Chapter 15
LORKIN
Metal made sense.
You heated it. You struck it. It changed shape.
It didn’t ask why. It didn’t want anything from me except force and attention, and I had both to spare. There were plenty of things in the world that I didn’t understand. Metal wasn’t one of them.
I brought the hammer down again, and sparks scattered across the dirt floor.
The forge was hot enough to make sweat run down my back under my shirt. The fire burned low and red in the belly of the furnace, throwing light over the walls, the tools, and the soot on my arms. Everything was where it belonged.
That should have been enough.
It usually was.
But I kept thinking about Kazan.
I’d driven out to the orchard two days ago with a load of milled timber and found him in his kitchen. Kazan. The Bastion. The man who’d held a transport hold against forty Protos marines with one arm broken and blood running into his eyes.
He was catching figs.
Maisie tossed them at him, and he caught them like there was nothing else in the world he needed to do. He wore a flannel shirt. His tail moved slowly behind him, content as anything I’d ever seen.
It was wrong.
Or it should have been.
I’d told myself that was weakness.
A warrior gone soft. A man forgetting what kept him alive.
I’d told myself that more than once.
But Maisie wasn’t what I’d expected either. I’d thought she’d be fragile. Humans usually were. Small, breakable things with too much fear and not enough sense to survive the places they ended up.
I shoved the blade into the slack-tub. Water hissed, steam rising between me and the door. For a moment, there was only heat and iron and the familiar stink of the forge.
I was alone.
That was as it should be.
The terminal on the wall pinged.
I ignored it.
The box was bolted to the wall near the workbench because Remmen had insisted. There were timber orders. Repair requests. Supply notices. Proof we were all respectable citizens of New Knossos and not a camp full of men one bad day away from trouble.
It pinged again.
Then a third time.
I set the tongs down harder than necessary and crossed the shop, wiping one hand on my apron. Whoever wanted a plow blade by next week could wait. Whoever wanted timber could wait longer.
I thumbed the screen awake.
It wasn’t an order.
The Agency seal glowed on the display. Interlocked rings. Too clean. Too official.
Under it, the message waited.
Greetings. You have been selected.
I stared at it.
More words appeared beneath the first line.
The Alien Matchmaking Agency is pleased to invite you to choose a bride. Your appointment is confirmed for this Friday at 13:00, Matchmaking Office, New Knossos. We look forward to building your family.
For a moment, I didn’t move.
Then I read it again.
Then a third time.
It didn’t change.
My name was there. My citizen file. A cheerful little countdown blinked in the corner, like I’d asked for it. Like I’d walked into that office and signed my name to a list.
I hadn’t.
I’d never gone near that place. I’d never asked for a human woman to be brought across space and handed to me like a shipment I’d forgotten ordering.
A bride.
The word sat there, ridiculous and impossible.
I didn’t want a bride.
Which meant someone else had decided I did.
There weren’t many people stupid enough to do that. Fewer who had access to my registration. Kazan was soft enough now to think it was helping. Remmen was smug enough to make it official.
The settlement was for desperate women. We were men with dying bloodlines and empty houses. Men who wanted families badly enough to trust an Agency seal and a woman from Earth.
That wasn’t me.
I had a forge and forty workers who needed tools, timber, and someone to keep the accounts honest. I had a roof that didn’t leak and a bed no one else slept in.
What would I do with a wife?
What would she do here?
Freeze. Cry. Get bored. Get hurt. Decide she’d made a mistake.
Or worse, decide she hadn’t.
I didn’t need complications or paperwork. I didn’t need a funeral waiting for me in a pretty dress.
I wasn’t desperate.
I jabbed the screen with one soot-blackened finger and swiped the message away.
The Agency seal vanished. The terminal went back to standby green, quiet and blank.
Good.
That was done.
I turned away from it and went back to the forge. There was no reason to be in New Knossos on Friday at 13:00.
No reason at all.
I pulled another bar from the fire and set it on the anvil.
Behind me, the terminal pinged once more.
I didn’t turn around.
I hit the metal harder.