Chapter 18: Backfoot

“Jeez, Em, you were supposed to sleep last night.”

With a mumbled curse, I pushed myself up from my desk, rubbing at my eyes. They felt puffy, and my mouth tasted like something had crawled into it and died.

“I did.” My voice was raspy, grating like sandpaper in my throat. “For a few hours.”

Electra pushed into my office. She looked tired too, but more from all the work I’d had her doing on wiring and electric. “It’s been two weeks since you did that hummingbird raid thing.”

I chuckled, rubbing at my face. “Once I fuck up my sleep schedule, it takes me forever to fix it.”

“Yeah well, you kinda need to get on that,” Electra said. “We’re all counting on you here.” Behind her, Rel, Ishanti, the boys, and my pet enchanter Maarin filed into the office as well. My ‘inner council’, as it were.

“When did you start talking back to me?” I pushed myself upright. “In any case, it’s fine. I got the work done before taking my nap. I am a super genius, you know.” I picked up the pieces of paper on my desk. I handed out the week’s work schedules and allotments, then I paused.

“Ishanti,” I said.

The white-blonde princess tilted her head. “Yes, my lady?”

“The fuck is that?” I pointed.

“Hmm?” She tilted her head, looking down at the cage attached to her waist. Inside of it was, unless I was very much mistaken, one of the venomous hummingbirds I’d gone through the trouble of capturing. “Ah, the new cage I ordered was finally finished.”

I watched, eyes wide, as she stuck a finger through the bars. The hummingbird hopped over, flapping its wings pitifully, and pecked at her finger, slurping at Ishanti’s blood.

“Are you immune to that now, too?” I asked.

“Members of the Royal Family have been known to heal much faster than the average person. It is part of what makes our bodies—still living—so valuable to the true rulers of Vecorvia,” Ishanti said. “In this though, according to the Bestiary you had hunter Llen compile, the hummingbirds are only venomous because they imbibe the nectar of the blood lilies. This one has subsided on naught but sugar water and my own blood for near on two weeks now.”

I leaned closer, handing off Ishanti’s own orders as I examined the little bird. It’s left wing was held awkwardly—probably broken, which was interesting—but… “Is it just me, or is it going gold?”

Ishanti tried to hold back a wince, but failed. “I believe my blood is having beneficial properties on the monster.”

I sighed. The more I learned about the girl’s apparently magical bloodline, the worse it sounded. “Keep an eye on that for me.”

Were I still simply Empress, villaness extrodinaire, I also would have ordered a sample of her own blood sent to my labs for testing. Of course, I didn’t have labs to do any testing. And I needed Ishanti more than I cared about whatever magic blood she had.

Finally, it looked like the Seneschal of Silverwall, and this mysterious Senate, had all the answers when it came to Royal Blood anyway. I’d get the answers when I came to grips with them.

We would be coming to grips with each other.

“I will keep you appraised, my lady.” Ishanti flipped through the documents. “In addition… pardon me if I am mistaken, but did you forget to allot materials needed for the building of the next sloop of Lady’s Port?”

“What?” I stood up. “No I distinctly remember assigning all the work crews you needed.”

“Crews yes.” A delicate finger scrolled down the line of… admittedly somewhat smudged ink. “But what of the lumber? There is no mention here of who shall be providing materials.”

I scanned my own messy handwriting. Over the past, Jesus it had really been months now, I’d developed a standard layout to keep track of where the materials were coming from, who was getting paid, how long the work should take, how long the work would probably actually take, etc.

And I was missing a line.

“Ugh.” I rubbed my face. “Let me think, where was I supposed to get that from.” I glanced back to my desk, picking through my notes. “If anyone has a surplus of wood, tell me now or forever hold your peace.”

There was a rustling of reports behind me. “Nothing from me, Mistres.”

“I mean, I don’t think there’s any extra, but I’m bad at math.”

“Uuughh.” I knocked my head on my desk. “I’m gonna have to go through it all again.” I could already feel the headache coming on. “Reports back. Dee, Dumb, I’ll have to talk to you later, we need those ships.”

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“No prob boss,” Dee said.

Dum chuckled. “Always been bad at numbers.”

I gave a laugh. “Missed you two.” It was nice to have my original crew back together, even though it looked like I just doubled my workload by accident.

“Mistress,” Rel said. “Now that you’ve drawn up the basic schedules, I should be able to fix the rest.”

I shook my head. “There might be other mistakes. I thought I was tracking all the projects but if I let something like that slip I might have to redo everything.”

“More like, ‘I’m gonna redo everything anyway’,” Electra said.

I turned to glare at her. “Well maybe if you’d finished calc two you could help me out.”

“You don’t need calculus to balance a budget.” Electra shook her head, laughing. “You just won’t let me help.”

“Because you’ll mess something up.”

“Why don’t you just, I dunno, invent double entry bookkeeping or something.” She shrugged. “That’s like, an isekai staple.”

“What even is that?” I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know basic math, but expect me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of random medieval accounting techniques? I can’t just google random smart-sounding words that the audience won’t bother to look up.”

“Also…” Ishanti raised her hand. “We already have two entry bookkeeping? It is, as you say, quite a basic method for balancing budgets.”

I turned back to Electra, tapping my foot. “Next you’re gonna tell me to invent the overshot waterwheel.”

