Leo Feldmanis hated the chairs in the Otharian Cabinet’s meeting room.

Like nearly everything in the fortress, they were made from metal—tucrenyx, to be precise. The dull grey mineral no longer scared him the way it once had. Every Otharian—and all other Scyrians, most likely—grew up associating the cursed metal with pain, evil, and prisoners. After all, to even attempt an Observation, even something as minor as a candle flame, while in contact with the metal was to invite excruciating pain unlike anything else one could experience.

Leo had had the poor fortune to experience the joys of tucrenyx firsthand more than most. His first experience had come during an educational seminar in his Voice training as a young man. The instructor had passed around a small chunk of the metal for each of the students to try Observing with. The pain had appeared the instant his Observation had begun, a debilitating pain that broke all his concentration. His singular thought at the time had been that he would never touch the terrible stuff again.

How foolish he’d been.

Less than a decade later, he would find himself wearing that same metal all day, every day, for years and years. It was how Scyrian societies controlled their prisoners. Just a simple thick band was all that was needed to keep an Observer from utilizing their abilities. Feelers, on the other hand, needed much larger and sturdier setups. He’d heard that Feelers suffered less than Observers, though as an Observer he didn’t know for certain.

One thing he did know for certain was what it felt like to Observe in shackles. The pain went beyond the physical, striking seemingly at the soul itself. Adding to the pain was the unnatural and unpleasant sensation of one’s soulforce going awry, as if something was ripping the internal energy from powering the Observation and redirecting it elsewhere.

None of that had stopped Leo from trying to power through the pain. He tried and tried and tried, working on his willpower, concentration, and pain tolerance. None of it had worked. After about five futile years of trying, he’d given up, utterly defeated. What had followed were years of unceasing malaise, where every day was indistinguishable from the one before it—until, one day, a man covered in tucrenyx came and freed him.

Leo had been too overwhelmed at the time to realize that the armor was a sign of things to come. As if Othar himself was taunting him, he’d wound up in a place where everything was made from tucrenyx. And yet, things were different here. It was alright that the large circular table in front of him was made of the metal, as he had little need to Observe here, the free man that he was. In Lord Ferros’s castle, the prevalence of his crystalline lights and “plumbing” meant Leo didn’t even need to conjure up a candle flame to read or water to clean.

Even if he did, though, the tucrenyx here didn’t seem to cause interference and pain for reasons he could not fathom. He’d seen several other ministers Observe while touching the meeting table and nothing had happened. It was like the rules were different here.

So no, while Leo Feldmanis did despise tucrenyx for its part in his years of suffering, he did not hate the tucrenyx chairs in the meeting room because of their material. He hated the chairs simply because they were bad chairs. They were hard and flat and cold and your back hurt after sitting in one for just half an hour. For all the wonders of Blake’s powers and talents, his limited furniture design skills didn’t seem to place much value in comfort. Sometimes Leo wondered if the man’s paralysis meant that, since he didn’t feel the discomfort himself, he just didn’t give it much consideration.

He knew about the ruler of Otharia’s injury, of course—Samanta had told him very early on—though he wasn’t sure that Blake knew that he knew. Leo suspected that Blake suspected, but neither of them had ever broached the subject and they both saw fit to leave it that way. It was for the best.

A reasonable person would probably ask, if he hated the chairs so much, just why he insisted on being the first person in the council chamber and sitting for any longer than need be. There were many reasons for this, of course. First, it was better to be early than late. Arriving early lent an air of competence and seriousness to his image, which was important for somebody like Leo who relied in part on his authority to manage the ministers. Arriving late imparted a message to all present that either you thought the meeting was not worth your time, you were too disorganized to be punctual to a regularly scheduled gathering, or you were so selfish that you didn’t care if others had to wait for you. Arriving on time didn’t do much of anything other than blend you in with the other attendees. All things considered, it was clear that arriving early was always best.

Being the first in the room had the added benefit of allowing Leo to study the other ministers as they came in and perhaps glean some information from casual conversation before Lord Ferros arrived. The various ministers’ guards were always at their highest when Lord Ferros was present, and there was very little to gather then.

The shuffle of feet pulled him from his musings. He looked towards the room’s single entrance and, as expected, Fricis Upeslacis walked in. Leo always found it amusing how the old man still wore rough farmer’s clothes—complete with thick, durable boots—to cabinet meetings. The farmer did presumably still go out into the fields enough to justify it, but Leo suspected that it was more just a product of habit than anything else.

Surprisingly, Lord Ferros did not take issue at the unorthodox outfits Fricis and some of the other ministers preferred.

“As a programmer and engineer, I understand the importance of wearing what feels good,” he’d said. “Just try to keep it more formal than pajamas, please.”

Leo still didn’t know what being a programmer had to do with outfit choices, but he wasn’t going to argue with leniency. The Lord had only insisted that they each wear a large, intricate badge pinned to their clothes, which marked them as high-ranking members of the government and people of authority. Naturally, Leo and the rest usually took them off when going outside in public.

Along with his usual thick farming clothes and the badge, the farmer also wore his trademark disgruntled scowl. Leo took no umbrage with the way the older man glared at him as he entered; he knew from experience that Fricis didn’t mean anything by it. The man’s mannerisms were nothing more than a combination of his stubbornness—greatly enhanced now by old age—and his unending drive to pull his people out of the pit of mass starvation.

It was that drive that had told Leo that Fricis would accept his offer back when he had first started assembling a Cabinet to help administer the country under Lord Ferros’s rule. Leo had met Fricis soon after leaving the academy and becoming a full-fledged Voice, as the best farmer in one of the villages not far from his assigned town. At the time, he had be struck by the man’s surly demeanor, but he’d soon come to realize the truth: Fricis Upeslacis was a man on a mission, one practically impossible to achieve. He would never be satisfied until every person in Otharia had not only enough food to survive, but enough to thrive.

It was no surprise that Fricis was the first person to join him. The man was a farmer, after all. Unlike Leo, who needed to use an alarm clock—an incredible invention that everybody should have, in his opinion—Fricis had been getting up at or before the crack of dawn for his entire life.

The man lowered himself into a chair on the other side of the table and offered Leo a terse nod, which he returned. No words were spoken; none were needed. Still, Leo couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong. Fricis was an uptight man, yes, but Leo could see a tension in his neck and face that was not normally there.

Leo liked to believe that he was rather good at reading people. Reading others was important as a Voice, and he’d been passably good at it then, but he’d discovered it to be even more important as a prisoner. It was during those terrible years when he’d truly learned to read others, as properly doing so had been a matter of life and death. His place in that world had been... unusual to say the least. Unlike most of the other prisoners, he’d rarely been allowed to leave the confines of his small cell. The isolation from the other prisoners meant he’d had fewer chances to get attacked, but also prevented the rest of them from really getting to know him and the reason for his presence there. As such, they’d seen him as less of a fellow prisoner and more of a symbol of the authority that had locked them away. Nothing good had come of that.

These prison-honed instincts told Leo that something was wrong with the farmer-turned-administrator’s world. Leo struggled to divine what it was though... so he simply asked. It was Fricis, after all.

“Something wrong?”

Fricis grunted in a way that Leo would describe as “begrudgingly affirmative”.

“Crop related?”

“The drought,” the old curmudgeon replied. “They always put me in a mood.”

“Ah, yes,” Leo nodded, letting the room fall back into silence. He knew to what Fricis referred, so he left it there. It would come up during the meeting.

Only a little while later, another person entered the room, somebody Leo hadn’t expected.

“Heya, everybody!” Martis Tievais called out with a boisterous grin and a quick wave. Casually, he slid into a chair beside Fricis and lounged back against the backrest, his bulky, muscular arms hanging casually over the back of the chair.

“I didn’t expect to see you this morning,” Leo admitted.

“Yeah, well, I finished things at Nartung a bit faster than expected, so I figured, since I was going to be coming back tomorrow anyway, why not come back early? Wouldn’t want to miss an important gathering like this, now would I?”

“Pah!” Fricis spat. “You just wanted extra time to see that little seamstress lass you have a hankering for.”

“GAHAHAHA!” Martis guffawed. “You got me!”

Martis Tievas was an average-sized man by Otharian standards when it came to height, but he was wide like a garoph, with strong, broad shoulders that looked like they could bear a house. He’d confessed some time back that his father had made him train his body since he was a boy in preparation for joining the army, but he’d ended up enjoying both the process and the results, and so continued to work out each evening. At the prime age of twenty-seven, he appeared the ideal example of a powerful combat-level Feeler, the sort of shock troop used to break through the enemy’s most fortified positions with sheer force. Given his father’s stated goals, this was not surprising. So, of course, he had grown up to become a stone Observer, architect, and builder instead.

In Leo’s mind, Martis had been much more of a reach to be the Minister of the Interior than Fricis as Minister of Agriculture—everybody but Fricis had been a reach, if he were to be honest with himself. Still, of all of them, Martis was probably the reach that had worked out the best on a personnel level. The jolly man absolutely loved his job, which, he would readily admit, was the reason he’d agreed to serve.

Martis’s job had two main parts. First, he led and oversaw all large engineering projects, be it digging canals or extending a city’s walls to create more room. Many of Lord Ferros’s projects also required a large amount of work beyond the metal that he was so good at using, like building the foundation beneath his vaunted railway travel system. Martis led and oversaw those parts as well.

