"That is Master Rubins," Jellema protests weakly. "He painted the Queen’s portrait last year."
"He painted a lie," I correct. "He made the Queen look like a milkmaid who has never had a thought more complex than 'butter'. And he made the King look... heroically slim."
I pick up another sheet. It is a sketch of a sea battle. The ships look like bathtub toys; the waves look like blue frosting.
"This is garbage, Jellema. I am not hiring a court painter to make us look like dolls in a dollhouse. I am hiring an artist to document history."
I walk to the window. Below, Torvald’s pile-drivers are already thumping rhythmically against the earth. It is a violent, heavy sound.
"I want the sweat," I say, looking at the mud. "I want the strain of the ropes. I want the viewer to feel the weight of the stone. I don't want a pretty picture of a ceremony. I want a testament to industry."
Jellema pours himself more wine. He is learning that working with me requires a steady intake of alcohol.
"There is... Maren," he says hesitantly.
"Who?"
"Maren Leifsdottir. She isn't a court painter. She... well, she used to illustrate anatomy for the Medical Guild."
"Anatomy?"
"She was fired," Jellema admits. "Apparently, her drawings were too... visceral. Too accurate. The doctors found them unsettling."
"Accurate and unsettling," I muse. "My two favorite adjectives. Where do I find her?"
We find Maren not in a studio, but sitting on a bollard near the fish market. She is wrapped in a coat that has seen better days, sketching on a pad of rough paper with a stick of charcoal.
She is young, perhaps twenty-five, with hair chopped short as if she did it herself with a knife. Her hands are stained black.
She does not notice us approach. She is too focused on a fisherman gutting a cod.
I look over her shoulder.
The drawing is not pretty. It is grotesque and beautiful. She has captured the slickness of the entrails, the dull glaze of the fish’s eye, and the exhaustion in the fisherman’s shoulders. It is not a drawing of a man cleaning a fish; it is a drawing of labor.
"You have a heavy hand," I say.
Maren jumps, nearly dropping her charcoal. She spins around, eyes wide. She sees Jellema and scrambles to stand.
"My Lord Duke!"
"Sit," I command. I pick up her sketchpad. I flip through the pages.
A beggar with a twisted leg. A stray dog fighting a rat. A ship listing in the mud at low tide.
"You draw the broken things," I note.
"I draw the true things," Maren says, her voice quiet but defiant. "The court painters draw the world as they wish it was. I draw it as it is."
"Can you draw strength?" I ask. "Not the fake strength of a man in armor posing for a statue. But the strength of a crane lifting five tons of granite?"
Maren looks at the harbor. She looks at the massive wooden crane Torvald is erecting.
"It is all tension," she says, her hands moving as if tracing the lines in the air. "The rope pulling against the pulley. The wood groaning. The counterweight fighting gravity. Yes. I can draw that."
"I have a commission," I say. "A triptych. Three large panels for the entrance of the new Fey Embassy."
I gesture to the construction site.
"Panel One: The Decay. The rotting piers. The mud. The inefficiency."
Maren nods, her eyes lighting up. "Shadows. Browns and greys."
"Panel Two: The Work. Torvald’s machines. The driving of the piles. The pouring of the lead. I want to see the muscles of the men and the sparks of the iron."
"And the third?"
"The Ceremony," I say. "It happens in two days. The King will be there. He will be holding a silver shovel."
Maren scowls. "A portrait? I am not good at flattery, My Lady."
"I do not want flattery," I step closer. "I want the truth of the transaction."
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
I lower my voice.
"Paint the King in the center. Make him beautiful. Make his velvet shine. Make him look like the sun king he thinks he is. Let the light hit that silver shovel until it blinds the viewer."
"But?" Maren asks, sensing the trap.
"But in the background," I say, "painted in the shadows, behind him... paint the Bank. Paint the construction. And paint me."
Maren studies my face. She looks at the sharp line of my jaw, the predatory stillness of my posture.
"You want to be watching him," she realizes.
"I want to be looming," I correct. "Paint me not as a participant, Maren, but as the Architect. He holds the shovel; I hold the horizon. He is the actor on the stage; I am the one who built the theater."
I pull a small pouch from my belt.
"I will provide the pigments. Lapis lazuli for the sea. Real silver dust for the shovel and gold dust for the coins. And for the shadows..."
I smile.
"...I have a special ink from the Fey lands. It is very dark. And it never fades."
Maren looks at the pouch. She looks at her charcoal-stained hands.
"I will need canvas," she says. "Big canvas. Sailcloth."
"You shall have it," I promise. "And you shall be paid five hundred gold crowns."
Maren chokes. "Five hundred?"
"If you capture the soul of this harbor," I say. "If you make the people who look at it feel the weight of the stone and the weight of the debt."
"I will start sketching the crane today," Maren says, clutching her charcoal like a weapon.
"Good," I say. "Make sure you get the angle of the breakwater right. Torvald is very particular about his angles."
I turn to Jellema as we walk away.
"The Vulture, the Bear, the Blue-Inker, the Driftwood Banker," I list. "And now, the Anatomist."
"She will paint you like a monster," Jellema warns. "She draws truth, remember?"
"I know," I say, watching Maren frantically sketching the line of a rope. "That is exactly what I am paying for. Oskar wants a portrait for his vanity. Seeing me depicted as unattractive will make him feel better. Now we must find a location for the bank and embassy."
"Too small," I say, dismissing the storefront on the main market square. "And it smells of cabbage."
