Chapter 1

30th Day, Upper Fire Month, 1 CE

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Because Jorge said you wanted to see me, sir.”

Sir Luis snorted at Liam’s reply. Liam kept a straight face, trying to figure out what he had done wrong. Maybe he was screwing up without realising it, but he couldn’t imagine himself making any mistakes during his endlessly dreary duties as he escorted House Restelo’s caravans back and forth between Hoburns and Canta.

“We’re moving you to B Company,” Sir Luis told him.

Liam stared at the powerfully-built man, who looked comically out of place behind his tiny desk. The desk was in a tent off to the side of the main administrative area of the camp, which had been built on a platform under a public pavilion. From what he could see, the tent and those nearby were where the more sensitive aspects of the labour camp’s operations were discussed.

“May I ask why, sir?”

“Most would jump at the opportunity to join B Company without question,” Sir Luis noted, “but maybe I should have expected this from you. Duerte says you’ve been carrying your tasks not without question, but without fail. Why is that?”

“…because that’s my job, sir?”

“…just to be certain, you didn’t dream of becoming a soldier growing up, did you?”

He wasn’t sure if he had any dreams of the future growing up. Reality occupied his every breathing moment.

“No, sir.”

“Then my question stands: why?”

“I don’t understand the question, sir.”

The big man’s steely gaze held Liam’s own for several seconds, then went past his shoulder to the entrance of the tent.

“Do you know what that big platform out there – with all of its clerks and aides – is for?”

“Running the camp, sir?”

“It’s for problems,” Sir Luis told him. “Not enough; too much; I don’t know; I don’t like; how do I…and ninety-nine out of a hundred of those problems are caused by our own people. Why do you suppose that is?”

Liam shook his head unknowingly. Sir Luis rose from his seat and turned to face a nearby chest of drawers. He pulled open the top shelf, produced a small lacquer box from within, shut the shelf, and turned back to face Liam. The precise set of motions took less than three seconds.

“This,” he said as he placed the box on his desk, “is how men such as you and I do things. If something needs to be done, we do it. No detours; no lollygagging; no useless arguments and no hesitation. No waiting around for others to give us a reason to act. Those people lined up out there with their ‘problems’ are Lanca. Most of the problems they’re bringing up wouldn’t exist if they bothered to think. They cause problems by wasting time and waste more time waiting for someone to fix the problems that they caused. When they ‘work’, it’s just enough not to get them in trouble and they despise anyone who makes that modicum of effort look bad.”

“So adding me to Duerte’s caravan was a test, sir?”

The timid Pedro wasn’t the only person he had been partnered up with for escort duties over the last two weeks. As Sir Luis had pointed out, seemingly everyone in the caravan seemed hellbent on doing just enough to collect their pay despite the work not being challenging at all in the first place. They didn’t screen properly and chatted endlessly. He was pretty sure that a halfhearted attack on the caravan would have sent most of them scurrying off.

As a follower of The Six, their conduct repulsed him and he did his best to ignore them in favour of doing his job properly. They made it much easier to do so by the second trip since they stopped talking to him entirely. Liam thought they were just leaving him to do his thing, but, if Sir Luis was right, they were actively excluding him from their ‘group’.

“Life is a test, Liam,” Sir Luis told him. “Whether people can see what you’re doing or not, everything serves as a measure of your quality. You would do well to remember that.”

Sir Luis opened the case and picked out a brass pin, placing it on the desk in front of Liam.

“Pack up your tent and report to Sir Jimena before sundown. Your new job starts tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” Liam picked up the pin and saluted. “Thank you, sir.”

The Knight sent him away with a grunt. Liam left the tent, staring down at the pin in his palm. It wasn’t masterfully crafted, but the livery still served its purpose of depicting two fish jumping out of the sea. In other words, he had joined the elite retinue of House Restelo – or at least what amounted to it in the northern Holy Kingdom.

That notion neatly summarised how the south perceived its relationship with the north. Normally, the pin was a standard part of a retainer’s official uniform. This meant that Liam was the equivalent of a regular retainer in the eyes of House Restelo, and that status was considered ‘elite’ in the work camp. The usual hierarchy of a Noble house had been extended downward to create positions that existed somewhere between the official retinue and the nameless commoners who worked for them.