The second half of his responsibilities were the various mines scattered throughout the nation. He and those working for him had to scurry around the nation, checking on mine production, solving problems, and the like. As such, he spent a great deal of his time on the road, as evidenced by the durable traveling clothes he currently wore. Most notable was his thick leather vest, which sported a multitude of pockets stuffed with a variety of tools and measures; Leo hadn’t the foggiest idea what most of them were for.

The combined responsibilities kept Martis very busy and meant that he missed the vast majority of these meetings, but such sacrifices needed to be made. If the mines, especially, were to fail, then... Leo didn’t want to even think of the repercussions.

Lord Ferros relied greatly upon the mines to provide new tucrenyx and cantacrenyx crystals for his projects and the like. In a way, that made Martis the most critical minister of them all—other than Leo himself, of course—when it came to what mattered: keeping Lord Ferros content to the point that Otharia remained not-on-fire and they all kept their lives. Even though they’d all been in their positions for over a year, none of them could afford to become lax. There were already enough examples of Lord Ferros’s wrath; they had no illusions as to what would happen should his displeasure grow too great, and nothing made him more aggravated than not having the materials he needed to do what he desired.

Leo studied the younger man for a moment. Martis seemed relaxed and confident, which was a good sign.

Leo stood up momentarily to stretch and massage his aching back while Martis tried to engage in idle conversation with the cantankerous old farmer. Fricis wasn’t in the mood, giving even shorter and snappier responses than normal, but Martis seemed unable to take the hint. Leo was about to chime in and rescue the poor old man when a new arrival appeared in the meeting room doorway.

“Gentlemen,” came Zigmars Vietnieks’s tepid greeting, the word spoken halfheartedly as a matter of obligation and nothing more. After a moment of standing within the door frame, staring into the room like a man staring at a freezing cold river with the dreadful knowledge that he needed to jump in, he stepped inside and walked over to the table.

Zigmars was kind of a physical opposite to Martis. While the tallest of the ministers—almost as tall as Lord Ferros himself—his body was thin and gangling, and drooped in a way that reminded Leo of one of the mournful trees found in the southwest of the country. The effect was magnified by the excessively loose outfit he wore, with long, hanging sleeves that fluttered like leaves in the wind when he moved—a recent fashion of the wealthier Otharians that Leo was convinced existed for no other reason than to show how much cloth they could waste on one outfit.

“Aaaayyyy, Minister Vietnieks! How are you holding up?” Martis asked, patting the sullen man on the shoulder as he took a seat. Zigmars flinched from the contact and scooted further away from Martis and closer to Leo.

“Is it too much to ask that you not touch me with those filthy hands, you oaf?” Zigmars sniffed.

“Of course, how silly of me,” Martis replied. “Sorry, I forgot. After all, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Ziggy.”

“My name is Zigmars!” the Minister of the Treasury spat. “And even a buffoon like yourself should be capable of remembering something as simple as basic manners!”

Leo sighed. As always, Zigmars was Zigmars. Leo wasn’t quite sure if the man was suffering from a severe lack of social skills or if he genuinely detested the rest of them, though in a sense, the result was the same. Dour and antisocial, the thirty-four-year-old former accountant’s distaste for the other Cabinet ministers was largely returned in kind. It came in several forms, from Martis’s semi-benign teasing to Gunta Izkapts’s refusal to even acknowledge his presence unless she had no other choice.

Yet, as much as they all disliked him, Leo and the other ministers couldn’t help but respect the man for one simple reason: Zigmars Vietnieks told Lord Ferros “no”. Repeatedly—far more often than Leo did, even. The man possessed a sort of nihilistic courage perhaps found nowhere else in the realm, and he made ample use of it to the point of Blake’s frustration.

It had gotten so bad, half a season in, that Blake had started muttering things to himself about “kicking the fucker out” and “leaving him face down in a ditch”. It had taken several days of lobbying to stave off disaster. Leo’s argument had hinged on Blake’s strong preference for straight-talk and an equally strong professed hatred of “bullshitters” and “yes men”. Zigmars was a man who only knew how to talk straight. If Blake were to act against him, wouldn’t he be sending a message that, despite his claims, he wanted his staff to be yes men? To his credit, Blake had conceded the point and Zigmars remained the Minister of the Treasury to this day.

All that being said, respect could be given from afar, and even Leo preferred to minimize interactions, though their roles made such a preference mostly impossible.

Luckily, another minister entered just moments later, providing a welcome distraction. Leo felt the collected Otharians tense slightly as Arlette Demirt stepped through the doorway, her distracted gaze focused on a knife in her hand.

The other ministers were usually tenser than normal when she was around for several reasons. First, she was newer than the others, having only joined a few seasons ago, so they were all less accustomed to her. Second, she was an Elseling, a mercenary personally selected by Lord Ferros himself. This created an chasm of distrust between her and them that was hard for the others to overcome. There was little doubt in their minds that her loyalty lied with her employer over the country. Third, she was the one now in charge of all of the weapons. Everybody in the chamber had seen firsthand just what the Lord’s creations were capable of, and the thought of what she could do to any of them only served to widen the gap between them.

Not that she would even need her Lord’s weapons, as she had her own personal ones right at hand. Leo glanced at her outfit for a moment, searching for the usual band of knives she strapped somewhere on one of her legs. He spotted it easily on the left thigh today, half-concealed beneath the loose cloth of her pant leg—cut above the knees for easy movement—and just below the bottom of her short sleeved woolen tunic. He could see the subtle glint of three blade, with likely many more hidden within arm’s reach. As the only trained fighter in the room, with years of battle experience to boot, she would likely have little trouble murdering the rest of them all on her own if she so desired.

Still, those weapons had always stayed strapped to her body. For her to actually brandish a weapon in front of them... well, that was a new development, and it only served to send a shock of alarm running through the others. Without so much as a word of greeting, the Minister of Security plopped down beside Leo and continued to study the blade intently, turning it slowly as she studied its intricate details. Then, as if intent on making the situation even more unsettling, she pulled out a second identical knife, one in each hand, and began inspecting them both.

“Minister Demirt,” Leo muttered, leaning towards her, “is there truly a need for such behavior here at the council table?”

“Huh?” came the reply.

Arlette looked around and seemed to become aware of the environment for the first time.

“Oh, right,” she said, her face growing red as she quickly put the knives away somewhere. “My apologies.”

“Is there something bothering you, Miss Demirt?” he inquired. Always important to keep track of your subordinate’s issues—and she was his subordinate. Though handpicked by Lord Ferros, her reports still went through him, as they should.

“No, no,” she insisted, perhaps a tad too quickly. “There’s just something personal I’ve been trying to figure out since yesterday, that’s all. Nothing important.”

“Very well.”

“A good morning to you all,” a new voice said, the words sounding empty, more formality than something sincere. Gunta Izkapts strode purposefully into the room and sat down two seats to Leo’s left, the open seat furthest away from Arlette. The only person in the room wearing the ‘official’ Otharian high-level minister’s uniform—a heavy dress uniform made from off-white wool with a green sash tied from left shoulder to right waist—the short and stocky woman looked about with her stern gaze like a prim and proper instructor surveying a classroom of rowdy students.

“I see that Simona is tardy once again,” she noted.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Zigmars snorted. “The less time I have to spend around that crazy woman, the better.”

“Punctuality is the foundation of order,” Gunta replied with a disapproving gaze. “Such indolent behavior should not be tolerated, especially not from somebody in our position.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you.”

When Leo had needed somebody to be in charge of the country’s law enforcement institutions, he’d found the pool of willing, capable, and qualified candidates to be depressingly small. The only people truly qualified and capable for the role were those already familiar with maintaining order, upholding the law, and managing the country’s penal system—in other words, those who’d worked in law enforcement for the Church. Unsurprisingly, the overlap between the group of people who’d run the Church’s legal and penal systems and the group of people willing to work with the lawless Elseling who’d slaughtered the Church’s high and mid-level staff had been exceedingly slim. Gunta, then a thirty-year-old constable for the Church, had been the least bad candidate he could find.

Leo wasn’t entirely sure why the woman had agreed to the position. It was abundantly clear to everybody just how uncomfortable she felt serving somebody who’d torn down the established order that she’d spent her adult life learning and enforcing. Perhaps it was a sense of duty, or an attempt to limit the damage—in a way, not dissimilar to Leo’s own motivations. Or, perhaps, she simply believed in maintaining order no matter what. That sort of fetishization of order was all too common among those in her discipline, in his experience.

Whatever the reason, Gunta remained, doing what Leo might charitably deem a “serviceable job”. She followed Blake’s orders to the letter, but rarely to the spirit. She was quick to revert to the way things used to be done when left to her own decisions, and she often displayed the noted lack of leniency and a strict interpretation of the law that the people in her line of work were so infamous for. Her schoolmarm-like, prudish attitude was bad enough when directed towards the administration of Otharia in the abstract, but it especially rubbed the others the wrong way when she directed it at them as people. Leo had no doubts that she would be the most unpopular person here, even more than Arlette and Simona, if Zigmars did not exist.