Electra tilted her head. “Aren’t we standing in one of…”

“Exactly,” I said. “Keep talking.”

She huffed. “Okay, well, even a broken clock is right twice a day. You really need to offload some work if you’re making simple mistakes like that!” She glanced over at Rel. “Besides, don’t you want your suave minion to help you out?”

I gave a small laugh, glancing over at my first and most faithful follower. “I rely on her too much as it is.”

Rel blushed. “It’s nothing, Mistress.”

“ ‘Sides! You can’t worry about other people’s workload but not your own.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure I can. That’s why I’m the boss.” I waved it off. “Besides, it’s not like I have anything else I have to take care of today. Right? Maarin, everything’s going good with communication mirror production, right? We’ll have those rolling soon.”

“A-ah, uh, well.”

I sighed. “Maarin. You’re killing me here.”

Electra giggled. “Careful, she might kill you if it’s bad news.”

“I only do that to people who personally disappoint me.” I turned to face my pet enchanter, hands on my hips. “You aren’t going to disappoint me are you, Maarin?”

His face went bone white, eyes darting back and forth. Electra smacked him on the shoulder. “Relax, she’s joking, man.” She paused. “At least, I think she’s joking. Em’ isn’t really in the habit of offing her lieutenants like most Villains.”

“I’ve never had lieutenants before,” I said.

Somehow, he got even more pale. I sighed. Okay, the joke was clearly played out. “Just tell me, Maarin. I need an accurate assessment of our production line.”

“Well, w-we managed a few prototypes,” he said. “Unfortunately, making th-the multi connection part f-fully automatic, is beyond me. The enchantment doesn’t bend so easily, and layering a second on top, to swap out the ‘address rods’ as you call them, destabilizes the whole thing and almost took the functioning prototypes with it!”

I quirked my lip. “So what do we have now?”

He rubbed his arm. “Three sets of one way m-mirrors, and then th-three more that c-can connect to each other, but you need to manually switch the connects at a central location.”

“Range?”

He shrugged. “The single connection mirrors sh-should work anywhere on the island; the materials you provided were very high quality.”

“That alone is worth it.” I folded my arms. “Focus on getting me more of those for the time being. Waiting on the Little Mistress to get back from the capital is too long to wait for news. I’ll think about the other problem.”

“But Empress,” Electra grinned at me, waving the sheaf of papers in her hand, “weren’t you going to work on this?”

I frowned. “I can do both. Especially now that I’ve had a nap.”

“Sure, like there aren’t still huuuge bags under your eyes.” Electra laughed. “You’re so out of it you didn’t even notice Shanti’s been carrying around that bird for the last like, three days.”

I stepped back. “No way.” I looked over at Ishanti. “That can’t be true.”

The princess opened her mouth, pausing for a second, before looking away. “I would prefer if you did not call me ‘shanty’ as if I were some kind of song performed by bawdy sailors.”

Electra grinned. “Whatever you say, ‘Shanti.”

Ishanti huffed.

I slumped against the desk. “I seriously missed the venemous hummingbird? I thought you said the cage was just finished.”

“…I had it in a simpler wrought iron affair.” Ishanti glanced away. “But I felt it lacked gravitas.”

“You haven’t looked up from your desk in flipping days, Empress.”

I opened my mouth to reply, when the door to my office burst open again. I glanced down to see a child, Rel’s little minime, standing in the entrance, breathing heavily.

“Uh oh,” Electra said.

“Attack.” The tween pointed out towards the farm. “Monsters and bandits. Golden eyes.”

Ishanti sucked in a breath.

I turned towards her. “This wouldn’t have something to do with your pet having gold feathers all of a sudden?”

“I… wish I could say no.” The princess hunched in on herself. “I have no knowledge, only bare rumors, but if the Seneschal has deployed one of the golden against us… it means he is finally taking us seriously.”

I looked out the window. In the distance, I could just see a plume of smoke beginning to rise at one of the outlying farms. Meanwhile, here I was going over reports and trying to make sure we had enough wood to build a ship, instead of focusing on the enemy at our gates.

“Ah,” I said. “I’ve let myself get complacent.” I nodded once. “You’re right, Electra, I really should have someone else handle some of these reports for me.”

The blond blinked. “Okaaay? Why do I get the feeling that I’m gonna regret that?”

“Simple, isn’t?” I shook my head. “I’ve let myself get so distracted running everything that I’ve let myself get slowed down. It’s been half a month, and I couldn’t spare the time to mop up the rest of the bandits in the jungle.” I turned, kicking my desk hard enough to send it sliding an inch. “Moron!”

“Hey, there’s no need to be so harsh!” Electra said.

“No, no. You were right,” I replied. “Savor it, Eleanor, you finally won an argument.”

“I… win plenty of arguments?”

I smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Well, you’re losing this next one. So get ready to move out.” I huffed, gathering up the last of my papers. “Fucking Seneschal, thinking he can just ‘take me seriously’ all of a sudden.”

Behind me, my allies shuffled, no doubt trading glances at my sudden change of behavior.

Really though, it had been building for a while now. I’d been so focused on the next thing to build, the next project to set in motion. I’d been too obsessed with my city on the hill, so much, in fact, that I’d forgotten the reason I’d started building it in the first place.

“…Where are we going?” Electra asked.

“To attack.”