Eventually the conversation with Aelius regarding Jadis’ past exploits came to an abrupt end when Dys’ stomach chose to make its displeasure known. She had put aside all thoughts of her hunger when she had found Alex and Sev sitting with the older Seraphim, but after a while her body would not be denied. She’d exerted a massive amount of energy the night before and her belly demanded a sacrifice. Preferably one that involved lots of meat.
“My servants should already have the preparations for a meal underway,” Aelius said as he rose from his seat. “I’ll go check on them. Wait here, if you’d like?”
“No, I’d like to check on Sabina,” Dys said as she, too, rose to her feet. “Maybe convince her to leave her work for a minute to eat something. You said she’s in a workshop somewhere?”
“I’ll show you the way,” Severina said as she got up as well. “It’s behind the main house.”
“Alex, the rest of us are starting to get up,” Dys quietly told her demonic lover. “Would you go join them?”
“Yes…” Alex nodded in easy agreement.
Jadis wasn’t trying to be sneaky, but she didn’t think bringing Alex along for the first meeting with Sabina’s family was a good idea. She’d already tried that tactic a couple of times, with Thea’s mother and Bridget’s family, and those introductions hadn’t gone too badly. However, Glanum had just been attacked by Demons. Jadis didn’t truly know what sort of person Sabina’s father was, or her brothers, and for all she knew they might have a pretty negative reaction to Alex considering recent events. She figured she should have a conversation with them first, to set expectations, and to make sure there wouldn’t be any issues. Jadis was prepared to like Sabina’s family, but if any of them turned hostile towards Alex… Well. She wasn’t exactly known for her patience. She just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“Did you get any sleep yet?” Dys asked Severina as they walked through the manor’s courtyard towards another door on the far wall.
“Perhaps an hour or so,” Sev answered wearily. “There has been much to do.”
“You need sleep,” Dys gently chided her lover. “Real sleep. Shit, I need more sleep. Maybe a full day of it. Maybe a week.”
“I will rest soon,” she answered as she flexed her one living wing. “This is not the first time I have gone a day or two without sleep. There were issues that had to be attended to in the wake of the attack.”
“Such as?”
“Organizing the defense. Relief efforts. Explaining to the local magistrate why we are here…” Severina trailed off, her voice growing more tired by the word. “Our presence is welcome, but landing the Leviathan has caused some consternation among the locals.”
“Ah. I hope they aren’t too upset. I mean, it was sort of an emergency landing.”
“Lodovico understands completely,” Sev waved the concern off. “He has always been a pragmatic magistrate. However, we should probably get the airship moved sooner rather than later, to avoid causing any ill will among the locals. Your praises are being sung on every street corner right now. I don’t want that sentiment to be tainted.”
Jadis nodded along in agreement to the paladin’s words. She figured people couldn’t be too mad at her, not if her efforts regarding the defense of the city were known. She wasn’t egotistical enough to think that all credit would go to her, not when it was a combined effort that led to the defeat of the Demon Prince, but she assumed she had to have some good will being sent her way. However, if the Torre Sacra was as important to the locals as she guessed, it was probably for the best that she get the airship moved as soon as she could manage. There was no need to show disrespect to the people who lived in Glanum just because she’d saved their asses from a demonic invasion.
“Speaking of tainted sentiments,” Severina sighed as they walked through a corridor towards another door. “You will need to meet with General Voss later this evening.”
“What? The commanding general wants to see me? Is he mad at me for something?” Dys frowned at the thought. “He’s not another General Egilhard, is he?”
“No,” the blonde firmly shook her head. “Voss is an experienced and well-liked general. He isn’t a noble, either. He was promoted from the ranks. There are no politics in that man’s ambitions. However, there was a rather public argument between you and one of his most prominent commanders. He wants to deal with that.”
Dys frowned but didn’t object. The argument she’d had with Odilia, the Valbjorn, was certainly what Severina was referring to, but it didn’t sound like General Voss was looking to reprimand Jadis. Or was he? Maybe it was some official thing that had to happen because Jadis was a registered mercenary and she had disobeyed the orders of a ranking commander in the military. She honestly had no idea how any of that worked; she hadn’t gone into the army for more than one reason, and a strict bureaucratic code of conduct was one of them. Still, from the way Sev was talking, it didn’t sound like it would be too onerous a meeting. Probably something she could get over with quickly and move on, presuming Voss was as reasonable as Severina made him out to be.