The chatter around the table sputtered out as the last of the ministers finally entered and everybody got a look at her. Simona seemed on edge today, even more so than usual. Her short hair was messier than normal and she seemed to have dressed quickly judging by her rumpled clothes. The Minister of State glared at them all with evident contempt, her gaze lingering on Arlette the longest as per usual, then sliding to Leo as she sat down. Was it his imagination, or had he detected more wrath directed his way than usual?

Leo averted his eyes and tried to ignore the zealot’s stare as the room settled into an awkward quiet. He’d always had a complicated relationship with zealotry, given that at least a bit of zealotry was required to become as member of the Church as he had, but his perspective had shifted fairly significantly after being locked away for years for the crime of helping his suffering constituents.

“He’s late again, isn’t he?” Zigmars sourly observed, breaking the tension Simona’s arrival had created.

Right, there was still one more person they needed before they could begin. With a sigh, Leo realized that Blake was indeed late. His recent streak of missed meetings had grown to the point that Zigmars’s “again” was now accurate and well-justified.

“Tardiness is most unbecoming of a leader,” Gunta stated with a disapproving frown.

“I’ll go-” Arlette began.

“No, allow me,” Leo insisted, rising to his feet and heading out into the hallway.

Anything to get out of that chair.

Leo strode through the fortress halls quickly. He wanted to run—his schedule was packed today, like every day—but as the Chief of Staff and now Prime Minister of Otharia, running through the halls would be unseemly, so he had to make do with a brisk walk instead. It was alright, however. He’d memorized the current fortress layout and knew the most efficient route to his destination.

A boom echoed through the halls, followed by a rapid series of smaller explosions, then finally a high-pitched, ethereal, whistle-like shriek. Leo ignored the clamor; such hubbub was the norm in this area at this time of the morning and was nothing to worry about. To prove that point, he passed by a window that provided an open view of the inner courtyard—perhaps the best design feature Blake had added since the redesigns began—through which he spotted Samanta and Pari covered in blood-

No, wait, they were laughing, and that wasn’t blood, it was some sort of red dye—a dye that they’d splattered all over the courtyard wall. Leo added “dye bomb” to his mental “Things To Be Wary of—Pari Clansnarl” list and continued on.

“Good morning, Leo”, Sofie Ramaut said with a nod as they passed each other a few moments later.

“And to you,” Leo returned cordially.

Leo liked Sofie. She was polite and respectful, which was more than he could say about most of the people here. What’s more, despite being a witch who literally controlled minds, she had somehow arguably caused him fewer headaches than any of the other people who lived in this place. That, sadly, said a lot about his life that he really didn’t feel like unpacking right at that moment.

“I’m looking for Lord Ferros.”

“Blake’s in his rooms. I just dropped off some new translations.”

“Thank you. By the way, I recommend you check in on the children soon.”

“Why, what are they...”

Sofie ran off down the hall, heading towards the courtyard. Leo couldn’t help but smirk at the squawk of dismay that graced his ears a few moments later.

The door to his Lord’s quarters was shut. This was normal but still annoying. No matter how many times Lord Ferros reshaped the fortress layout, he always put layers of metal between himself and people like Leo who needed to talk to him. He claimed it was for security, but Leo believed that he did it mostly to keep from being bothered about such unimportant things as “governance” and “leading a country”.

This recent run of tardiness and missed appointments, however, was relatively new, having begun after Blake returned from his trip north. The man that had left for the journey was a different person than the one that had returned, and to his surprise, Leo found himself wishing for a return of the old Blake—or, more accurately, parts of the old Blake.

The old Blake had been angry, bitter, and inconsiderate of others when their wants and needs conflicted with his own. The new, improved Blake was... still all those things, but to a far lesser degree. That was good; it meant fewer migraines, at least. However, the man’s drive seemed to have mellowed along with the rest of him. There had been a fire within the old Blake that Leo had respected. The man had been proactively engaged with the world and the responsibilities he’d assumed—often too proactive, but that was a different matter. The new Blake largely stayed inside his chambers unless dragged out by somebody like Leo, just like what was about to happen now. In Leo’s eyes, the new Blake was, by and large, the better person—not a great one, necessarily, but still better—but the old Blake had been, for a lack of a better term, more effective, and when it came to running a country, effectiveness mattered.

Leo pressed his palm against the sensor outside of Lord Ferros’s chambers. The sound of a peppy jingle leaked through the door and into his ears. Strange, he’d never heard that before. It must have been added quite recently.

The door slowly slid open, revealing Lord Ferros’s antechamber. Leo strode in with purpose, moving past the seats and into the main “office”, if you could call it that. Leo didn’t know much about what Lord Ferros spent his time doing in this large room. The walls were lined with machines of unknown function, and he’d never been present to watch the other man use any of them. However, Leo did know that some small amount of light administrative work was also done here, so an “office” it was.

What few administrative duties were performed here took place at the large metal desk on the far end of the room. It was there that Leo found Blake. The man sat on the other side of the desk, his upper body hunched over a “pad”, as he called it, intently reading. His helmet was missing, revealing the top of his head and giving Leo a good view of his thinning yellow-brown hair and pale scalp. This sort of sight had once been unthinkable. Blake had always made sure to wear his helmet when interacting with others, to the point that Leo had never even seen Blake’s face until the night when Sofie’s powers had been revealed. Now that the morkut was out of the sack, Blake no longer saw the need to always hide his face when the two of them were alone, though Leo suspected it was a decision born more out of laziness than some desire to connect or open up.

“Forget something?” Blake asked, not looking up.

“No,” Leo replied, “though perhaps you have.”

Blake raised his head, surprise clear on his face. “Oh, it’s you!” He paused, looking at a clock hanging on the left wall. “Already? Damn.” Reluctantly, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way around the desk, metal flowing up his face to form the helmet and mask that everybody in Otharia knew all too well. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

“What are you doing, that you are losing such track of time these days?” Leo asked as they exited Blake’s chambers.

“Eh, you know... stuff,” Blake deflected with a shrug.

“Lord Ferros, you have been late to or completely missed almost two-thirds of all your appointments since you started whatever it is that you are working on now. While this is not the first time you have obsessed over a project so much that it has impacted the functioning of the Otharian government—and, might I add, made my life significantly harder—this is without a doubt the worst it has ever been. And yet, I do not even know what it is that has monopolized your attention so. I had hoped, after so many seasons of loyal service, that you would trust me enough to keep me apprised of things like this, but you have almost deliberately avoided doing so.”

“Not ‘almost’. I am deliberately not telling you.”

“Is there something I have done for you to keep this from me? Have I displeased you in some way?”

“Not at all. I’m just not telling anyone. Keeping it close to the vest for the moment.”

“...I see.”

“I just don’t want to jump the gun with this, is all. It’s better if I don’t say anything until I’m as sure as I can be that I’m right, and I’m not that sure yet—not even close.”

“If you insist, Lord, then I will wait until you are ready.”

“Thanks.”

“But, answer me this, at least: this thing that has consumed your time and attention so completely—should I be worried about it myself?”

“You?” Blake considered for less than half a beat. “Nah, there’s not much you can do about it, really.”

“Then, should I be concerned about it in my capacity as the Prime Minister of Otharia?”

Blake paused for much longer this time, and Leo could see him mentally vacillating. “...maybe.”

That was far too distant from a solid “no” for Leo to feel comfortable.

“But anyway, Leo, you’re right. I’ve been a bad boss,” Lord Ferros quickly continued, making no attempt to conceal his effort to change the subject. “How are you handling the workload right now? Have you taken a day off in the last few weeks? How are you liking that stapler I made you?”

“I’m fine, no, and it’s a wonder. I don’t know how I ever functioned without it.”

“Well, that’s good to hear, except for the middle part. What am I going to have to do to get you to chill out once in a while?”

“I took some days off almost two seasons ago,” Leo pointed out.

“I don’t know which is worse, what you just said or the fact that you somehow think it helps your argument.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.” Both of them knew that it was a lie. A part of Leo did indeed desire to step away from the daily toil, but after witnessing the disorder brought about by his last, brief hiatus, he could not help but worry that any sort of vacation long enough to be worthwhile would result in the total collapse of the Otharian government. His worries might be unfounded—his staff and the ministers were neither idiots nor fools—but the potential consequences were dire enough that he felt he could not dare to risk it and find out for real.

“By the way, any progress on the wife search? I haven’t heard you mention it in a good while now.”

A spike of anxiety shot through him, but he pushed it down before Blake could notice. “Nothing to report.”

“It’s been, what, over a year and a half now? Are you really sure there’s anything to even find at this point? What if she’s just in some unmarked grave somewhere?”

“She knew too many people to just disappear. Even if she’s dead, somebody should know what happened to her.”

“But then, how have you been unable to find any of these people after all this time?”

“It’s complicated. It seemed that she moved around a lot after I—after we were separated. I can find people who saw her after I was locked away, but so far I have not found what I’m looking for. There are a lot of people in Otharia, after all, and unfortunately, I have had less and less time recently to devote to it. As for a record of her death, well... need I remind you of what you did to the Church’s official records?”

“Right, yeah, sorry. Let me know if you need something more to help.”

“Of course.”

Their conversation petered out as they approached the meeting room and they walked in to silence. Nobody seemed surprised at their sudden arrival, which made sense, given the noise Lord Ferros made walking through his halls.

