ThatSharkPerson

  Vesta began the meeting without preamble, her notes already colted on the table before her.

  “As you all no doubt noticed on the way to this meeting, Tulian, which has historically relied heavily on its oceanic trade, currently cks any and all infrastructure to support the resumption of this practice. While I am certain there was little other military option at the time,” Vesta shot Nora a gre that said she thought anything but, “the bombardment of the harborside has left us bereft of critical industries. If we are to begin the recovery efforts in any meaningful capacity, we must focus on the construction of docks and warehouses to store goods. Many of our pre-war economic pns hinged on the export of unique items that your Champion’s knowledge will allow us to produce. This is not possible with two shattered piers and a city rendered nigh inaccessible by rubble.”

  “I can agree with that, aye,” Nora said, throwing her remaining foot upon a stool, the empty limb where her prosthetic had been removed left dangling comfortably off her chair. “And we’ll need to retain the shipyard workers I trained, too, and don’t you doubt that other sorts’ll be trying to poach ‘em. Don’t want to teach another lot how to do the same damn things I spent so long pounding into their heads, much less let other folk get their hands on the hands that built the Waverake.”

  “We can build basic warehouses with concrete,” Sara said as Evie began to scribble notes, “and the same can be said for docks. It’ll still take a while, but the 1st Combat Engineers have got mixing and pouring the stuff down to an art. Hell of a lot faster than mining stone and dragging it into the city. I’ll get an estimate on the repairs as soon as I can, but I doubt it’ll be more than a couple months.”

  “We’ll need it sooner, rather than ter,” Nora said. “She’s a fine ship, but the Waverake was built with green wood. Even if she never fights another day in her life, she’ll start coming apart at the seams before a few years pass her by. Takes years to get pnks ready for shipbuilding, and that’s when yer not making ‘em half as thick as the Waverake needs. Yer gonna need reserves of wood, big ones, and pces to store them for seasoning.”

  “Will the products of the University be avaible for aid?” Ignite asked. “I have read of the process your concrete is produced by, Governess, and while the cost of the material is incredibly encouraging, the time and bor spent mixing the product seems a fine candidate for the same device which currently keeps this ship afloat.”

  “Good idea,” Sara said, nodding appreciatively, if only to encourage the habitually quiet Ignite to continue speaking up. “Garen?”

  “It is not impossible to turn the engines towards mixing concrete,” the archmage replied, though his lips turned down. “But there will soon be a considerable shortage of steam engines compared to all the purposes for which they are desired. We only have so many crystals of a size required to heat a boiler, and as of now, I remain the only one capable of enchanting them with the appropriate precision.”

  “What about smaller stuff?” Voth asked. Sara blinked, surprised to hear the orc take an interest in the topic. “I saw that big bastard you got in the bottom of the ship already, but that won’t do much for me. I need something my troops can use in the field.”

  “And what do you require construction machinery for, Voth?” Vesta pointedly asked. As Tulian’s treasurer, it was second nature for her to get testy with anyone who wanted something expensive. “I see little use for steam machinery in the hands of one who commands border-patrolling militias.”

  “Because the border’s getting a lot damn closer, that’s why.” Voth sat up in his chair, sliding over a map of Tulian. He tapped the jungle wall emphatically. “We’ve lost twenty miles of territory to the jungle already. It just won’t stop growing. Don’t pretend you don’t know about it. I’ve sent you all the reports.”

  “Twenty square miles completely consumed?” Vesta asked. “In a matter of months? That seems ridiculous.”

  “Dunno how ridiculous it is,” Voth replied with a frank shrug. “But it ain’t twenty square miles. It’s twenty miles, period. The entire southern border’s migrated at least twenty goddamn miles north. All along the entire jungle wall. Twice that distance in some pces. And I haven’t sent many patrols far west, but word is it’s even worse in the swamps. Way the grapevine was talking, you’re gonna have to make some new maps of Tulian.”

