Chapter 94: Two Weeks
Arkania was not one place. It was two, stitched together by imperial decree and a great deal of wishful thinking, and it covered more ground than some kingdoms.
The Kane half had been neglected for eight years: roads gone to ruts, villages surviving on stubbornness, a handful of guards who were really just farmers with spears. The Harwick half had the opposite problem. It worked, after a fashion, but it had worked for the wrong master. Every ledger, garrison, and tax collector there had answered to a man who had vanished with half the records and all of the loyalty.
Aldous, who had a gift for understatement, called the first half "somewhat behind" and the second "somewhat leaderless."
Theresa called it two catastrophes sharing a river.
She took over the dining hall on the first morning. By noon the flowers were gone, the table was buried under maps, and a sign in her neat hand hung on the door: Administration. Knock first. By evening, someone had added underneath, in smaller letters, And bring tea. Nobody confessed to writing it.
She hired eleven clerks in two days, drawing deliberately from towns on both sides of the old border. Nine kept their jobs. One was dismissed for claiming he could read Old Imperial script (he could not), and the other for suggesting, with great confidence, that the Harwick tax records were "probably fine."
They were not fine.
"Forged," Theresa said on the fourth night, tapping a page so hard the ink jumped. "The same hand, across forty years of ledgers. Three separate levies charged twice. A bridge toll for a bridge that was never built." She looked up, golden eyes flat. "I would like to speak to Hector Harwick, briefly, with a ruler."
"He’s missing," Dominic said.
"I am aware. It is a great inconvenience to my ruler."
By the end of the week, every Harwick-era levy was suspended pending audit, the toll collectors had been replaced, and word had spread through the villages faster than any messenger could carry it.
The tower came next.
Theresa spent three days riding the length of the region with Aldous and a stack of surveyor’s maps. She chose a low hill at the seam where the old Kane and Harwick borders met, where three roads crossed and an old watchtower had stood before the stone was carted away for walls. She stood on the crest, wind pulling at her coat, and looked in every direction.
"Here," she said.
"It sits exactly on the old border, my lady," Aldous noted.
"Good. Then neither half gets to claim it."
"A sound principle. May I ask what you intend?"
"A tower. Libraries, laboratories, wards, a place to teach." She paused. "And somewhere the mages will not complain about."
That night she wrote to Vex. The letter was two pages long and entirely businesslike, listing the site, the purpose, the resources required, and the research that would benefit the Collegium in return. The last line read: I am aware this is a large request. I am also aware you will be happy you accepted this offer.
Four days later, a courier arrived with a single sheet of paper in reply.
Approved. Eleven mages and two surveyors arrive in a fortnight. Do not make me regret it. V.
Theresa read it twice. Then she folded it carefully and put it in her coat, over her heart, where Dominic was fairly sure she thought nobody would notice.
***
Lysandra took her the old ledger and a map of the barony and disappeared for three days.
When she came back, she had a plan.
It was a very small plan on a very large piece of paper. A market square on the main road, wide enough for twenty stalls. A weigh station. A single, simple toll, lower than any in the neighboring territories, so caravans would choose Arkania for the savings alone. A guesthouse for traveling merchants, because merchants who slept well bought more. And a proper road east to the old Harwick trade towns, which still had warehouses, guilds, and nobody in charge, and which would happily sell to a market that asked fewer questions.
"Free stall fees for the first season," she said, pointing, voice shaking only a little. "Anyone who sets up before the harvest festival gets it. After that, a fair rate. And I’ll write to my father." She swallowed. "He knows every trader between here and Caldmore."
"Do it," Dominic said.
"Really?"
"It’s a good plan."
She looked at him, then at the map, then back at him. The corner of her mouth twitched upward, and she hurried out before it could become a full smile.
The first caravan arrived on day six, a salt trader and four wagons, rolling into the half-built market with the wary expression of a man who had heard rumors and did not believe them.
He tried to short her on the delivery. Two sacks, hidden in the back, an old trick.
Lysandra counted the wagons. Then she counted the sacks. Then she smiled, small and calm and very, very cold.
"I think," she said gently, "you may have miscounted."
The salt trader looked at that smile for a long moment. Then, without a word, he produced the missing sacks from the back of the last wagon.
"My mistake, Baroness."
"Of course."
Dominic, watching from the fence with a cup of tea, decided never to haggle with her.
***
Florence began with a whistle.
It was an ugly, piercing whistle, and it brought every soldier in Arkania to the parade ground by noon on the first day, forty-two men in mismatched armor, shuffling and squinting in the sun. A handful of mercenaries had drifted in from the road behind them, drawn by the noise and the promise of a fight.
She walked the line once. Then she stopped in front of them, hands on her hips, wearing Dominic’s shirt over her combat gear.
"Weapons on the ground. All of you."
There was a long, uncertain pause.
"Now."
They obeyed. The sound of dropped steel rolled across the field.
"Good," Florence said. "You’re all dismissed. Go home. Eat. Sleep. Tomorrow you come back, and we start again, from nothing. Anyone who wants a place in this army earns it. Not your name, not your old master, not your cousin. Your ability."