“Alright, ladies and germs,” the armor-clad man said as he plopped down into the seat beside Leo, “let’s get this over with. Leo, would you do the honors?”

“As always,” Leo returned. “Let us begin with new developments, starting with one distressingly close to home. After receiving numerous reports of kashkuli sightings, I commissioned an investigation. I regret to inform you that we have a massive infestation in the city sewers.”

The collected people groaned as one, with the exception of one person.

“Kash-what-now?”

“Kashkuli are little brown lizards with tan spots,” Minister Demirt informed their employer. “They’re rather small, growing up to maybe two-thirds the length of my hand, but they eat seemingly anything and everything and they reproduce like nothing I’ve ever seen. To make matters worse, they love to dig, and if they get into farmland, they make homes under the topsoil and kill all the crops by tunneling around and feasting on the roots. I’ve never seen an infestation myself, but one hit my home village about ten years before I was born and the elders would talk about it like it was the end of days.”

“The lass is right, Lord Ferros,” Fricis chimed in. “I’ve seen what a kashkuli swarm can do to a village’s crops. We have to wipe them out now before they spread to the farmland.”

“And how do we do that?”

“Well, normally I would say germa root extract. Poisons them quickly and effectively. But germa root has always been in short supply and we don’t have nearly enough right now. I’ve heard of several other options but they don’t do the job as well, from what I know.”

“Nah, no half measures unless we have no other options. Does it grow elsewhere? Maybe we can buy some?”

Collectively, the group looked over at the one person in the room who’d spent most of her life outside of the country, who just blankly stared back at them.

“Why are you all looking at me? I never farmed; I stabbed things for a living,” Minister Demirt sighed. “Fine... uhhhhhh... if I remember right, Eterium used to grow a decent amount of it.”

“My Lord, given Eterium’s broken state, now would be a perfect time to push them hard,” Simona advised, no small amount of relish in her voice. “Let me twist their arms and make those greedy Eterians scream. They will be so desperate that we will be able to name our price. We will pay them a pittance!”

“After all the suffering that they went through—that I went through and witnessed—during the war, you want to just make them suffer more?” Arlette noted with scathing scorn. “I would ask if you had any shame, but we all know the answer to that.”

“Don’t think I will tolerate your disrespect, Elseling!” Simona snarled, rising from her seat.

“Both of you CHILL! Act like fucking adults, god damn!” Blake snapped. Simona flinched slightly, reluctantly and resentfully lowering herself back down. Blake looked to Arlette. “Would Eterium even be able to supply us with the root now, after the war and shit?”

“I highly doubt it. The places I remember it being grown were in the southwest plains, which was under Ubran control during the invasion. There would not have been many people left to farm, and those that did would have focused on food crops, I would imagine.”

She glanced over to Fricis, who nodded.

“I think I remember some farmers in Kutrad also grew it. They are probably your best bet. That’s all I have.”

Lord Ferros turned to Leo. “Get on it. Top priority.”

Leo nodded, ignoring the huff from Simona. “Very well, next item: New Plontas is currently suffering through a dry spell that has lasted long enough to become a drought. Minister Upeslacis, please tell us more.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Aye,” the old man began. “That area has always had less rainfall than most of Otharia, but it’s been worse than normal there for a while now. The crops are withering under the sun and the soil’s dry as a grandmother’s teat. New Plontas’s beets are their main export, and the whole area is in trouble if things don’t turn around soon. We’ll have to rework a lot of our food distribution plan to cover for it, and any more large issues put the whole country’s food supply at risk.”

“Are there any good water sources in the area?” Blake inquired. “Show me where this is.”

The center of the circular table they sat around shifted, the large, flat panel in the center lighting up like the street lamps outside. A picture formed on the panel, shifting quickly between various images until stopping on one of a map of Otharia. Seasons ago, such displays of technological wizardry would have unnerved every person in the room but one; now, it was so commonplace that nobody batted an eye as the Lord summoned documents without moving a muscle.

Leo recognized the map as the most recent map the Ministry of the Interior had created a season ago. He rose out of his chair and indicated a spot a good deal southwest of Nont. “New Plontas is right about here.”

“I’m not seeing much else out there,” Lord Ferros noted. He pointed at a black squiggly line nearby that ran northwest, starting deep in the center of Otharia and winding its way to the sea near the border with Eterium. “This river—what’s it called, and how big is it?”

“That would be the Bhoresta,” Leo told him. “As for how big...”

“Depends on what part, Lord,” Martis helpfully chimed in. As the person out and about the country, he knew the lay of the land best. It was part of Leo’s job to know where his people lived, but less so the land they lived on. “It’s fairly large by the time it meets the ocean, maybe twenty to twenty-five strides wide, but often less than ten the further in you go.”

“And, this area here,” Lord Ferros continued, circling an area about thirty leagues to the east of the drought-stricken area. “If I’m reading this right, it’s basically unpopulated, right?”

“Correct,” Leo responded. It’s largely undeveloped for now, with, I believe, at most a few villages within the bounds you indicated. This will change as your land development project moves to that part of the country in...” He mentally went through the current deforestation and development timetable. “...four and a half years, barring unforeseen setbacks.”

The image shifted, another map coming into existence on top of the first. This one did unnerve Leo, despite having seen it before. It was an image of the nation as if viewed from the eyes of a god floating high above the world. Leo could see all the colors of the land, from the multi-hued forests to the brown and grey badlands to the large grey monstrosity that was the very building that they sat in at that very moment. Created by stitching together images taken from the swarm of tiny hovering machines Lord Ferros had built and deployed around the country, it served as a stark reminder of the reach he had at his disposal. It didn’t matter where you were; Lord Ferros was watching.

“Yeah, yeah, the terrain looks good,” the armor-clad man muttered to himself as he looked over the area again. “Alright! Here’s how we’re going to solve this: we’re going to build a lake.”

The assembled ministers, Leo included, looked at him as if he wasn’t making any sense, because he wasn’t. The words each made sense individually, the understanding conveyed within each one seeming perfectly sensible—together, however...

A lake was not something that could be built. It was a lake.

“What, don’t tell me you all have never made a reservoir before,” Lord Ferros wondered in disbelief. “You can grow stone and you’ve never dammed up a river? Seriously?”

Perhaps it was just because he’d worked directly with the man more than the others had, but Leo was the first to regain his balance. “Lord Ferros, are you saying you desire to... stop the Bhoresta?”

“Yeah, what else would I be talking about?”

“...why?”

“To help with the drought problems, Leo. What else? Look, we dam up the river somewhere around here,” he explained, pointing at a spot along the river roughly eleven leagues—or thirty-five ‘miles’— due east of New Plontas. “With the terrain layout, we should get a nice reservoir that fills up all of this here.” His finger circled an area south of the focal point that encompassed perhaps six square ‘miles’ of terrain. “We’ll have to check the terrain in more detail on the ground, of course.”

“But even so, that’s still over thirty ‘miles’ from the drought area. How would it help anything?”

“Sure, but that’s why we’ll then run pipes and irrigation channels from the reservoir to that area. That’s the point of this whole thing. We build up the water and use it as needed for these sorts of problems. It’s of more use to us there than draining into the sea.”

“What about the river, then?” Minister Demirt interjected, her voice revealing her to be as stunned as Leo felt. “Wouldn’t it dry up?”

“Only until the reservoir is done filling. Then you let it start flowing out through the dam and it’s back to normal, or maybe just cut the flow in half for a while instead of cutting it off completely. There’s a lot you can do with that pressure, you know. We could even put in some turbines for electricity generation, though an electrical grid is still a long way out for this place.”

“What about the people currently living there?” Minister Izkapts asked, a rare contribution from her when talking about matters unrelated to the law and criminal system.

“I’m not going to abandon important progress just because a few people would be inconvenienced,” Ferros said dismissively. “Move them elsewhere. Build them a new village or whatever.”

“And what of the people downstream?” Leo pressed.

“I thought you said the area was basically undeveloped.”

“There are still a collection of smaller towns closer to the ocean, where the soil is healthier.”

“Well... it’s not like the whole river will disappear...” Blake reasoned. “There are tributaries and stuff like that, or it wouldn’t widen like Martis says it does, right?” He let out an annoyed grunt. “Look, I’ll make a bunch of water tank skitters and we can supply them with water temporarily if they need it, alright? I’ll do the same for the drought area. It’s not like the reservoir will be ready next week or anything, anyway. There’s going to be a lot of planning and surveying that needs to happen first. Martis, you handle that. Get it done sooner rather than later if you can.”

“Of course, my Lord. I will take care of that as quickly as possible. Let me think... it’s only an hour from Moltik, so I can tackle it after that.”

“Moltik? What are you doing going to Moltik? We don’t have any projects in Moltik.”

A spike of alarm lanced through Leo as he heard the sudden deep suspicion in Blake’s voice and realized the precarious situation Martis had accidentally stumbled into. In his confusion, the minister had accidentally broken the first rule of being Lord Ferros’s subordinate: never, ever, mention anything that was a part of what was known as, for lack of a better name, the Unspoken Agenda.