“Sure. After we eat?”
“Yes,” Sev nodded in agreement. “Though there is no urgent rush. I’ll take you to his command post when you are ready.”
By that point they had made their way out of the back corridors of Aelius’ manor and were outside again. Looking around, she saw that they were probably on the third tier of the city, rather than the second, just based on how close the giant central tower of Glanum loomed in the sky above them. There were beautiful buildings all around them, untouched by the previous night’s chaos. On the other side of a yard dotted with beautiful old olive trees was a small building that Jadis presumed was Aelius’ workshop. Small was a relative term, of course, since the structure was bigger than Thea’s childhood home.
“You know your way around this place pretty well,” Dys commented as she followed behind the blonde angel. “Have you been here before?”
“A few times,” Severina answered almost breezily. “Aelius is a friend of my parents. He is not the head of his family line, but he is an important member of House Fulgor, so he and my family have had many dealings in the past. He is also technically a distant relative.”
“Oh?”
That was news. Jadis had some ideas about who Severina was related to, but she had never brought up any mention of Aelius.
“Very distant. He is my third cousin, once removed, I believe. The only reason anyone would even keep track is because we are both of noble houses and such records are kept by scholars and the imperial academy.”
“Hm,” Dys hummed as the two of them approached the door that would lead into the workshop. “Well, he seems like a really nice guy. I’m glad we got the chance to talk.”
Severina turned to face Dys, a smile on her face. Before she could say anything, though, Dys ducked down low and kissed the Seraphim soundly on the lips. When she pulled back a moment later, Sev’s face was flushed pink with a bright blush.
“What was that for?” she asked somewhat breathlessly.
“I’m just happy you’re okay,” Dys answered, one hand lightly cupping Severina’s pale cheek.
“I believe I’m the one who should be saying that,” the winged woman commented dryly. “You gave us all more than a few scares last night.”
“Eh, I was fine,” Dys joked. “Just a few scratches.”
“Right…”
The two stared at each other for a moment longer before a loud banging of metal on metal from within the workshop startled them both. Glancing behind her at the door, Sev made a thin-lipped face and tilted her head. Then, stepping to one side, she waved Dys forward.
“I’ll leave you alone with them,” Severina said as she started back towards the main house. “I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting Sabina’s family, and I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
Something about the way the Seraphim said those words set off a warning bell in Jadis’ minds. However, she was already at the door, so there was no point in delaying the inevitable. She was there to meet her lover’s family, after all.
“See you soon,” Dys called after the retreating paladin.
“Yes, I’ll come rescue you in twenty minutes,” she called back.
“Rescue?” Dys murmured aloud as she pushed open the door.
As soon as she entered the workshop, she was assaulted by a cacophony of noises. Hammers banging on anvils, a bellows blowing into a furnace, the squeal of a grindstone, and the sharp scraping noise of steel on steel. All were to be expected for a forge. Jadis had been in and around Sabina’s workshop plenty of times, either to help or just to fetch her easily absent-minded lover, so she was familiar with the noise that came with such a facility.
What she had not expected were the voices.
“—if that’s even the correct version, which it isn’t, then you’re still doing it wrong because you need more carbon in the mix to reach the level of hardness that Basilius talks about in his third treatise on armor crafting. But as Ernust pointed out centuries later, we don’t need that much carbon to achieve a more durable product when using the correct technique!”
“Ernust was working with pig iron. We aren’t. I know what I’m doing, dad! This isn’t even normal steel, it’s cold flame steel! It’s a different process! Entirely!”
“It’s the same principle! Especially when you’re dealing with heavy armor like this one! If you make it too hard it’s going to shatter instead of bend, which is bad for the armor and worse for the wearer.”
“It’s not going to shatter; it’s going to be fine! It’s cold flame steel! It needs more carbon!”