  The entire room went quiet at the announcement. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t been aware of the problem, of course. Voth wasn’t lying when he said he’d been sending reports. But with the war going on, no one had really bothered to care. To hear it in person, then to see the orc’s finger tracing the amount of territory lost on the map? It was shocking. Even Sara let out a hissing curse.

  “How many vilges have we lost?” She asked.

  “Can’t say. But we didn’t lose many people, at least. You had everyone hole up in the capital for the siege that never happened, and that meant most of ‘em weren’t there to get overrun by the jungle. ‘Course, if they’d been there to help cut it all down, it may not have gotten so out of control. Most of the growth’s happened in the past couple months, when there was no one to fight it. Which also means a lot of people you’ve got cooped up in this city don’t have homes anymore, by the way. So that’s another problem.”

  Sara took a deep, purposeful breath. “Okay. Okay. We’ll consider that a high priority item. Dad, try and teach Garen about, like, chainsaws or something. See if we can get something going there.”

  “Uh, sure,” he replied, looking profoundly nervous at being called out. “I mean, I don’t know how much of a difference chainsaws and stuff will make, if what Mr. Voth is saying about the growth rate is right, but I think we can try.”

  “Better than nothing.” Sara shook her head, resisting the urge to curse again. “Alright. Garen, do you have any idea why the jungle would be going wild like this?”

  “Not at the moment, I’m afraid. I’ve done limited research on the matter in the past, due to Voth’s letters, but never enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. Magic that encourages growth is possible, but I have never heard of it being employed on such a rge scale.”

  “So you think it could be some kind of directed effort, then?”

  Garen shrugged. “It could be. It could also be the nature of the jungle. Magic is not unique to thinking beings, Sara. Quite the opposite. The greatest of archmages are but novices next to the chaotic wild.”

  “Okay. Well. Shit.” Sara pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing sharply. “Okay. That’s a big fucking deal, but not anything we can do about it right this very second. Who’s next?”

  “I believe I have several matters of relevance.” Evie squirmed in Sara’s p as she retrieved one of her many notebooks, flipping to a well-worn page. She cleared her throat, readying herself to give an orator’s speech. Sara found it faintly amusing to hear Evie acting so officious while curled up in her p.

  “As Vesta and I have tallied it, you have thus far received at least forty separate requests for official visits by foreign dignitaries. With word of Tulian victory over Sporatos spreading, those who were previously reluctant to officially recognize the Republic are now all but cmoring for your favor. The Carrion Navy has already announced a formal recognition of our independence, as promised, and an Admiralty representative is likely on their way as we speak. While other Kingdoms and city-states have not gone quite as far, it is pin to see that the world has already begun to recognize Tulian as a political force independent of Sporatos.”

  “There are several oddities in that long list of diplomatic overtures, however,” Vesta said, flipping through her own papers. Watching the woman shuffle the pile around, Sara was briefly distracted by the thought that she really ought to invent paperclips sometime soon. It was amazing how helpful little things like that were. Vesta eventually found what she was looking for, clearing her throat.

  “Here it is. While nearly all these letters will require your attention at some point or another, there were three examples which I wish to bring up at this meeting. Though the verbiage of their requests for meeting is fairly standard, their origins are not.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “For one, they were not delivered by messengers. The first letter was one Oddry found neatly folded atop my desk one morning, without any expnation for its arrival. Perhaps unusual, but not dissimir to the frustratingly enigmatic manner with which our own Garen communicates.”

  “It is an awfully convenient spell,” Garen agreed, smiling lightly.

  “I’m certain it is,” Vesta drolly replied. “The second letter, however, was found in my pocket two days ago. I noticed it when getting undressed at the end of the day, and I haven’t a clue when it was pced, nor does anyone else who was with me. Either it was pced by an exceptionally skilled pickpocket, or it was manifested by means of spellcraft, simir to the first. Regardless of the specific method employed, I find it disconcerting to know I was so easily targeted. Worse, the final letter was brought to me yesterday evening, hand-delivered by a young member of the Guard who insisted he had been tasked to personally present it. However, when pressed, the fellow could not remember who had tasked him with this, when he had received the task, or even if he had truly spoken to anyone at all. The discrepancy, once revealed, caused him no small amount of emotional distress. I ordered him to be brought to the Church of Amarat to ascertain the extent of the mental manipution which I suspect to have occurred. I have not yet received any report from the church, but anticipate one soon.”