The Unspoken Agenda was nothing sinister—it was created more from necessity than anything else—but Lord Ferros could still never be allowed to learn about it. Revealing its existence would shatter the fragile trust that had been built between them and their ruler, not only jeopardizing the functioning of the nation, but their freedom, safety, and perhaps their very lives as well. And yet, the Unspoken Agenda had to exist to allow the government to run. Leo saw little choice in the matter.

Very early on, Leo and several of the others had each independently concluded that it would be best if many of the smaller problems that could be dealt with using proven, existing strategies were taken care of without being brought to Lord Ferros’s attention. This was because Lord Ferros had a well-documented record of being very, well, “Lord Ferros-y” when it came to solving problems. The man liked to apply large, bold, and brash methods to almost every issue, including those that very much did not require society-shifting solutions. The conclusion that Leo had come to was simply “if he doesn’t know about it, he can’t make things worse”. Eventually, when he had realized that some others were each doing their own version of the same tactic, he’d brought them together to better coordinate the strategy between them, and the Unspoken Agenda was born.

As dangerous a strategy as it seemed, the alternative was to risk bringing about all sorts of unnecessary upheavals that would only make their lives and the lives of their people more difficult. This could perhaps be best demonstrated by what had just happened moments ago. What had begun as a discussion on ways to help the communities dealing with a rather severe but likely temporary drought had ended with talk of creating lakes and massive, league-spanning irrigation systems. Had they known that a report of a mid-sized drought would turn into geoengineering on a scale they had never before even conceived, then they would have probably done their best to address the issue without the Lord ever even knowing of the drought at all. After all, it wasn’t like the man was sitting around with nothing to do. He was already juggling a large assortment of tasks that only he could do; they were performing a service by keeping him from adding to that assortment until it became unmanageable even for him.

Now, though, after Martis’s screw-up, things looked dire. As far as Leo knew, Lord Ferros’s cabinet had been able to conceal their side activities until now and had avoided suspicion as a result. Martis, however, had always been the weak link. Given that he was so busy traveling the country that he rarely attended the meetings, it figured he would be the most likely to accidentally let something slip.

“U-uh...” the Minister of the Interior floundered, aware of his error and unsure of how to get out from under it.

The truth was that Leo had found signs that indicated significant corruption within the Moltik government, but did not yet have the proof needed to act. The best possible outcome would be that Leo would acquire the needed evidence and Gunta could then act on it. The second-best outcome was that he would be unable to find the evidence. The worst possible outcome would be if Blake found out about there being possible corruption. Leo and Gunta both agreed that his finding out would spark a massive purge of the municipal governments, something that would take up a massive amount of time and do far more damage to the country than good.

The problem was how to get the evidence in the first place. Ordering the town government to send records to Wroetin would cause the possibly corrupt officials to simply send only the documents that looked good, and might spook them enough to cause them to destroy anything incriminating as well. The same could be said if Gunta sent investigators. The problem with being an investigator in Scyria was that everybody could easily create a flame using nothing but their own will. Any government official with a secret to keep could send all their incriminating records up in smoke before they could be seized, as long as they had even a few moments of advance notice. Gunta didn’t have any people to spare at the moment, anyway.

Martis, on the other hand, was perfect. He was already set to travel close by, he had no law enforcement connections that would make him appear threatening, and he had a plausible excuse both to be in the town—planning for some made-up new, just-decided-upon construction project—and to be in the town hall—requisition supplies and the like. He and his underlings would be able to get themselves into the right rooms before anybody would be the wiser, and by that time it would be too late. They would be able to seize everything in one fell swoop. It was a convoluted plan, but such was the reality of working behind the scenes with limited resources. Anything more overt ran the risk of being noticed by Blake.

Surprisingly, Martis had been not only agreeable to the idea but downright eager. Leo suspected that the spycraft-esque mission excited him in a way his normal work did not. It was that excitement, however, that had likely led to the current situation. Leo needed to act now before one simple slip of the tongue brought everything crashing down.

“Please excuse the minister, Lord Ferros. He is simply doing me a favor,” he cut in.

“Yeah?” came the not-quite-convinced response.

“Indeed,” he replied, the falsehood coming out as smoothly as the truth. “During the census completed last season, the responses from Moltik were lost in an accident during transfer here. Given that he would be traveling somewhat close to the area already, I asked him to make a short detour and deliver replacement forms for me.”

“Ah, well, alright then,” Blake acquiesced. “But I’m not a fan of using you all this way. Martis is busy enough as it is. We should have a department designed around transporting and delivering—” Abruptly, he straightened, snapping his finger and then pointing it in Leo’s face. “A Post Office! We need a Post Office!”

“A Post Office?” Leo repeated with confusion, trying to grok the full meaning of the term. “Some sort of alliance of couriers?”

“Kind of, yeah!” came the excited response. “A whole system dedicated to letter and parcel transport and delivery that anybody could use.”

“Preposterous. And how would you propose to pay for such a grand expenditure?”

Leo let out a tiny sigh as Zigmars entered the fray in the only way he knew how.

“What grand expenditure? I could handle most of it myself!”

“Oh, really?” the Finance Minister replied with mocking derision. “Please, do tell.”

“Well, ninety-nine percent of the work could be done by skitters—I would just have to modify them to be able to carry cargo and letters. People would just come up to a mail skitter and give it a letter in an envelope—”

“What would this letter and envelope be made from?” Zigmars cut in.

“What else? Pap... paper isn’t widely available, is it?” Blake realized. “We use it here so much that I forgot.”

“Outside of Wroetin, paper is a highly-priced luxury good,” Leo informed him. “Parchment is more readily available, but still outside the budget of the vast majority of people.”

“Make a note to work on paper milling in the near future,” Blake instructed him with a small groan of resignation. “With all the deforestation we’re doing, we should have plenty of wood to work with.”

“Noted.”

“Anyway, lack of paper is but a temporary issue!” Lord Ferros pressed onward. “Once it is plentiful, all a citizen would have to do is get an envelope, write the destination address—”

“Ignoring just how few people can write,” Zigmars broke in again, a wisp of a smile mixed in with his trademark scowl. It was as if the man was actually enjoying himself by antagonizing somebody who could kill him without a second thought or a single consequence. “I must ask: address? What would that be?”

“I know you’re not the brightest bulb in the bunch, Captain Buzzkill, but don’t act like you don’t know what an address is. Nine-fifty-seven Mulberry Street, Wroetin. That sort of thing. With the flitters and the overall system to help guide them, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to get automated pathfinding working. I have a more rudimentary version of it in action already.”

Zigmars’s smile widened in victory. “Prime Minister, if you needed a courier to deliver something to a home in the poorer northwest area of this city, what would you tell him?”

Leo understood the minister’s point and let out a tired breath. “Probably something like ‘second house with the yellow door and round windows in the third alley past Ansler’s Tailor Shop on Kruchern Avenue’. Otherwise, they would have no idea how to find it.”

“You... you guys don’t even have, like, real addresses?” Blake realized with disbelief. “Jesus Christ! Alright, fine, it would take a bit more work than I initially thought, but—”

“And that’s not to mention that your robot would have no idea if the person receiving the package is even the correct person,” Zigmars continued. “That is, assuming anybody would be willing to approach one of your terrifying creations in the first—”

“My creations are not terrifying!”

“Is that so? Then why is your vaunted city-to-city transportation system so empty and unused?”

Zigmars was clearly in a wild mood today; while adversarial, he did not normally take such joy in tearing down Blake’s ideas. Going after the train system, however, was a bridge too far. Leo saw the armored man’s right hand twitch and decided to intercede before Minister Vietnieks finally got the bullet in his skull that the rest of them had expected him to get for over a year.

“What the minister is trying to say,” Leo jumped in, “is that while a system such as you describe could theoretically be constructed, your machines would be the poorest fit for it. To do it properly would require hiring people—hundreds, if not thousands, of people, all of them employed in perpetuity as long as this Post Office remains. This isn’t like creating a lake, which only would need you and perhaps some stone Observers. This would be a massive, constant expense.”

“In other words,” Zigmars chimed in, “a grand expenditure.”

Lord Ferros harrumphed and crossed his arms combatively. “Then, so what? Raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it. The economic benefits alone would be worth it.”

“We’ve raised taxes on them and audited them several times already,” Zigmars reminded him. “Are you trying to get them to revolt?”

Blake scoffed. “Let them fucking try. If they want to give me a reason to take everything they fucking have, I won’t say no. It’s not like anything would be lost, anyway. The rich are all just asswipes with too much cash. I’ve seen it time and time again—they just throw money around and let others do all the real hard work that matters, then they claim all the glory when all they did was write a fucking check. They treat everybody under them like they’re nothing but replaceable cogs in a big money machine. Fuck ‘em.”

Leo coughed. “That being said, it would still be unwise to further antagonize them and risk driving them towards helping the terrorists.”

“They’re already helping the terrorists.”

“Minister Demirt and I have told you time and time again that we have no proof that your hunch is the case, and not for lack of looking.” Arlette nodded in concurrence. “Perhaps there are other ways to raise the coin we would need?”

“What about exports? I can set up some manufacturing real quick. Something like... paper! We could make paper—high quality paper, better than anything out there now—and export it!”

“I doubt we would be able to supply the wood fast enough with our current manpower,” Leo informed his leader. “Even if we could, exporting is not something that would come as easily as you hope. We have no history of exports, no contacts, no agreements, and all the rest that I would imagine comes with centuries of exports. What’s more, given the devastated economic situation outside of the country, there aren’t enough potential customers to finance what you have in mind.”