“Less is more, boy! Half that amount will do!”
“No, that’s too little! It’ll be too weak and will fall apart like flaking mud the first time it takes a direct hit! Look, did you even read Milo’s scroll on enchanted armor?”
“Milo! What does that man know about enchanted armor? He may as well have written about gardening.”
“I thought Milo was a gardener?”
“No, you’re thinking of Otho. He’s the one from Corso. Went into smithing because he wanted to make his own gardening tools and wrote a book on using plants in the smithing process. Sort of a weird read.”
“Oh, right. He’s the one who wrote all that nonsense about olive oil.”
“Olive oil. Olive oil! For quenching! How did that man not set his whole forge on fire.”
The three voices that rang out amidst the sounds of hammers and forges were masculine and unfamiliar to Jadis. However, they all had a familiar cadence to their rapid speech that Jadis was very familiar with. When the next voice spoke up, she recognized the woman as the source of her familiarity with the tone and accent.
“I think it’s because he mostly worked with copper, so he was using lower heats than you do with steel, so he wasn’t at as great a risk. I would never use it, but I think Otho had the right idea to mix in plant-based mixture to quenching liquids to help lessen distortions, since that was some of what they were doing in Svaroga’s temple when I was working with Doru. They had an interesting mix that involved tenderweed spice, which I think we should try with this next batch. I don’t have all the ingredients though, so maybe we can make some adjustments to the mix that might improve it overall!”
“I do have some tenderweed powder somewhere. Good idea, Sabina. We’ll try that on the next batch, though not this one. We’ll let your brother ruin this one and then start over again when he’s done.”
“It’s not going to be ruined!”
Dys watched silently as a quartet of craftsmen carried on a ceaseless conversation with almost no pause between them. The moment one stopped talking, the next was already speaking, carrying on their response or thought without any time for contemplation. It was an endless chatter that was spoken at high enough volume that even the pounding of hammers on steel couldn’t drown out the quickly spoken words.
Not only were they speaking fast, but they also all had strong accents that made it hard for Jadis to understand some of the things being said. Even Sabina, who had a light accent that Jadis didn’t notice most of the time, had somehow reverted to a strongly foreign intonation that reminded her of Italian. Her accent wasn’t as strong as the oldest in the workshop, though. Not by a longshot.
“Don’t worry. Even when you ruin the metal, it can still be salvaged. Too much carbon, we add more iron. Too much iron, we add more carbon. It can be fixed,” the man Jadis assumed was Sabina’s father said as he continued to hammer what she recognized as a piece of her black armor. “There’s no mistake that can be made that cannot be unmade. At least in smithing. Maybe not with relationships. That’s different. And bread. Once it’s bread, it’s bread. Whether it’s good or bad bread, it’s too late to change. Tear it up and feed it to the ducks if you don’t like it.”
Gallo was, as Jadis already knew, a human man. Sabina’s deceased mother had been the elven half of her heritage. Like his daughter, Gallo had black, curly hair and tan skin, though his tone was much darker than his daughter’s shade. He wasn’t a thick-set man, not the way Aila or Bridget’s fathers were, but he was far from skinny. His arms bulged with muscle gained from years of hard labor, and his wide chest spoke of brute strength. When he turned his head to speak to Sabina, Dys could see that he was clean shaven. Other than having thin lips and a bigger nose, he had a strong family resemblance to his daughter. He was certainly handsome, in a blue-collar worker kind of way.
“I’m not talking about ducks with you again,” a tall man with thick muscles said from where he was forging a red-hot piece of metal. “You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to ducks. You don’t even like ducks.”
Jadis guessed this other man to be Sabina’s older brother, Crispus. He was clearly a half-elf like Sabina was, based on his pointed ears, and he looked a few years older than her as well. He was taller than both Sabina and Gallo by a few inches and had a lot of muscle on his bare arms. His build reminded Jadis of Gunnar, her company’s formal administrator, as they both looked like body builders. Crispus was taller and sleeker, though, so his bulk didn’t look quite as brawny as Gunnar’s did.