  Sara’s eyebrows rose a notch higher several times throughout Vesta’s expnation. When she was done, Sara slowly lowered her chin onto Evie’s shoulder, wishing she could simply let herself drift away to sleep. So much for the easy logistical meeting she’d anticipated.

  “Okay,” she eventually said. “That’s pretty wild. But it’s fairly standard magic bullshit. Well, not fucking with that guard’s mind. We’re gonna have to find out who did that and make an example of them. That shit won’t fly in Tulian. But what did the letters actually say? If they were from foreign dignitaries, which they probably were if they have the power to do that kind of wizard bullshit, why do you assume they’re all reted, beyond just being weird as hell in how they got to you?”

  “All three letters cim to be addressed from representatives of the same political entity: one rather unhelpfully named ‘The Empire.’ Which empire, or where it is, they did not say.”

  “Well that’s just pompous as all hell,” Sara scoffed. “Talk about having their head up their ass.”

  “Oh, that’s pretty normal,” Sara’s dad abruptly said. “There’s been tons of empires that are so self-important that they don’t think they really need a name. Other pces may call them the ‘empire of bh-bh-bh’ or whatever, but plenty of actual emperors just called themselves ‘the emperor’, as if they’re the only one that matters.”

  “Mm,” Vesta hummed with feigned interest, hiding a slight grin as she flicked her eyes over to meet Sara’s. Before the meeting, Sara had warned the other attendees that her dad was a generally shy person, often difficult to prompt into conversation. That was true up until the moment you inadvertently stumbled across a topic he was interested in, in which case it would be next to impossible to shut him up. Vesta clearly got a kick out of seeing that predicted behavior in action.

  “In fact,” her dad obliviously continued, “empires rarely use titles that match how they’re referred to in history books, because they’re so wrapped up in political justifications of their rule that are relevant during their existence, instead of geographic accuracy or historical validity. This one’s probably the same. If whoever was writing the letters qualified which empire they belonged to, it would imply they weren’t the most important one, which would be a huge no-no.”

  “Be that as it may, Mr. Brown,” Evie said, “their unhelpful titles do no good in determining what they actually desire of us. I’ve read the letters myself. They are perfunctory, disinterested affairs, seemingly created less out of interest in any genuine diplomatic ties being created and more of bureaucratic obligation. When one reads between the lines of what you might call ‘legalese’, precious little is offered beyond a request for initial lines of communication to be established.”

  “Huh. Okay.” Sara chewed on her cheek for a minute. “Did they leave any way to contact them?”

  “No, I am afraid not,” Vesta said. “Which is perhaps even stranger than the method of their delivery. I cannot help but wonder at their intentions.”

  “Me too. But if they really did just send this shit to check off some box on a list somewhere like Evie thinks, fuck ‘em. If they contact us again, properly, I might send something back.” Sara frowned. “Except for whichever dickshit group screwed with an innocent person’s head. They don’t get shit.”

  Vesta jotted down a few quick notes in her book, then snapped it closed. “Understood, Sara.”

  “Good. Alright, next on the list then.”

  The meeting dragged on, one problem after another added to the pile. Tulian was in a state of disaster, frankly. And while that had mostly been true for the st decade, it was particurly acute at the moment.

  Nora and Vesta were right that Tulian was dependent on its trade. With the war over and life ostensibly due for a return to normalcy, Sara could no longer rely on goodwill and honesty to keep every necessary product cheap. It was simple enough to convince miners to go to work in a dipidated mine when they knew the ore they drug up would be turned into swords protecting them from marauding Knights. Now that they were mining for comparatively mundane economic motivation, they’d suddenly grown far more interested in negotiating wages and prices. The same story was being repeated all across the tiny Republic. Workers who had pitched in because it was in their own best interest were backing away from deals made in the heat of the moment, recognizing not only that their services were worth a lot more, but that Sara suddenly had far more to pay them with.

