Demon World Boba Shop: A Cozy Fantasy Novel

Arthur managed to not knock anyone down for the rest of the day. And Lily recovered enough to start helping all the cooks in the plaza, which kept her from going stir-crazy about not being able to work as hard as she’d like.

Arthur slung tea until the morning rush broke, then sent the still-conflicted Karra back to her house to take a nap. Somehow he also managed to complete the much more difficult task of getting Lily to do the same thing, convincing her that the quickest way to the end of the day was to be unconscious for part of it. When he finished cleaning the shop and snuck in to check on her, Lily was already peacefully snoring in her half-sized bed.

After that, it was time to find Milo. Or Onna, or really almost anyone from the council. He had been authorizing an awful lot of people to do an awful lot of things over the past couple of days, enough that when his day finally slowed down, he started to worry about it. It was very easy to say that he’d confirm everything with the council but then to forget to actually do that.

Arthur suspected that most people didn’t mind when he jumped ahead in that way, but he minded. If nothing else, it put all the responsibility for mistakes firmly on his own shoulders. He was sure that he’d be immediately forgiven if something did come up, but it didn’t matter to him much. He’d still feel bad about them. Somehow, making sure everyone else would have made the same decision was the only thing that would help.

These days, the council was still mostly early residents of the town. Milo, Mizu, Rhodia, Onna, and Arthur all fell into that group, as did Skal, who filled out their old-but-wise quota and mostly sat quietly in meetings unless he saw some horrible mistake that he needed to prevent. Talca, on the other hand, was too immediately important to the town’s interests to be excluded, and thus was the newest member in the official seven member council.

That number, Arthur was told, was so traditional and proven as a decision-making council size that nobody dared buck it. With that said, there were also far too many different interests in the town for a mere seven people to represent all of them.

Meetings were not only public, but they were also whole-town conversations in which the voice of the people had a sort of unofficial veto power.

From Arthur’s experience so far, demons weren’t a power-hungry race. Very few people coveted Arthur’s job, including Arthur himself. When the format of the town meetings was explained to him, he had expected it to be a massive, chaotic mistake. Somehow, it wasn’t. Most people just wanted the town to do well. They showed up, didn’t talk unless it made sense for them to, and had such a positive attitude towards local government that it was, from Arthur’s point of view, bordering on nonsense.

It all worked, though, something that he was absurdly glad about given his current set of responsibilities.

“Arthur!” Milo popped out of his workshop before Arthur could even yell to let him know he was there. “I was looking for you.”

“In a good way, or in a ‘I messed something up’ way?” Arthur asked.

“In a good way. I think.” Milo set down his hammer on a workbench, where it settled with a thunk. “I’ve been working with Puka on his trap ideas, and it’s turning out there’s a pretty big synergy between machinists and trappers.”

“Yeah? That sounds promising,” Arthur said.

“It is. There are places I want to use a giant mechanism, but Puka knows of some trap format that will do about the same thing, in a simpler way. Or places he wants a trigger that doesn’t exist in his class, but does in mine. Or at least I can invent something for it. It’s been getting pretty crazy.” Milo grabbed a flask of water off the workbench and took a swig, then grimaced. “This is warm. How did it get warm?”

“It’s right by your shop,” Arthur answered as he gestured at the forge. “I think you forget how hot it gets in there. I can barely stand here without feeling sunburned.”

“Right. Anyway, I’m so deep in the process that I can’t tell what is real and what’s just my imagination anymore. Puka is the same way. We have a lot of good ideas, but most of them will take a lot of work to get off the ground,” Milo said, not at all concerned about the fact that he was losing grasp of reality.

“Well, good news, then,” Arthur said. “I’m here to call a town council meeting. Get washed up. We have to get the word out.”

“Ugh. Yeah. Give me a few.”

Ten minutes later, Milo was out of the shower and dressed in some of his nicer walking-around clothes. His hands were still a bit dark with coal dust, but they nearly always were. There was only so much that soap could do for that problem.

“Come on. I’ll buy you a juice at the plaza and we can start to get the word out,” Arthur said.

The juice at the plaza was great. Arthur’s tea shop was no longer the only game in town as far as beverages went, which was great as far as he was concerned. There was only so much business he could or even wanted to do. And variety was just as important to him as it was to anyone else.

The town’s juice vendor worked hard all warm season gathering local fruits, domesticating what he could, and juicing all of it to preserve in jars for the cold season. Through the magic of his skills, the drinks were almost as good during the off-season as they were during the warm parts of the year.

As Arthur worked on his berry drink and Milo finished his citrus drink from some preserved concentrate, the bird-demon took care of the publicity for the meeting.

“Hey, Olata. Town council meeting tonight. Be there,” Milo yelled.

“Tonight? That’s quick,” Olata asked back.

“What, you have a big date?”