They were basically third, fourth and fifth-class retainers, though most wouldn’t realise it unless they made their way up the ranks themselves. Resentment due to that realisation never manifested; new entries to the upper ranks simply embraced the new wealth and privilege of a system that worked in their favour.

“You should put that where people can see it.”

Liam looked up to find Jorge standing in front of him.

“How come you don’t wear yours?” Liam asked as he attached the pin to his collar.

“Ah, so you noticed,” Jorge chuckled and scratched the back of his neck. “That is what they call ‘talent’, I suppose. As for me, you will find that Sir Jorge does not differ much from ‘Jorge’ overmuch.”

“What’s Sir Jimena like?”

“Hmm…halfway between Sir Luis and myself? Except that he has four wives and I swear they are all Sirens that he fished up from a sewer outlet. Speaking of which, has any girl caught your eye yet? If you cannot decide on one, you can easily afford a few now.”

“I don’t know how you think I have the time for that,” Liam replied. “I’ve been escorting caravans non-stop.”

“Perhaps, but B Company is stationed in the city so you will have plenty of time now. You will get to sleep in your tent every night, too. What could be better than having a nice girl to make things more lively? Oh, by the way, make sure to exchange your tent for a larger one. As men move up in the world, they have more things to keep around…well, it’s more that their women have more things to keep around. My wife has taken over most of my plot and things are starting to pile up outside. My things.”

“You know that I don’t have any women.”

“Oh, you will. You are young, but do not be ashamed – it is only natural!”

Something caught the undercover Knight’s attention and he meandered away with a friendly wave of his hand. Liam left the administrative centre of the camp to pick up his tent. He had barely slept in the thing, so it would merely be a matter of dismantling it and rolling it up.

When he arrived at his part of the camp, Francisco’s ‘wife’, Francesca – he swore it had nothing to do with why he ‘picked’ her – was hanging laundry out to dry between their tents. The young woman’s golden curls bobbed as she greeted him with a friendly smile.

“Hello, Liam.”

“Hi.”

“Getting some sleep before…what’s going on?”

“I got transferred to one of the companies,” Liam tugged on a tent peg. “They told me to move over to their side of the camp.”

“Oh, congratulations! I hope this means that they’ll stop working you so hard. We’ve barely seen you since you moved in.”

Liam boggled at the woman’s logic as he took apart the rest of his tent. One would normally think that receiving a promotion meant greater responsibilities and more things to stay on top of. Then again, she was a follower of The Four. The more time Liam spent around them, the more he was convinced that ‘laziness and liberty from responsibility’ was one of their core tenets.

“Still,” Francesa said as she watched him work, “it’s a shame we didn’t have the opportunity to get to know one another better.”

“I’m working in the city, now,” Liam tossed everything together and rolled up the canvas, “so you’ll probably see me around. Anyway, they want me by sundown, so I need to get going. Give my regards to Francisco.”

He walked away as quickly as he could without looking like he was fleeing from the woman. Once, he had made the mistake of engaging her in conversation and ended up having two hours of his sleep stolen away by her gossip. The gossip wasn’t even useful.

Liam crossed the centre of the labour camp, stopping by the quartermaster’s office to replace his tent. He still had no intention of getting a ‘wife’, but having a tiny tent surrounded by huge ones would look strange. The man at the counter took one glance at his new pin before trading up his tent.

“First tent’s free,” he told Liam. “Furniture’s extra.”

“Can I use our scrip for that?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks.”

With the Holy Kingdom’s coinage becoming ever more unreliable, most of its people outside of the cities had long switched to a system of barter. In doing so, they discovered that things weren’t actually as expensive as they seemed. Why that was never seemed to cross people’s minds, but neither were they in any position to change things.

They also discovered how annoying and inconvenient barter was. It wasn’t long before they got sick of it and came up with a simple solution. Every Noble house operating in the northern Holy Kingdom now issued its own scrip. That scrip was only redeemable in the labour camps of the houses that issued them, creating dozens of ‘alternative economies’ around the country.

The Holy Kingdom had laws against counterfeiting its coinage, but there was nothing about the creation of alternative currencies. With the internationally-accepted trade coins of the Merchant Guild already in circulation in the country, trying to enforce such legislation seemed like a lost cause. Trying to control the distribution of scrip was also now impossible for the Holy King, as any such laws proposed would be rejected by the Royal Court.