  Sara, for one, was perfectly happy with this. Her entire philosophy was to build a society of workers with a backbone. She wanted them to fight her, wanted them to force her to pay them what they were worth. Vesta may have hated it, wishing she could keep bancing the books under the assumption that every contractor could be happy with receiving an I.O.U. note, but Sara didn’t. Her only irritation was the fact that the Tulian people’s own insistence for self-determination was ironically harming their recovery. If they’d extended their cooperative goodwill for just a few more months, once the immediate aftermath of the war had been smoothed over, things would have gone so much smoother.

  Sara wouldn’t waste time trying to argue with them, though. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and with rubble choking the streets and mass graves lined in neat rows outside the city, Sara was most certainly begging.

  “What about you, Dad?” She eventually asked, when she’d finally managed to cw her way out of the doldrums of economic woes. “You’ve had enough time to get the tour of Tulian. What do you think of our industry?”

  Her dad pushed his gsses up his nose, picking up his own notes. He cleared his throat, then slid his gsses back down to the very spot they’d been sitting before, so he could read what he’d written.

  “Well honey, I think you’ve made a good start.”

  Sara groaned inwardly. She knew that tone of voice. It was the same one he’d used every time she’d shown him her butchered attempts at homework.

  “But there’s definitely room for improvement,” he said. “You’ve remembered that early industrial work had a lot to do with mining, and that’s good, but that wasn’t all. Your first attempts at a printing press, for example.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, you’re trying to make it steam-powered. And that’s understandable, and a good idea in the long term, but it’s really not necessary. Printing presses predate steam power by hundreds of years.”

  “They do?” Sara asked incredulously. “What? How?”

  “Manual operation, of course. All you really need for a printing press is metal letter dies that can be slid onto a row, a way to slide paper underneath the face, and a way to get ink onto it. For what you’re trying to do, you really don’t have to worry about all the fancy conveyor belt stuff that you were trying to set up.”

  Sara pursed her lips. She had a growing feeling that her dad’s entire portion of this meeting was about to make her feel very, very dumb.

  “The gun manufactory is pretty solid. You’ve got serial numbers going, kind of, and people seem to be working in their roles really well. You could probably simplify things even more, really narrow down which part individual people are working on, but Garen said that might be counterproductive, because of Levels, which I still haven’t learned much about. So the jury’s still out on that one, I guess.”

  He flipped the page, licking his lips. “I do think you need to get basic electrical power going. It’s essential to a whole lot of processes that you’ll need to get started from scratch. And sulfuric acid, too. Man, sulfuric acid is used in everything. I know you’re already importing sulfur for bck powder, but you’re gonna need a lot more. I mean, jeez. You’d just be shocked by how important it is. And from what I’ve heard, people here basically treat lead like a waste product, and copper’s barely used, so you’ll want to secure supplies of that soon, and even before all that we’ll want to get the bessemer process up and running. That’s if we can’t just skip to open hearth furnaces, or even better, arc furnaces. That’s dependent on electricity production again, of course.”

  He flipped to yet another page. The room had fallen silent, most occupants trading confused gnces with each other.

  “Oh, and nitroglycerin, for nitrocellulose. If you want smokeless gun powder, we’re gonna need nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and lots of cotton. Though, and sorry, I didn’t write this in my notes, but guncotton is better for warheads than as a propelnt. I was thinking cordite may be a good way to go for smokeless powder, but I’ll have to do some more thinking on that. Don’t want to Jutnd ourselves. Lots of different ways to do smokeless powder. Bottom line, though, acids. Lots of acids. And the raw resources to make them, and the resources we need them for, of course. Oh, which means we’ll need industrial gss manufacture to handle acids, too, and for all the other chemicals we need. That’s something you should really get going right away, because gss is still apparently really expensive here, so it’ll be a great trade good, not to mention making lenses for microscopes, telescopes, eyegsses, all of that, which we could also sell. It’s a super important material. Really, looking at the maps you’ve got here, assuming they’re still accurate after the crazy magic jungle stuff, territory limitations are gonna be a big problem. Tulian’s old borders are the size of, like, France? I doubt these surveys are solid, since no one knows decent math here. But either way that’s not enough room for a self-sufficient industrial society. Though alchemists exist, apparently? Like, real alchemists, the kind that can transmute one element into another element. We’ll want to get some of them ASAP. They could be essential for covering the gaps until we can get other stuff up and running. Oh! And the periodic table. If we can teach alchemists about chemistry, who knows what they’ll…”