“Damn, you’re right, there’s nobody to sell to right now,” Blake acknowledged. “Then, what else could we do?”

“The quickest action we could take would be to cut costs,” Zigmars asserted. “There are a wealth of areas that could be trimmed down. For example, maybe if you did not insist on wasting money on frivolous items like constantly restocking the soap in the public toilets—”

“Well, people keep fucking stealing it!” Blake heatedly shot back. “Sanitation is important, and I’m not going to have my most-used creation be constantly soap-less. Maybe if we actually cracked down on those fucking thieves, it would finally stop!” He shot a pointed stare in Gunta Izkapts’s direction.

“W-with all due respect, my Lord, there are more important uses of my department’s limited resources than soap theft,” the minister hesitantly replied.

“You could also reduce spending on the mining operations,” Martis offered. “With your machines and equipment, we are already many times more productive than even the richest mine was before. With even just half the current budget, we could keep a steady flow of new material coming in-”

“Absolutely not!” Blake declared with finality. “I need all the metal and crystals you can pull out of the ground. They are the most vital resource we have, and I want as much coming in every day as we can manage—no ifs, ands, or buts. Understood?”

“Of course, Lord,” Martis replied.

“Good. Anyway,” Blake huffed, “I don’t care what Captain Buzzkill has to say, I’m putting my foot down on this, too! We’re going to create a Post Office!”

“And I’m telling you, in as simple terms as I can manage, that no matter how much you want such a thing, no matter how much you claim it will help in the long run, we do not have the funds to even begin such an endeavor! As wonderful as it would be to be able to make something from nothing, this is the real world, and—”

What had surely been winding up to be a Zigmars tirade for the ages was cut off abruptly as Arlette Demirt let out a gasp and shot to her feet without warning. Leo and the others all recoiled as she whipped out a knife in each hand before staring at both of them with wide, unfocused eyes. Nobody said a word for a long, tense moment while Minister Demirt continued her vacant-eyed examination, seemingly oblivious to her audience.

“Arlette? What the hell are you doing?” Lord Ferros asked. When she did not react, he reached out and gave her a tap on her side. “Yo, Earth to Arlette?”

Even his prodding did not seem to reach her.

“Alright, fuck this,” he grunted. The knives drooped like flowers under the hot sun, slowly losing cohesion and melting through her fingers.

That finally was enough to drag the Elseling woman back to the present. She quickly assessed the situation and had the decency to look embarrassed. “A-ah, I’m sorry, I, uh-”

“Look, if you’re gonna be a distraction, I’d rather you do it somewhere where you won’t be slowing down this already-too-long meeting. Go take five or whatever you need to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Arlette acknowledged before striding out of the room with that hurried gait people used when they really wanted to run but knew they couldn’t where others would see them.

“The hell is going on in here today? Sheesh...” Lord Ferros muttered to himself with a small shake of his armored head. “Well, whatever. What were we talking about again? Oh, right! Post Office!”

Leo remained trapped in that Othar-forsaken chair for another hour and a half.

----------------------------------------

The afternoon had grown long in the tooth as Leo finally left the House of Manys and made his way back towards his office, his mind filled with the seemingly endless list of tasks that still needed doing before the end of the day. Leo had expected it to take a few hours to negotiate the acquisition of the germa root, but his estimate had proved to be sadly optimistic.

“There you are,” Martis said as Leo rounded the final hallway corner before his office. “I knew I’d find you around here.”

“Is there something the matter, Minister?”

“Not at all! I wanted to ask you to join me for dinner later. I made a reservation at Matcha’s Alehouse.”

“A tempting offer, but I have far too much—”

“Come now, my friend,” the well-muscled man said, placing a hand on Leo’s shoulder and giving it several hard pulsing squeezes, “I haven’t seen you in more than half a season. Take a break for one night.”

Leo paused for a fraction of a moment. While he and Minister Tievais maintained a healthy professional relationship, they were by no means friends. Both of them knew this. The excessive squeezing only confirmed that there was something more to this than a friendly invitation, though Leo did not know what it might be. Whatever it was, it was something Martis didn’t feel safe enough speaking aloud here, which narrowed it down somewhat.

“Well, Lord Ferros keeps telling me to stop working so late,” Leo allowed.

“Wonderful! I’ll see you there tonight.”

With that said, Martis walked away and Leo entered his office, plopping down into his soft, comfortable chair with a large sigh of relief.

“You.”

The word was laced with enough venom to kill a dozen garophs, and to Leo’s dismay, he knew exactly who’d spoken it.

“Can I help you, Minister Jumala?” he asked before even looking up. The unhinged woman glared at him from the office doorway, naked hostility in her eyes.

“Don’t give me the innocent act, you worm!” Simona snarled. “I represent Otharia in negotiations, not you! That’s my responsibility!”

“And yet, he instructed me to handle this matter, instead of you. Perhaps you should consider why that is.”

“I already know what’s going on!” she spat, stepping into the room with no regard for the carefully sorted stacks of records placed in strategic locations on the floor.

Leo sighed as several stacks fell over; now he’d have to re-sort those. He really needed to stop putting off speaking to Lord Ferros about a more extensive filing system. Already, every wall was completely obscured by floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, all of them completely full. He’d been so busy that he’d always had something more important to do, though he’d been saying that for a while now. Now he was paying the price for his negligence.

“Do you think I’m not wise to you and your plans?” she continued, jabbing an accusatory finger in his face. “You might have the others wrapped around your finger, but I see through all your lies!”

“And what, pray tell, would these plans be?” he asked, unable to contain his morbid curiosity against his better judgment.

“Don’t play coy with me! I see how you worm your way into the Lord’s ear! I see how you organized everything so that you have a finger in every pie! You’re consolidating power so that you can warp Otharia into something that fits your twisted vision, all to get revenge on the country that locked you away for your deviancy!”

Leo hadn’t known what he’d expected to hear, but this was leaps and bounds more deranged than anything he would have imagined. He should have known better than to try to reason with a zealot. “Alright, that’s enough,” he said, rising to his feet with anger, but Simona’s tirade continued.

“I know you were the one who convinced the Lord to embrace the Elselings over our own people! You want to undermine what makes us great and turn Otharia into a vassal of the other nations! You—”

“SIMONA JUMALA, THAT IS ENOUGH!” he roared, activating his Voice for the first time in many years for maximum impact.

A Voice was the sonic Observation technique taught to all Voices—nobody knew if the name of the role or the name of the technique came first. A multipurpose technique, one’s Voice was mostly used to imbue one’s words with otherworldly, divine power and authority, and was most often employed when giving sermons. However, it could also be used for sonic assaults that could discombobulate and disable attackers, for shouting long distances, or a variety of other uses. In a way, mastering one’s Voice made one something akin to a sound Observer.

Leo had refrained from using his Voice for a long time. In a sense, he felt that his Voice was irrevocably tied to his role as a Voice. As he was no longer a Voice within the now nonexistent Church, using his Voice felt wrong, like treading on the grave of his old self. However, the moment now called for it, and he was not one to avoid the right tool for the right job.

As expected, Simona recoiled from the sudden verbal assault. He could see it impact her in a different way, as well. For all that she was, Simona was still an Otharian. For any Otharian, a lifetime of sermons lent a Voice a strong subconscious authority, one that was to be obeyed and never questioned.

“One of my greatest regrets is bringing you to Lord Ferros’s attention. You should feel blessed that he somehow still considers you an asset, because if I had my way, you’d have been carted off and dumped in the middle of nowhere seasons ago! Get out of my office this instant, and do not return until you have regained what little sense you once had and are ready to apologize for such baseless slander!”

Simona seemed to recover a bit from the initial shock of Leo’s Voice, her obstinance starting to return. “You can’t—”

“OUT!”

The Minister of State’s poise finally fully broke and she quickly scarpered out of the room.

With a huff, Leo pressed the button beside his desk that closed the door and let out a heavy sigh. It seemed that he would need to have another talk with Blake about Simona, but that would have to come later. For the first time in a while, he didn’t feel he had the energy or right mind to be productive. Perhaps Martis’s “invitation” had come at a convenient moment after all.

----------------------------------------

“You came earlier than I’d expected,” Martis said from the other side of the table.

“There were some... personnel issues that came up that made continuing my work... difficult,” Leo responded as he sat down on a rough wooden chair. Matcha’s Alehouse was not exactly a high-class place, but the drinks weren’t bad. Plus, for an extra fee, you could reserve a back room away from the main tavern, giving you a place to drink and talk in privacy—surely why Martis had chosen this place. Other more expensive establishments offered similar accommodations, but Martis struck Leo as a man who preferred the rougher things in life, so it did not surprise him that the other man had chosen a place like this.

Martis groaned. “Simona?” He gave a sheepish grin when Leo sent back a questioning cock of an eyebrow. “I passed by her on my way out. She looked mad enough to strangle a dozen infants, so I just thought a prayer for you and got as far away as I could.”

“A wise move, I would say.” Leo picked up his mug and took a large gulp, savoring the burn of the alcohol as it streamed down his throat. “A shame that I could not do the same.”