As far as Liam’s situation went, Pedro’s assertion that he could financially support a few ‘wives’ wasn’t wrong. So long as he continued working for House Restelo, of course.

These Nobles are really good at creating traps that normal people can’t detect.

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Never mind detecting the trap, people dove into it gleefully. It was their best chance for survival and offered security besides. Once caught, they were immersed in a system that incentivised performance with rewards that could only be redeemed with the house that one worked for.

Considering what Sir Luis told him, however, the incentives weren’t working very well when it came to improving the ‘numbers’ that every house coveted. Much like Re-Estize, the Empire, and a good part of the Sorcerous Kingdom, the people just did what was necessary and ‘took it easy’ the rest of the time. In the end, most of those who climbed the labour camp’s ‘reward ladder’ tended to be the rare driven individuals or those that inherited vocational aptitudes from their ancestors.

Maybe Sir Luis was right about calling them Lanca.

Ambition was considered a privilege of the talented in the Holy Kingdom and mediocrity was the comfortable norm. And that was their version of mediocrity. What Liam considered mediocre, they would consider exceptional. The poster he once saw in Rimun declaring that weakness was a sin was probably the result of some sane person finally getting fed up with the sheer stupidity of the place.

Liam arrived at the far side of the administrative centre, which was where the most luxurious area of the labour camp was. The tents here were anywhere between four to ten times larger than the ones on the other side depending on whose tent it was and how much they were willing to spend on their dwelling.

The sentries and patrols in the area sent sharp looks in Liam’s direction until they noticed the pin on his collar. Security on the far side of the camp was much tighter. When he wandered around the area in the past, they would immediately turn him away upon detection.

B Company’s ‘neighbourhood’ was easy enough to find, as it was the only set of tents filled with men preparing for their night’s work. As far as Liam understood it, A Company was the ‘face’ of House Restelo’s forces and worked in Hoburns during the day. B Company was reportedly just as capable and thus also assigned lodgings in the same area of the camp, but worked the night shift. Four other companies policed the labour camp itself and rumour had it that House Restelo was trying to expand its forces even further.

A sand-haired man fully equipped in chain mail and the livery of House Restelo stepped out in front of Liam as he looked around for some sort of command tent.

“You lookin’ for someone?”

“Sir Luis ordered me to report to Sir Jimena.”

“The replacement, huh? This way.”

Liam fell into step behind the man, glancing at the other company members as they made their way deeper into the tents. Every man felt like a capable combatant and they were what probably came to the minds of most when they thought of a house retinue. They were healthy, well-fed, well-equipped, and carried themselves with confidence.

Their living conditions similarly reflected their status. The plot allocated for each tent was as large as a communal camp area on the other side of the administrative centre. Most of the plots had a main tent, two secondary tents, a small pavilion for outdoor work and still had room for laundry and kids to run around in. It also looked like the place somehow had a working sewer system and the lanes that ran between the tents were wide enough to bring a freight wagon through.

His guide stopped in front of an empty spot and crossed his arms.

“This is your predecessor’s plot,” he told him.

“What happened to him?”

Liam didn’t think that the Holy Kingdom was dangerous enough for a member of a house retinue to meet their end.

“Executed for rape,” the man answered. “Damn commoners always let power and authority get to their heads.”

“…you’re Sir Jimena?”

“It’s nice to see that you’re not oblivious,” Sir Jimena said. “But you look like you’re too young to have been in the army…you probably don’t know the law. No? I thought so. What good are you to me? If you say that you’re good in a fight, I’m going to stuff you headfirst into that latrine hole.”

“I can work as a thief-taker.”

Sir Jimena silently peered at him with his hazel eyes.

“Would you happen to know other thief-takers?” He asked.

“No,” Liam shook his head.

“Damn. We need at least five more. The army hangs on to any that they find. You have an hour to set up before we start our shift.”

With that, the Knight turned on his heel and strolled off. Jorge seemed to be spot-on with his assessment of his personality.

Liam dropped his tent on the grass – the field wasn’t trampled to oblivion like the rest of the camp – and examined the plots near to his. The arrangement of the neighbouring tents was almost manor-like, with auxiliary tents forming a yard with the main tent much as the buildings of a rural manor would. He didn’t have all of that, so the best he could do was figure out where his tent would go relative to the hole for the latrine.

What did they stick on that anyway?