  Her dad suddenly stopped, looking up from his paper. Pretty much everyone save Sara and Garen had a gzed look in their eyes. It wasn’t as if they weren’t paying attention; they just hadn’t understood a single noun out of the st fifty. Well, Hurlish’s eyes were closed. She probably wasn’t paying attention. Sara couldn’t bme her, not when she could barely comprehend half of it.

  “Alright,” Sara said, drawing the word out patiently. “Why don’t you give me a copy of your notes or something, so we can write all that down. Because I’m pretty sure you’re the only one here that knows how to spell, like, any of it. Maybe add some dictionary definitions, too. But before we do that, a different question. Instead of what we can’t make, what can we make?”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry, I was just trying to focus on bigger picture stuff. As for what we can get going right away…” he flipped a few more pages through his notes, scrunching his nose to keep his gsses from tipping off the end of his nose. “Ah. Here. As far as big-picture stuff we can do right away, and the ones you’d be interested in, there’s steel manufacturing, radios, fuses, pnes, breech loading cannons-”

  Sara smmed her hands down on the table, startling everyone. “Wait! Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Did you say pnes?”

  “Uh, pnes, yes,” her dad said, giving her an odd look. “Basic ones, bipnes and stuff, but sure. It’s not like they’re hard to make.”

  “Wha- not hard to make? They’re pnes! That’s like the hardest thing in the world!”

  “Not really, Sara. At least not once you understand the principles. You should at least be able to draw up a basic aerofoil already, and that’s ninety percent of what you need.”

  Sara stared bnkly at him. “No, Dad. I cannot draw an aerofoil. I don’t even know what an aerofoil is.”

  Of all things, her dad looked vaguely hurt. “Really? Don’t you remember when we went to the Air and Space Museum? I thought you had a great time.”

  An indistinct flicker teased at the edge of Sara’s memory. A long weekend spent in Washington, D.C. when she was ten years old, delighted to get out of school for a few extra days.

  “Yeah, I remember,” Sara lied, “but that doesn’t mean I actually understood it. I was a little kid, Dad.”

  “Well.” He sniffed. Sara did her best not to wince. “Now that I’m here, I can help you remember more. Pnes aren’t hard to make, Sara. They’re hard to invent, but make? No, that’s easy. Once you have a good enough engine and know what shape to make the wings, it’s basically just a carpentry project.”

  “A good enough engine, then,” Sara said, seizing on the idea. “We don’t have that. Never had.”

  “Well, no, not technically, but again, it sounds like it wouldn’t be hard.” Her dad looked at Garen, then back to Sara. “I know you’ve been working on steam engines like crazy, and that’ll be good for the big power stuff, but you’ve already got some smaller engines going without realizing it. He told me about that spinning top of death or whatever it was his students made, when they were trying to test material strength. It used synchronized crystals to shove things in a circle really, really fast. If you put props on that and lightened it a bit, it’d probably just lift off into the sky.”

  Sara thumped back into her chair, working her jaw. Thoughts of the war she had just fought fshed through her mind. Thoughts of what that war would have looked like if she’d been sending pnes against the Knights, instead of halberds and cannons.

  “Okay.” Sara took a deep breath, then slowly blew it out. “Okay. Well, consider that your top priority, for now. Get me pnes. I don’t care what kind, so long as they fly. And bombs, too. You said you could make fuses?”