Martis put his stein down for a moment, his expression shifting into something more serious. “I originally wasn’t going to invite you to this, to be honest. I thought you were too close to him, even though we’ve cooperated behind his back before. Wasn’t sure if it was worth the risk. But, after what you did for me today, I reconsidered.”

Leo’s pulse quickened as the still-murky reason for this meeting became clearer, his unease growing along with it. “I was the one who selected you all to work for Lord Ferros. It’s only natural that I should shield you from undeserved danger. A proper leader protects their subordinates, though admittedly, I was protecting the others and myself as well. That being said, I must admit that your words leave me highly concerned.”

“I’ll explain when the others arrive.”

“And these others would be?”

Circumstance answered Leo before Martis could, as the door opened and the perhaps the most unexpected person entered.

“This had better be good, Tievais,” Zigmars Vietnieks sniffed, eying the pair of them seated at the table as he set down a tankard of mead.

“Patience, Zigmars.”

Zigmars stopped for a moment, surprised. “You’re addressing me properly for once,” he noted before turning around and heading back out the door. “I see that I’m going to need a stronger drink.”

Over the next few minutes, the room filled as not only Zigmars returned, but Fricis and Gunta arrived as well—the entire cabinet minus Arlette and Simona, meaning the five people involved in the Unspoken Agenda. Leo did not see this as a coincidence.

“We’re all here now. Tell us why you asked us here,” Zigmars prodded.

“Why not relax for a moment first,” the well-muscled man suggested, taking a sip of his drink.

“No, I have places to be,” Zigmars insisted, “and they are most definitely not here.”

“I have to agree,” Fricis added. “I have to get up early tomorrow, like always.”

“Alright, then.” Martis leaned back and poured what remained of his alcohol down his throat. Placing the stein down gently, he stared at the wooden table before him, seemingly struggling to find the words he was looking for.

“Did you know that Otharia used to do surveys of the land, looking for potential places to mine?” he began. “Through a stroke of luck, around four hundred years of these surveys were stored in a closet in one of the few side buildings to survive Lord Ferros’s takeover. They’re good, too—as good as any I or my people could make now. They even make note of tucrenyx and cantacrenyx deposits. They are wonderful.”

“A proper man gets to the point, Martis,” Gunta said.

“The point is that these surveys are not just highly detailed, but when combined, they essentially cover the entire country. That includes the unsettled lands—they had four hundred years to check everything, after all. Just to be sure, I had several groups of my people canvas the areas marked as empty. They found two—two—deposits, both so tiny that they were probably just too small to include in the surveys. I have great confidence in this data.

“What I am trying to say is that these surveys give me an essentially complete map of all the tucrenyx and cantacrenyx deposits in Otharia, which is why I can tell you now that we have somewhere between three and five seasons before we run out.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘run out’?” Zigmars demanded.

“Already the production is slowing in the older half of the mines. They’re starting to run dry. Soon, the newer mines will follow suit. There might be a few hidden veins discovered in the existing mines—that’s why I said three to five instead of just three—but none of it will be big enough to fundamentally change the outcome. There’s only a certain amount of any metal in the ground, you know, and both tucrenyx and cantacrenyx are fairly uncommon as minerals go. With all the people and machines we have digging away, we will soon have it all dug out. Three to five seasons.”

Leo felt a massive headache forming, perhaps the worst one he’d felt in ages. Impulsively, he decided to treat it with alcohol, taking a large gulp. When that didn’t work, he took a second, even larger one.

“That is what you made us come all this way to hear?!” an irate Zigmars snorted, rising from his seat to leave.

“Are you daft? Sit down, you fool,” Fricis growled, grabbing the younger man with his wrinkled hand and keeping him from leaving with his old man’s strength.

The Treasury minister seemed unwilling to give in to such rough methods, but while he couldn’t walk away, he refused to sit down either, leaving him stuck in an uncomfortable-looking half-squat position above his chair.

Fricis nodded at Martis. “So, this is why you proposed cutting your own budget this morning.”

“Right. I was hoping that it would let us push back the inevitable.”

“What? What in Othar’s name has you both so terrified?” Zigmars asked. “From what I see, it would be a blessing. That lunatic would finally have to cease starting crazy new projects every ten days and actually focus on fiscal responsibility.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Gunta cut in, her face pale. “Have you not witnessed the way the man works? Did you not hear what he said in the meeting this morning?”

“I try to keep myself removed from such nonsense as much as possible,” Zigmars said defiantly. “My role does not require that I deal with that sort of thing, and staying removed helps keep my judgment pure.”

“Even so, you should understand that tucrenyx is the Lord’s lifeblood and cantacrenyx is his beating heart. Everything I’ve ever seen him make or do involves them.”

“Then he will just have to learn to use other materials.”

“No, she’s right,” Leo finally chimed in. “Lord Ferros is a man who is, at least in part, quite stuck in his ways. No other materials can do what tucrenyx and cantacrenyx can in his hands, so he will not give up on them easily. When our supplies run out, rather than moving on to other metals and techniques, he will try to acquire more.”

“Then, he can just purchase it from elsewhere.”

Martis shook his head. “Not feasible. The other nations are no different than we were just a few years ago. They have little use for the stuff, so why bother mining it?”

“Plus, once mines are established, they will still be far away, slow to produce, and expensive,” Leo added. “There’s no world where Lord Ferros would consent to share his mining machines with the other countries—I think we can all agree on that. So if he cannot get what he wants using peaceful means, that leaves only one other option.”

Zigmars’s eyes went wide, and Leo could see he was finally coming to the same realization that Leo and the others had already arrived at. “You don’t mean...”

“That’s right. When we run out of new tucrenyx and cantacrenyx, Lord Ferros will decide that the only way to get more will be to take it from others. But these materials are not something you can just gain by raiding a city; no, they require new mines, which take seasons to develop and produce, and that requires holding the land—a permanent military presence. He will, almost without a doubt, invade the rest of Nocend and make much of it his. And when that happens, Otharia will cease to be Otharia.”

The petulant minister finally sank back down into his seat. “But, then... what do we do? What can we do?”

“Can we get more help? What about the other one, Sofa or whatever her name is?” Martis proposed. “He seems to listen to her for some reason.”

“You want to ask an Elseling for help?!” Gunta gasped. “Are you mad?! They’re Elselings! They’ll just stab us in the back!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Leo told her. “I know for a fact that Sofie would oppose any sort of invasion, but whether or not she could keep our secret is another question. Still, she could definitely stop him if she wanted to, so we should at least keep the option open. Doing so would burn every bridge we have, however, and we would need to be prepared for what would come from that.”

“What other options are there?” Fricis wondered aloud.

The table went quiet for a moment.

Zigmars coughed. “There’s always... you know...”

“No,” Fricis immediately cut the younger man off, his voice hard as stone.

“Really? I’d always thought you’d be more amenable to the idea,” Martis commented.

“Why, because I’m old?” the elder scoffed.

“Well...”

Fricis scowled and leaned in, giving both Martis and Zigmars a hard stare. “Listen up, then, brats, and I’ll tell you what wisdom my age has gotten me. Back when I was a child, I lived in the town of Chastorva. Does that name ring a bell, lad?”

Martis scowled. “No, I can’t say it does. I’ve never been there.”

Minister Upeslacis took a long drink before continuing. “That’s not surprising. The place hasn’t existed for decades. It was a small farming village out past Eflok. Like everybody else there, my family and I were farmers. We tried our best, but the land wasn’t very bountiful and every winter was harsh on all of us. Then, one summer when I was just six years old, our crops were hit by the red rot—a nasty disease, a fungus of sorts that grows on leaves and slowly eats them away. Naturally, the village’s crops suffered, and our low yields were sure to put us in danger for the coming winter... and then the drought hit. The village fared so poorly that the Church’s tax collector couldn’t even take anything from our harvest that year; there was nothing to tax.

“By the middle of winter, our stores were exhausted. My family and the rest of Chastorva had no choice but to survive on nothing but hunting and whatever we could scavenge out in the wilds, like tree bark. It still wasn’t enough. My mother refused to eat until my younger brother and I had been fed enough to stay healthy. With how little food we had, that meant she would starve. My father and I begged my mother to eat more, but she refused because she understood the truth of the situation: the only way three of us would survive would be if the fourth starved.

“I will never forget that winter, watching her wither away until there was nothing left of her, up until the night she stopped breathing. I swore then and there that I would do everything in my power to never allow this sort of thing to happen again.

“You might be wondering, what about the Church? Didn’t they help us in our time of need? No. They didn’t. We were nobodies, just a tiny village on the edge of civilization. They couldn’t be bothered to care about what happened to us. By the spring, everyone still alive had left to look for a better life, and the village disappeared for good.

“The Church’s lack of interest didn’t change as I grew up. I worked hard to become the best farmer I could, experimenting with different techniques to find ways to grow more food and protect the plants from pests and harsh conditions others. Some worked, most didn’t, but the Church wouldn’t listen to anything I tried to tell them either way. They didn’t care that people—whole villages, even—starved every winter, as long as they stayed in power.

“Now, look at where we are today. It was close, but we managed to feed the entire country last winter, and this year looks even better... and you know what? As much as many of us don’t want to admit it, it’s because of him.