"It is a prime location," Silas Visser argues, walking a step behind me. "High foot traffic. Near the Weavers' Guild."
"I do not want foot traffic," I correct him. "I want destination traffic. When a man comes to borrow money to build a ship, Silas, he should not feel like he is stopping to buy turnips. He should feel like he is ascending to a higher plane of existence."
We are walking the length of the harbor front. The wind is biting, but my new team is keeping pace. Kenric is watchful. Silas is practical. Master Olin is clutching his ledger, muttering about rental prices per square foot.
Torvald is just bored. He wants to be hitting things with hammers.
"What about that one?" Kenric points to a sturdy brick building near the sail-lofts.
"Former tannery," Olin sniffs. "You will never get the smell of urine out of the floorboards."
"Delightful," I drawl. "Next."
We reach the end of the developed waterfront. Here, the cobblestones give way to packed dirt and weeds. The new construction site, where Torvald’s machines are currently screaming, is just beyond.
But standing between the old city and the new expansion is a ruin.
It is a massive structure of grey stone, three stories high, with arched windows that are currently boarded up with rotting wood. The roof has collapsed in the center. Ivy chokes the front steps.
It looks like a dead giant.
"Stop," I say.
"That?" Silas follows my gaze. He grimaces. "That is the Old Admiralty House. It has been empty for twenty years."
"Why?"
"A fire," Silas says. "And... stories. They say the Admiral went mad in the attic. Hanged himself. No merchant will touch it. They say it eats money."
"It eats money," I repeat, a slow smile spreading across my face. "Perfect. A bank should look like it eats money. It inspires confidence."
I walk up the cracked steps. Above the door, a stone crest has been chipped away, leaving only a scar.
"Who owns it?" I ask.
"The City," Olin answers immediately. "It is on the books as a 'non-performing asset.' They have been trying to sell the land for scrap value, but the demolition costs are too high."
"Torvald," I say, kicking a piece of rotting timber aside. "The bones?"
Torvald steps up. He ignores the ivy. He places a massive hand on the cornerstone. He looks at the foundation line. He kicks the wall.
"Basalt," he grunts. "The walls are three feet thick. The roof is rot, the floors are likely sawdust, but the shell? You could hit this with a cannon and it wouldn't shudder."
"Can you fix it?"
"Give me fifty men and three days," Torvald says. "I'll rip the guts out. New roof beams. New floors. The stone just needs a sandblast."
"Olin," I turn to the Vulture. "The price?"
"It is a blight," Olin calculates, peering through a crack in the boards. "The Mayor would pay you to take it. Offer him a thousand crowns for the deed and the land rights for fifty yards in either direction."
"Do it," I command.
"Princess," Silas warns. "The location... it is at the edge of the city."
"Silas," I say, turning to face the harbor.
From here, I can see everything. To my left, the crowded, chaotic old port. To my right, the skeleton of the massive new pier Torvald is building.
"We are not at the edge," I tell him, sweeping my hand toward the ocean. "We are at the hinge. The old world is over there. The new world is over there. And everyone who wants to go from one to the other has to walk past my front door."
I place my hand on the rough stone of the Admiralty. I send a pulse of magic into it. I feel the cold, damp silence within. I feel the rats. I feel the echo of the dead Admiral's despair.
"Besides," I whisper, "I like a building with a ghost. It keeps the burglars away."
The Mayor of Varpua is a man named Guss. He is sweaty, round, and currently staring at the bag of gold on his desk as if it might bite him.
"The Admiralty?" Guss stammers. "You want the Admiralty? Princess, the roof is open to the sky. The seagulls nest in the ballroom."
"I am fond of birds," I say coldly. "Do we have a deal?"
Sander Vane, my new secretary, slaps a document onto the desk. He drafted it in ten minutes at the tavern. It is viciously precise.
"Standard transfer," Sander barks. "Freehold title. Mineral rights. And a waiver of all back taxes due to 'historical neglect by the municipality'."
Guss looks at Sander. He looks at the gold. He looks at Kenric’s sword.
"Done," Guss says, grabbing the quill.
We stand inside the ruin. It is dark. The moonlight filters through the hole in the roof, illuminating a pile of debris that used to be a chandelier.
"It is... atmospheric," Kenric notes, holding a lantern.
"It is a mess," Olin corrects, kicking a dead rat.
"It is a blank canvas," I say.
I walk to the center of the great hall. The floor is rotted wood, but beneath it, I can sense the stone foundation.
"Torvald," I order. "At dawn, your men strip the wood. Burn it. I want stone floors. Polished slate. Cold and hard."
"Aye," Torvald grunts, making notes on a piece of slate.
"Silas," I point to the back wall, where a dark archway leads to the cellars. "The vault goes there. Torvald will line it with lead and iron. You will design the lock."
labor the way priests paint saints:
- entrails
- decay
- misery
- truth
But—not a flattering political portrait.No, no.
weaponized portrayal of the ceremony:
- Oskar gleaming and oblivious
- the silver shovel blindingly bright
- and the Princess in the shadows, looming like inevitability itself
it.
ONE THOUSAND CROWNS and demands land rights “fifty yards in either direction.”
menace.
A symphony of competence
A love letter to infrastructure
A threat to corrupt guilds everywhere
And a warning to Oskar that the future no longer needs him
Five Sharks Three Bears Two Ghosts One Anatomist and A Bank That Eats Money / 10
the Discord via this invite link.