He poked his head up and looked around, but he didn’t want to catch anyone doing their business. It was probably just better to ask someone while the company was gathering.

A pair of young boys ran through his plot, yelling as they waved their wooden swords in the air. Liam wondered if he would have to deal with kids going through his stuff.

Everyone here has someone to watch their things…

It was something that he didn’t care much about with his barely-used tent from before. If he wanted to keep up appearances, however, he would have to make something out of his living space. He knew that the Holy Kingdom’s people were highly unlikely to steal something even if it was just lying out in the open, but, with how he had grown up, the lack of security bothered him.

Could he just have another guy move in? If he set things up real nice, anyone would want to live in his plot…except that it was explicitly meant for retainers of his status and their families or women. He wasn’t sure how claiming a man as his ‘wife’ would be received by his new company. It would also mean that the guy would have to play along. Liam didn’t want any more extra ‘challenges’ than necessary, which was why he kept shrugging off Sir Jorge’s suggestive suggestions in the first place.

Ugh, I’ll think about it later. I need to get this tent set up.

Liam went to join the rest of the company once he spotted them gathering. The aroma of food reminded him that he hadn’t had dinner yet. He leaned slightly toward the man next to him.

“Where’s the mess here?” Liam asked.

“Kitchen’s right behind us,” the man answered. “Name’s Marim, by the way.”

“Liam,” he stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Marim took his proffered hand and gave it a firm shake.

“Likewise,” he said. “I’m not sure how long you’ll be with us, however – your kit won’t pass muster.”

Several of the other men cast glances in his direction. They all wore matching uniforms consisting of surcoats over their chainmail armour, heater shields bearing the heraldry of House Restelo, and kettle helms polished to a mirror sheen. Each was armed with a two-metre-long spear and an arming sword. Liam, on the other hand, wasn’t wearing anything that marked him as a man at arms and his only bit of livery was the pin on his collar.

“I’ll be working out of sight for most of the shift, I think,” Liam told him. “The uniform will just get in the way.”

“Thief-taker?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice!” Marim grinned, “Night patrols are hell without one, I tell ya.”

A sense of alarm rose within Liam at the statement. The overly chatty caravan guards allowed Liam to glean information on a variety of topics, but there was no mention of anything out of sorts going on in Hoburns. Something like that would surely spread like wildfire through camp gossip.

“I’ve been escorting caravans to Canta for weeks,” Liam said. “Is something going on in the city?”

“Not exactly,” Marim said. “Every day gets a little more tense, is all. A Company has to deal with most of it during the day. At night…well, having some eyes on our side’s much appreciated.”

“Assuming they even work.”

Sir Jimena walked up to the mustering yard with two sergeants on either side of him.

“I don’t expect trouble lurking in every alley,” he told Liam, “but if you miss something you shouldn’t have, I’m going to feed you to Sir Luis.”

The inspection was brief and the briefing was nonexistent, leaving Liam on his own to discern the company’s behaviour and routines. They marched straight through the camp to the highway and stopped at Rimun Gate. Sir Jimena entered the gatehouse while a quarter of the company went to man their section of Hoburns’ towering curtain walls.

“What part of the city are we covering?” Liam asked.

“Rimun Gate and the blocks between there and the west plaza,” Marim answered. “How much of the capital have you seen?”

“I tried living here for a while before coming out to the camps,” Liam said.

Marim snorted.

“The only people who can live in the city are the ones that can somehow eat their pride,” he said. “There’s no sense in it, but I’m sure you know that.”

Over time, Liam came to understand that every Human country was divided into two distinct societies. The vast majority of a country’s population – well over ninety per cent of its subjects – was rural and thus a society built on the customs, practices, and realities that came with rural life. Urbanites made up the remainder, and their society was built on how life worked in the towns and cities.

The relatively tiny population of urbanites, however, had a much stronger hand in the direction of a country than their rural counterparts. They lived in the centres of political, economic, and military power and thus had a direct and outsized influence over their country’s most prominent affairs.

In the northern Holy Kingdom, that dynamic was broken. Cities rose as the centrepiece of their respective territories and Jaldaboath’s invasion had broken the supply chains and support mechanisms that kept them running properly. The nobility was naturally on the side of a country’s rural society and thus the Nobles that came to help ‘manage’ the recovery of the north acted to suppress the power of the cities.