  “Probably. The ones you made are good, but they could be better.”

  “Good. Okay. Well, pnes then. I need them.”

  Sara watched her dad put a little cartoonish star on his paper next to the heading “pnes.” Not a drawn star. A little golden sticker sporting a goofy smiley face, the kind he used for grading papers.

  “...How?”

  “Mm?”

  “The stickers. How do you have those?”

  “I had a roll of them in my pocket when I got taken here.” He pulled the roll out to demonstrate, waving it. “I think this was, like, a two-thousand pack? So it’ll st me a while.”

  Sara felt a prophetic vision overtake her. The Constitution of Tulian, preserved behind bullet-proof gss in a modern museum, bedazzled with wilting smiley stickers. She shook her head, banishing the image. The rest of the room was looking at Sara a little curiously, not understanding her reaction, while Garen had picked one of the stickers off the roll to repeatedly pce and peel it off his finger, squinting at the glue.

  “Talking about pnes reminds me. I’m still not trying to say you were wrong to go for steam engines, but I really think you’re getting a bit trapped in old-world thinking. Rotational energy is the key, and you’ve got that concept down pat, but I think you’re forgetting that there’s lots of ways to rotate things in this world that weren’t there in our old world. Garen’s told me it’s not that hard to enchant a crystal with a spell, and there’s lots of spells that can create movement. If you can efficiently use those to spin a wheel, you’ve skipped out on any fuel requirements from the start.”

  “But this is a discussion I have had with your father before, Governess,” Garen said, preempting her reply. “Spells which cause something to spin, rather than move linearly, are difficult. There are few natural principles from which to draw Inspiration. There are no creatures which can rotate a joint about an axis indefinitely, no flower which twists endlessly through the day, and precious few phenomena beyond cyclones and what your father calls ‘tornadoes’ that can stand as an example.”

  “And that matters, I guess?”

  “Initially, yes. When teaching a student the Form of a spell, it is almost always easiest to find a natural example capable of producing the desired result. As all things contain inherent magic, one can begin forming the basis of their spell from the intrinsic nature of some worldly equivalent. The best examples are those which embody multiple concepts. If one wishes to create a force that juts forward, grabs, or pulls, you may study a chameleon’s tongue. For something that pierces, crushes, or shakes, a wolf’s jaw. If one wishes to draw energy from the sun or the moon, a flower embodies the essence of the spell. By learning from their creations, one may glimpse an inkling of the majesty with which the Gods created this world. Lacking such an example, any spell created would be horribly inefficient.”

  “But it can still be done,” her dad said, returning Garen’s side eye, “and that means we should be pursuing it. Even if we can’t get a fully efficient circur spell, it’ll make a world of difference to even explore the option. I keep telling you, that’s the essence of an industrial revolution. Thinking something is impossible is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “I did not say that it was impossible. Only difficult, and never attempted, for the use was so limited.” Garen turned his attention back to Sara. “We will pursue the concept, Governess, but I make no guarantees regarding results.”

  “That’s alright. Worst comes to worst, we stick to the way people did things on Earth.” Sara gnced over Evie’s shoulder, inspecting her notes. “Now, Vesta. You said you’ve got contacts with important people in some of the eastern mercantile republics, right?”

  “I do, yes,” Vesta confirmed. “A number of the political dignitaries requesting an audience with you are in fact those I have had contact with in the past.”

  “Good. Those little capitalist hellscape city-states are the closest thing this world has to democracy, and I’ve got crap I want from them.”

  Vesta took out an empty paper, dipping her quill in ink. “And those are?”

  “Philosophers.”

  Vesta started on the first few letters before the nib scratched to a halt. She looked up at Sara with her eyebrows knitted together.

  “Philosophers?” She asked, drawing the word out.

  “Yeah. Philosophers. I’m trying to make a government here, and there’s no way I’m gonna be able to do that on my own.”

  “I was under the impression you had more than your fair share of opinions on how a nation should be run.”