“Kind of.”

“Then have it here. Food’s on the town for council meetings.” Milo turned to Arthur, slurping the last of his drink while Olata went to tell her date about the change in plans. “She’ll get the word out, especially when there’s food involved.”

“And I’ll go find Spiky or Leena before the meeting so neither of us has to do minutes.”

—

The sun set, and the town came out, picking up dinner from the cooks as they found places around the plaza to sit. There weren’t nearly enough tables and chairs for the entire town, but people knew enough to bring their own. Before too long, the tables were all out of the way, and everyone had plates or bowls held in their hands as they ate and waited for the show to start.

“Hey, everyone,” Arthur yelled. In the first town meetings, he had tried to talk in a loud, projecting voice that wasn’t a yell. After a couple tries, he gave up and just started yelling. Once the crowd quieted down, he’d be able to talk in a normal voice and count on the all-stone acoustics of the space to make it carry. For now, hollering was the only way. “Thanks for coming out.”

The town quieted down pretty quick as Arthur moved through the initial important bullet points.

“I don’t know any nice way to say that this is a tough time for the town, but I think you all know. We aren’t as protected as we used to be with Karbo gone. Trouble is coming sooner or later, probably sooner. And every single one of us has been working hard in the ways we can help to get ready for that,” Arthur said.

The audience let out a short clap at that.

“Right now, we’ve got a lot of ideas. Karra has some ideas of how to improve the wall. Milo and Puka have some thoughts on how to take out monsters that are trying to tear them down. And I know the rest of you have ideas too. We’re going to talk about what we have first, then I’ll open it up for anyone.”

The discussion between the council members didn’t take incredibly long. Each of them had at least some idea what the others were doing, either from talking with each other or from Spiky making his rounds and keeping them all up-to-date.

The rest of the town was hearing about some of these plans for the first time. There weren’t many questions about Karra’s design, since more walls seemed clearly better to everyone. Milo’s and Puka’s ideas were more complex and got more questions.

“So no saws, then?” one of the audience asked.

“No. And it wouldn’t do us much good even if we could build them. You’ve all seen monster waves. They pile up,” Milo said. “Sooner or later, anything we put up is going to get clogged. We have to plan for a case where the monsters start piling up.”

It would be a worse problem for Coldbrook because they had so little wall compared to most cities. That fact was also the only reason they had a chance to win out over the monsters in the first place. They just listened and contributed what they could to the plan.

“I do see a problem,” Talca said. “All those traps are going to take a lot of metal. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were just asking me to bring some back from my next trip last week.”

Arthur looked at Milo, fully expecting him to have an answer for the question. To his almost-comical horror, Milo was frozen in place.

Oh no. He hadn’t thought about materials. It wasn’t a problem Arthur had, but it was a common problem among crafter types in this world. In a lot of ways, they were more artists than manual laborers. Milo fell into the category who was fully practical and reasonable when it came to what he was making, but often let that wisdom fall by the wayside when it came to things outside of the discrete task of making things.

“I, um. I might have forgotten about that,” Milo mumbled.

“Is it that a problem we can’t get past?” Arthur asked. “Can’t we just make more?”

“Not that much.” Milo continued to look trapped in a pit of his own digging. “Not that quick. I’m the only person who can make metal here, and I can only make so much per day.”

Arthur felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. The traps were the most hopeful thing he had heard of since they started building up their defenses. If they worked, they might save the town. Having the prospect pulled away so quickly left him with a lurching feeling in his gut.

“You could get more.” Skal said. “It’s not as if ours is the only town in the whole demon world, boys. Some of them make iron. Hell, some of them only make iron. There are whole towns like that.”

“How much would we need?” Arthur asked. “Realistically, I mean.”

“A couple of wagon loads, at least,” Milo said. “Anything extra we can use for weapons, but we need quite a bit for cables and hooks and that kind of thing.”

A couple of wagon loads wasn’t nothing. When Arthur had first met Milo, he was reusing a lot of the iron in his pieces. Either remaking failed projects or scrapping them for the metal.

That said, the city’s coffers would more than cover it. Transport was a harder thing but it could be done. Probably.

“Iron is harder to transport than you think,” Talca said, disillusioning Arthur of the idea that it was going to be an easy fix. “And good transporters are going to be in short supply right now.”

“What’s the closest town that would have that much?” Milo said. “I mean for sure, that they could sell.”

“Land’s End.” Talca nodded decisively. “It’s a bit farther than where your dad was laid up, but there are good roads now. We could probably get there in a day and a half.”

“We?”

“Me and someone who can negotiate with town funds. Preferably someone non-essential to the defense plans.”

That settled it. There was only one person who fit that description.

“All right, everyone,” Arthur said. “Looks like traps are a go. Talca and I are going to take a little spin to get supplies. We’ll be back before you know it.”