The work camps set up around each city to organise labour and expedite the country’s economic recovery were, in reality, parasites sucking the cities dry. Whether he wanted to or not, the Holy King no longer had the power to dislodge them. The Royal Army had been sent beyond the Great Wall and the Crown was financially frozen because the cities – its primary source of revenue – were being slowly choked to death.

In the eyes of the Nobles, Caspond was nothing but a fool. A fool that hadn’t even realised that he had given up his power and was now effectively a puppet of the royalist faction.

Perhaps the strangest part of it all is that events were not driven by evil motives as bardic tales would so often assert. The Nobles were not acting out of malice: they were acting out of duty. They were ambitious and aggressive – at least by the Holy Kingdom’s standards – but neither quality was inherently evil. In their eyes, they represented not just their houses, but also their subjects and did their utmost to promote the interests of their people.

This perspective was shared down to the lowliest commoner. No one believed that they were doing anything bad and they actively brought justice down upon what they considered unjust. In Hoburns, there was none of the infighting, mean-spiritedness, and backbiting so often attributed to evil societies. The battle for control over the capital was not a battle between good and evil: it was one where good fought against good. Caspond’s role as the Holy King was to bring all sides into a harmonious relationship, but he instead was the primary driver of the conflict that was tearing Roble apart.

Liam could only shake his head at the unfolding tragedy. He could only hope that the Sorcerous Kingdom intervened in some way before it was too late.

Sir Jimena reappeared from the gatehouse with another Knight – presumably the captain of A Company. The Knight split off to oversee the changing of the guard while Sir Jemena came over to address the remainder of B Company.

“Seems like another regular day,” he told them. “Gods willing, it’ll be another regular night. Everyone get to your posts – Liam, a word.”

Liam went to stand beside Sir Jimena, who waited until the last of his men were through the gate before speaking.

“I want you watching the avenue bordering House Ovar in the north.”

“Are they trying to do something, sir?”

“We don’t know,” Sir Jimena said. “That’s why I’m putting you there. Only idiots sit around waiting for trouble to happen to them.”

“What are the rules, sir?”

The Knight raised an eyebrow at him.

“The rules? We do things by the book. Since you haven’t memorised that book, leave it to the others to settle things. If you think you see a problem, let the men on the street know.”

“What if the problem needs to be addressed immediately, sir?”

“We can only act within our jurisdiction,” Sir Jimena told him. “Even then, don’t make any messes for House Restelo to clean up, if possible.”

“Understood, sir.”

Liam joined the flow of traffic heading through the gate. It appeared that he would be the entirety of House Restello’s reconnaissance and counterintelligence efforts in Hoburns. While it should have been a lofty position to occupy, they likely considered him nothing more than some sort of urban scout.

After familiarising himself with the street level of House Restello’s jurisdiction, Liam slipped into an alley and climbed to the rooftops overlooking northwestern Hoburns. There, the familiar silhouette of a Shadow Demon was awaiting him.

“What’s going on?” Liam asked.

In response, the Shadow Demon produced a folded sheet of paper. Liam frowned as he retrieved it and deciphered the encoded contents.

Investigation of logistical anomaly concluded…

Though he had gotten a good grasp of what was going on in the Holy Kingdom, he hadn’t gotten a single whiff of the issue he was sent to investigate. Saye had come in along the delivery route for the grain, so the problem must have been close to the point of entry. After her somewhat passive role in the Draconic Kingdom, his sister wanted to accomplish something on her own so she must have been happy about it.

His eyes ran over the remainder of the message, which included a situation report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A new set of orders awaited him at the missive’s conclusion.

Assist in maintaining political deadlock in Hoburns.

Liam folded the sheet of paper and handed it back to the Shadow Demon.

“Orders received,” he said.

The Shadow Demon flickered into darkness, leaving Liam to ponder his new assignment. Had Lord Demiurge predicted that he would be in the position that he was, or was another agent watching him? Given that Ijaniya’s infiltration methods tended to create networks and leave behind resources that could be tapped for future assignments, the former was probably the case.

By continuing to assist House Restelo, he would help keep their rivals in check. If House Restelo’s faction gained too much ground, all he had to do was put Remedios Custodio in their way. Nothing currently justified the intervention of the Holy Order, but, considering the convenient timing of his new orders, Liam suspected that it wouldn’t be the case for long.