A tall sergeant at the end of the line snorted. His name was Brannock, and he had fifteen years of service and the posture of a man who disliked being told things.
"And who decides that? The duke’s pretty girl?"
Florence turned and looked at him. She smiled, bright as a drawn blade.
"Come here."
He did not need to be asked twice.
It lasted four seconds. She did not even use her halberd, only a training staff she picked up from the rack, and when Brannock finished sliding across the dirt, he lay on his back with the sky spinning above him and a faint sense that he had been struck by something with opinions.
"Next," Florence said.
By sundown she had beaten eleven men, three mercenaries, and one very proud knight who insisted on a rematch. The soldiers began placing bets on how many she would fight before supper. Aldous, passing through with a stack of requisition forms, was heard to say that he had not seen the parade ground this lively in thirty years.
The Kane garrison was the easy part. The Harwick side kept nearly six hundred men in barracks around the old Harwick seat, drilled, armed, and sworn to a house that no longer existed. Most of them did not know whether they were soldiers, prisoners, or unemployed. Florence rode in on the Ghost Horse on the third day, had them assembled by afternoon, and told them what she had told the others, in fewer words and a louder voice. Anyone who wanted to keep their oath to Harwick was free to leave at once, without their weapons. Eighty did. The rest stayed to find out what "ability" meant, and the proudest were offered the chance to find out personally.
By the end of the first week, both old garrisons were gone. In their place stood something rougher and stranger. Everyone had been tested. Everyone had been ranked. A former farmhand who could not read but could hold a line against three men outranked a Harwick captain who had never missed a dinner. The mercenaries came in numbers once the rumor spread: steady pay, honest rank, and a woman in a stolen shirt who would break your arm if you cheated at dice.
Brannock was the first to ask for extra training. Florence made him run the parade ground until he threw up, then gave him a corporal’s stripe.
"Why?" he asked, wheezing.
"Because you got up," she said.
***
Dominic did not sit still.
He rode the villages on both sides of the old border with Aldous and Wobbly, sat in kitchens, signed what needed signing, and listened. Mostly he listened. A woman in the eastern valley pressed a bundle of rose cuttings into his hands.
"Your mother gave my grandmother these," she said. "Fifty years back, from the manor garden. They’ve bloomed every spring since."
He stood very still for a moment. Then he thanked her, and put them in his coat with great care.
An old man on the river road gave him a goat.
It was a large goat, with a mean eye and no concept of personal space. It followed Dominic to the estate, ate a corner of Theresa’s third ledger stack, and was caught in the kitchen at midnight attempting to open the pantry with its horns.
Wobbly challenged it to a contest of glaring. The goat won.
"His name is General," Florence announced the next morning, scratching its ears. "He’s a captain’s rank, pending performance."
"Of course you’d take it as a pet, don’t get to close though you don’t know when it might become dinner," Theresa said.
"How could you say such a thing." Florence gasped playfully. "You are a very heartless lady."
Theresa looked at the goat. The goat looked at Theresa. Neither of them blinked.
***
The system chimed softly late on the seventh night.
[Quest Progress: A Duchy in Working Order]
[Administration: 45%]
[Military: 35%]
[Trade: 30%]
[Note: Halfway through the fortnight and you have not died. Impressive.]
He closed it and went to find Theresa.
She was in the study, the lamp low, a map spread across the old desk. She did not look up when he entered.
"You promised me a debt," she said.
"I did."
"I’m collecting."
She pointed at the chair beside her. He sat. She slid a stack of papers aside, put her pen down, and, without a word of explanation, leaned her head against his shoulder.
"That’s it?" he asked quietly.
"Yes."
"That’s a very small debt."
"It has been a very busy week." She closed her eyes. "Now be quiet."
The river murmured outside, and the pen scratched, then slowed, then stopped. Ten minutes passed. Her breathing evened out against his shoulder.
At some point Aldous appeared in the doorway, saw the scene, and withdrew without a sound.
Dominic did not move for a very long time.
***
Florence found him an hour later, smelling of sweat and horse and victory, her knuckles bruised and her grin enormous.
"Eleven men and a goat," she announced, dropping onto the end of the bed. "I’m starting to like it here."
"Get of the bed and go take a bath!."
"I didn’t realize you’d become a neat freak." She crawled up the bed like something hunting, stopped with her face an inch from his, and tilted her head. "You didn’t train today."
"I was busy."
"Excuses." She poked his chest. "Tomorrow, you spar with me."
"Tomorrow we are riding north."
"Tonight, then."
She pinned him against the pillow before he could answer. It was less a fight than a negotiation, and he lost it with a laugh and a kiss that tasted of salt and wine. When she finally rolled off, tangled in his shirt, she was breathing hard and smiling at the ceiling.
"Rest well, Master," she said. "Big day tomorrow."
He stared at the same ceiling. The roses were in a cup by the window, their stems already pale green against the glass.
Seven days gone. The duchy had begun to stand on its own legs, shaky but real.
Now it was time to find out what his father had left behind.