  “I did, yeah. And then I actually tried to run one, and I realized I don’t know shit. There’s too much to consider, too many loopholes. I want to do this right.”

  “And to do so, you wish to employ philosophers from ‘capitalist hellscapes?’ I do not follow your logic.”

  “It’s simple. You, Evie, my dad and I, we write the ws. Then we get those arrogant little pricks to go over it, word by word, and try and fuck it over as hard as they can.” Sara smiled wryly. “There’s no one better at coming up with aggravating, pointless loopholes than philosophers that think their shit doesn’t stink. I don’t want to just write up a constitution and throw it in the works, people.”

  Sara gnced across the room, making it clear she was addressing everyone. “We’re not going to fuck this up. Tulian’s a single city right now, but that won’t st forever. It’s going to grow, and it’s going to grow faster than anyone’s ever seen a nation grow before. I’m not going to leave the next generation some half-baked system to struggle through for the next few centuries. We’re going to spend years getting this right. We’re going to do it in stages. We’re going to pass ws, see how they work, who they hurt and who they help, and then we’re going to rescind them and go back to the drawing board. My country back on Earth? They didn’t have the luxury we do. They had to get something out fast, and it showed. We can take our time. For now, with only one city, Tulian basically runs itself. So I’m going to treat this whole thing like one big experiment. We’ll try one government, and if it doesn’t do what I want, we’ll tear it down and start again.”

  Protests burst to life across the room the moment she finished speaking. Sara listened to them all, absorbing it all in silence. Vesta was aghast at the economic chaos it would cause to have every merchant unsure of what next year’s policies and taxes would entail, much less the difficulty in establishing foreign alliances with such an unstable government. Ignite was politely but firmly opposing the idea that his Guards would have to enforce an ever-shifting legal code, and feared a complete breakdown of civilian respect for legality as a result. Garen was not particurly critical, but only by virtue of being academically fascinated in seeing how things would progress in such a novel system. Hurlish snorted herself awake at the shouting, blinked blearily at the room in mild confusion, then closed her eyes again. To no one’s surprise, Nora didn’t particurly care either way, so long as her Navy was still supported, and Voth had a simir level of disinterest. Sara’s dad was the only one who was supportive of the idea, but he was far too timid to voice that in a way anyone could hear.

  Eventually, though, the critical question was asked.

  “But doesn’t that mean you’ll have to stay in charge?”

  The overpping discussion petered out, attention turning to Sara’s father. For the first time in the meeting, he wasn’t bothered by the attention. He was focused on Sara, gentle concern on his face.

  “It does,” Sara confirmed.

  “I thought that was the st thing ye wanted,” Nora said.

  “It is.”

  Vesta’s head tilted a half-degree, eyes sharpening. “You truly intend to remain in charge of Tulian during this transitional period?”

  Sara sighed tiredly. “Yeah. I don’t really see any way around it. Everyone else is so fucked up with this feudal mindset that they really don’t understand how much better things should be. If there was someone else I trusted to put in charge, I would, but…” Sara shrugged. “There’s not.”

  “Are you sure?” Her dad asked. “You know how much this is going to suck for you, right? I mean, the paperwork alone…”

  “Yeah, Dad, I’m sure. Been thinking about it for a long, long time.”

  “Okay. As long as you’re sure.”

  Sara smirked at him. “I think we’re kinda past the point of me needing your permission. But I appreciate it.”

  He smiled back. “I guess you are. Just make sure to give yourself breaks every now and then.”

  “I’ve got Evie and Hurlish for that,” Sara said, patting the woman in her p. “She makes sure I blow off steam every now and then.”

  “I’m gd to hear it,” her dad said, in the same moment that Vesta just barely stifled a snickering ugh. Her dad remained clueless, even as Evie’s tail began to possessively wrap around Sara’s thigh.

  “Alright. I hope that about concludes it for all of the world-ending emergencies on the pte. Does anyone have any lesser problems they want to talk about?”

  To absolutely no one’s shock, they did. The meeting barreled on, the minutiae of victory winding on into the night.