Catching sight of his face whenever he looked up to speak, Dys saw that Crispus had a closely trimmed goatee that paired well with his mop of dark curly hair. His eyes were much brighter than Sabina’s, though they shared that same yellow tint that came from their elven heritage. He looked obviously related to Gallo and Sabina, though he was a far handsomer man than his father. If someone on Oros ever invented the three-piece suit, Jadis was certain that Crispus could star on a magazine cover while wearing one. The more Dys stared at him, the more she realized that Sabina’s brother was a, frankly speaking, obscenely good-looking man.
“But he does know more about bread than you. And relationships. At least he’s had one,” the third man in the room quipped from where he was pumping the bellows for the furnace. “A relationship, I mean. We’ve all had bread. Haven’t all had a relationship. I spoke with that one girl for a week, though, so that counts, doesn’t it?”
The last man had to be Valerius, Sabina’s younger brother. He was facing her, so Dys got a good look at the guy, though he kept on pumping the bellows, somehow oblivious to the giant pale woman who had stepped into the workshop. He was the same height as his father, which was to say about an inch shorter than Sabina, and had a slighter build. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so Jadis could see that Valerius had plenty of muscle to his lanky body, just that he wasn’t as bulky as his brother and father. His skin tone was a deeper tan, like his father, but his hair color was a lighter brown, almost blond. He was clean shaven, but his hair was longer than either Gallo or Crispus kept theirs. Valerius’ unruly mop draped down to his shoulders, though he kept it out of his eyes by tying it back in a loose ponytail.
Unlike Crispus, Valerius wasn’t handsome. He was cute. Very cute. Where his older brother had a supermodel’s chiseled features, Valerius looked like he belonged in a boyband. Jadis had never much cared for that sort of music, but she had more than enough experience surfing the web in her past life to have seen many examples of popular pretty boys that made the tops of music charts more for their looks than their singing talent. Valerius looked like he would fit right in with those sorts of performers, especially if he made walking around without a shirt on a regular thing.
“No, that doesn’t count as a relationship,” Sabina shook her head at her younger brother. “That’s more like a prelude to a relationship, or maybe a flirtation? Was she even flirting with you? Did you flirt with her? Or were you just talking to her about wood density again, like the last girl?”
“Wood density.”
“Of course you were,” Gallo sighed. “I’m surprised she lasted a week. Determined woman.”
“Determined?” Crispus made a face. “Determined to do what? Be a bore? I saw them talking, and she barely said a thing! All she did was stare at Val most of the time. I don’t think she even understood half of what he was talking about. Wasn’t she a seamstress in training? What would she even know about fletching, anyway.”
“Probably nothing,” Sabina said as she set the piece of metal she had been shaping on the grindstone onto a nearby workbench. “I’m sure she just wanted to have sex with Val.”
“Ew. Why?”
“Some people like to have sex, Cris,” Valerius laughed.
“Yeah, but with you? Really?”
“I don’t know. Apparently.”
The humorous conversation was abruptly cut off when Sabina let out a loud squeal of joy that silenced the men in the workshop.
“Dys! You’re up!”
Tossing her tools down on a nearby table, the excitable smith rushed over to Dys and threw her arms around her waist in a powerful hug. Naturally, she reciprocated the affectionate gesture, though she couldn’t help but notice the three pairs of silent eyes watching their display. When Sabina pulled back, she grinned up at Dys while gesturing at her family behind her.
“I’m so glad you’re here! Now you can meet my dad and brothers! They’ve been waiting all morning to greet you, but I told them that they had to wait until you woke up because you wore yourself out killing the Demon Prince last night, so we’ve all been keeping busy while you and everyone got some sleep. We’re remaking your armor! It’ll go super quick, too, since my dad and Cris are helping me, they’re really good at smithing. Dad! Look, it’s Dys! Say hello!”
While Sabina had been babbling, Gallo had slowly approached the two women. When Sabina turned and addressed her father, he glanced at her, then turned his stern gaze upon Dys. With arms crossed across his wide chest and a large hammer in one hand, the father of her perkiest lover gave off a surprisingly intimidating aura.
When he spoke his next words, Jadis was momentarily rendered speechless.
“So. You’re the one who impregnated my daughter.”
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