“Lord Ferros made food security a top priority from the start, and he has never failed to give me all the support I needed and more. We’re able to clear farmland with ease and harvesting can be done many times faster than before. Problems are dealt with instead of being left to fester. Just look at today! He is using his flying machine to get the germa root as quickly as possible before the infestation can spread, and he’s even going to build a moons-be-damned lake to fight the droughts. Say what you will about everything else he’s done, but Lord Ferros has been committed to ensuring that nobody in this country ends up like my mother. That means a lot to me, and it should mean a lot to the rest of you, too.

“Am I over the moons about him? I’m not. By some measure, you could argue that he’s only doing what any proper ruler should. But still, he is doing it, which is more than I can say about those who came before him. That’s why I won’t condone any rubbish talk of coups or whatever—not unless you can show me that the replacement will be better. I refuse to go backward after all the progress I’ve finally made.”

“I’m sorry to hear that you went through such a terrible time,” Leo consoled his associate. Though he’d known Fricis since years ago, the old man had never told him the story he’d told them all just now. It was a story that harmonized with his own more than he’d expected.

The crotchety elder waved him off. “I don’t want your pity. I was trying to make a point.”

“A point well-made, though one I somewhat disagree with,” Martis added. “It’s interesting... I realize now that I have no idea how the rest of you see our illustrious ruler. Maybe that’s just because I miss so many meetings, but I can’t help but become curious.”

Zigmars let out a snort. “You can’t ask something like that without at least going first. You’re the one who said you disagree.”

Martis shrugged. “My perspective is a bit different from the rest of you, I would think, since I get to see so much of what is being done with my own eyes. Yes, I see much of what the old man was talking about. Crops are good this year, better than any I can remember... but at the same time, it’s hard to ignore how the people are still afraid. His four-legged sentries are always there, watching from off to the side. It constantly reminds me that no matter how much he seems to trust me and the rest of us, that trust only goes so far.

“And then, there are the many projects that keep me so busy. I have a hard time sorting out my thoughts, I must admit. Some of them, like the sewers we built beneath every city, seem both useful and necessary; others, like the lake from this morning, feel neither useful nor necessary. But, the one feeling that I have been unable to rid myself of for a year now is that he sees them less as improvements to the country and the lives of its people, and more like monuments to his brilliance—endeavors motivated less by concern or altruism and more by arrogance and pride. Sometimes, I wonder if the distinction even matters, but either way, it does not entirely sit well with me.”

He poured himself another drink and leaned back. “Your turn, Ziggy,” he said before taking another large swig.

“Haaaahhhhh... fine,” Zigmars sighed. “When I was a child, I had a cousin two years younger than me. She was a genius at Observation—not as strong as an adult, mind you, but easily equal to five children or more. You would think that this would make her the pride and joy of the family—and to some extent, she was—but really, what it made her was a problem. The issue was that, for as smart and talented as she was, she was still a child and she acted like it. She yelled, and she screamed, and she threw massive tantrums when she didn’t get what she wanted... and that made her dangerous. One time, she gravely injured a servant in a tantrum she threw because she didn’t like the taste of the bread in the meal they brought her.

“Whenever I see that man, I cannot help but think of her every time. He is nothing more than a man-child powerful enough to rule a nation, constantly ready to scream and break things when the world isn’t willing to do exactly what he wants. My cousin grew up; she matured into a well-functioning adult. He, on the other hand, has already grown up, and yet he remains an overgrown child who sees Otharia as a toy for his amusement, throwing fits whenever he doesn’t get what he wants. I have seen little improvement since I came here and I highly doubt that will change any time in the future. It gets at me so much sometimes that I can’t help but relish the chance to rub his nose in reality from time to time and teach him that being Lord of Otharia doesn’t make him Lord of Everything. Makes my job feel almost worth it sometimes.”

“It takes courage to stand up to him the way you do, that is true,” Gunta agreed.

“Indeed,” Leo nodded. “However, I must warn you that there is such a thing as pushing back too hard. You overplayed your hand today. Be more careful in the future; I might not be able to come to your rescue every meeting. It is hard enough keeping you here and employed rather than tied up and thrown into the ocean.”

“Meh,” came the reply.

“I am closer to Minister Vietnieks than the rest of you,” Gunta offered without being prompted. “I think he is a dangerous man with no respect for the righteousness of the law. To him, the law is whatever he wants it to be at the time—whatever is most convenient for his goals. It is the sign of a poor ruler, one whose subjects would be right in removing from power if they had the means—which we, unfortunately, utterly lack. He is just too strong.”

“I must admit, your outlook does not surprise me,” Martis told her, “but it makes me wonder why you would agree to work under him at all.”

“Order must be maintained. It’s as simple as that. Without order, society crumbles into anarchy. If I must work for a man such as him to ensure that order survives, then so be it. We all must do what must be done for Otharia to survive.”

The group grew quiet for a moment, and Leo found the others looking his way, their expectations clear. So, after taking the final sip from his nearly empty cup, he gave them what they wanted.

“Lord Ferros has always been many different things in my eyes, and I believe my answer would change depending on when you asked. He is the man who destroyed much of my home and butchered the people who live in it. At the same time, he is also my literal savior, the man who pulled me out of the hole where they locked me away and let me see the sky again after all those years. He can be a demanding and difficult ruler who burdens me with a dozen new tasks one day and then changes his mind the next, but he can also be a concerned man who worries that I work too hard and never relax enough. In my mind, he is all these things and more all at once.

“But despite all of that, I have a new and different answer for you. A few days ago, I learned of a peculiar notion found in an Earthling religion. It is called ‘penance’, and it boils down to the idea that bad deeds can be cleansed by undergoing punishment. Before one can enter paradise, so they say, one must atone and wipe one’s debt by suffering through this ‘penance’.

“After learning about this concept, a funny little thought entered my mind. At first, it was just that, but in the days since, it has grown and set down roots, refusing to leave. I spent a long time sitting in a cell with little better to do than to contemplate my life, my country, and everything in between. Was what I had done wrong? Was the Church wrong? Was Otharia wrong? Eventually, I decided that we were all wrong—the country, the Church, and even the people, but that is perhaps a discussion for another time.

“I believe now that Othar agrees with me. I believe that he looked down from his hallowed halls and became displeased with what he saw, with how we lived our lives and with how the Church altered his teachings to suit their needs. I believe that Lord Ferros was brought upon us to be Othar’s punishment for our digression. He is our punishment, the instrument of Othar’s justice, and to endure his rule is our ‘penance’. It is through this that we, as a nation, will be cleansed of Othar’s displeasure and eventually be pure once more to enter His Golden Halls to sit by His side. That is my answer.”

The others looked rather stunned by his admission, and nobody said a thing for more than ten breaths—perhaps simply not knowing what, if anything, to say.

“As for the original reason for this gathering,” Leo finally told the assembled Otharians, breaking the silence, “we do not have to come up with solutions today. We have at least three seasons to work with, more than enough time to ponder every option. I suggest that we all go home for now and think about it. We can meet up again another time later once we have put enough thought into the problem.”

The others welcomed the suggestion. Zigmars excused himself and left immediately. Gunta and Fricis followed not long after, leaving just Martis and Leo to finish their drinks.

“This matter... why did you not report this to me earlier?” Leo asked.

“I told you, I wasn’t sure I could trust you to not inform Lord Ferros. That, and I didn’t want to say anything until I was absolutely sure.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Leo sighed.

“I should head out. Thank you for coming,” Martis said, standing up. “I have to be on the road fairly early tomorrow.” He stopped after a step, seeming to remember something. “Oh, by the way, I’m sorry, but I have still not heard anything about your wife. I’ve been keeping an ear out and an eye open as I’ve traveled, but nothing has come of my questions.”

“That’s alright. I appreciate that you continue to assist me, even if we have little to show for it.”

“We’ll find her one day, I’m sure. Have a nice night, and I’ll see you when I return.”

With that, the man walked out of the room, leaving Leo alone with his thoughts.

----------------------------------------

Later that night, Leo Feldmanis walked into a tailor’s shop just off the city’s main north-south boulevard. The day had grown old, but the shop remained open, though it would surely close soon. As if to prove the point, an attendant poked his head around the corner from the back room.

“Hello, we’re just about to close up—oh,” he said, recognizing Leo mid-sentence. “You’re here to pick up, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“One moment.”

The man’s head vanished again, and several moments later, the whole of him came around the corner carrying a folded set of workday clothes.

“Please try them on in the fitting room over there,” the attendant said, ushering him toward something that was far more of a stall than a room.

Leo obliged, entering the small wooden enclosure and unfolding the clothes. Reaching into the inside pocket, he withdrew a small folded slip of paper. Frowning, he read the message written on the paper. Then, with a sigh, he Observed a small flame. Within a moment, the paper was no more.

“It fit well?” the attendant asked as Leo walked back out into the front room.

“Yes, thank you,” Leo replied as he left the shop.

The walk back to the fortress was not a long one, but to Leo, it felt like forever. He stopped before the entrance, his mind going through the conversations of the day once more as the ever-present pit in his stomach grew. A question bothered him, the same question that bothered him every night. Twice today, important people in his life had brought up his missing wife. It was the one constant, the one thing that everybody remembered about him. If only he could tell them the truth: she’d been found seasons ago.