The first round of freed Velgein slaves were gathering in the training yard. I had Seranedra and several other priests and priestesses on loan from the Church in case any of the freed slaves needed healing, and Nodel and a team of advisors were operating in a managerial capacity to ensure everything was moving smoothly.
We were offering compensation to the owners who willingly freed their slaves—the overall numbers were manageable enough for this, and I had made a point to offer rare stones as compensation instead of gold, to reduce the cost to the Kingdom by dipping into my stock of magically produced wealth—and some were on-site to collect, while others sent their freed slaves with notes, demanding compensation to be sent to them at their homes.
I had been incredulous at the first note and increasingly livid as it went on, and had to take a step back and let Nodel and her team deal with it.
“They are, technically, complying, even if it seems curt,” she told me.
She was not wrong, it just felt so inhumanly callous to me.
There would be people less quick to part with their slaves, and we would deal with them in time. For the moment we had to help who we could.
Atlessoa and her team were also present, though disguised, and collecting information. I wanted to know who treated their slaves well and who treated them poorly. These lists were less important, since I intended not to allow slavery to happen again, but I did want to know who the worst offenders were for future reference.
After consolidating the soldiers who remained employed, we had freed up some barracks to temporarily house the slaves, giving them time to heal and recover before we aided them on their way back to their homes.
My little messenger bird had really motored across the Kingdom, making surprisingly good time each day when I checked in on it with my 3-point magic. I had not known how much ground they could cover so quickly, but in retrospect it had made sense, given that Earth had used messenger pigeons as well and it had been a viable method of communication for ages.
Knowing that I could send a bird north to Freigel without issue, I sent a message to Golchev explaining the situation as best as I could, unsure if the man would even believe the rather absurd situation, in hopes he could help organize. I also sent Regan by tarandback as a messenger through the pass to try to speak with the Velgeins guarding their blockade, hoping that the speed and adaptability of his mount would allow him to attempt to parley while still being able to escape if it came to violence.
The day had been going smoothly, overall, and I was pleased to see most of the Velgeins seemed to be treated well. Knowing how big and strong a healthy Velgein could be, some of the men seemed a bit underfed or malnourished to me. I made sure Atlessoa was checking on the well-being of the women, anticipating the worst, so I really should not have been surprised when the first woman arrived with a child in tow.
A small buzz of conversation had drawn my attention to her, with a young boy who could only have been about four years old. He still had a shock of white hair like his mother—a part of my brain registering it and noting that the white hair was not recessive after all, like albinism, the closest hair type that compared from Earth—but he was significantly less pale, and his eyes were blue, like mine.
The buzz of conversation fell silent as I started walking towards the woman, before Atlessoa appeared in front of me.
“Calm down,” she said, seeing my face. “Let me talk to her.”
I took a few breaths before nodding and turning away, and returning to Nodel and the advisors.
A short while later, Atlessoa returned. “Get some soldiers to set up a separate waiting area for the women with children,” she said softly. “I got the name of her previous own–uh, the child’s father.”
“What did she have to say about him?”
“...I think you’ll want to punish this one.”
I clenched my jaw and nodded, and Atlessoa returned to her work.
It was not too long before the second woman appeared with a slightly older girl with her. The child, white haired but brown eyed, appeared quite malnourished, and Seranedra rushed over to take care of them, offering healing and some food. Later on, a woman with a broken expression appeared, and Atlessoa learned from her that she also had a child, a boy, but that the father had not released him, hoping we would not find out or follow up. I dispatched a troop of soldiers to his house immediately to free the child and bring the father into custody.
I had stepped back to cool my head, sitting down on the far end of the training yard, away from the people working to right Tobar’s wrongs. While I was resting, Nodel came over. She stood silent nearby until I looked up at her.
“I thought I’d be prepared for it. I knew people could be horrible. Still, I…”
Nodel placed her hand on my back, rubbing it softly. “You’re already doing everything you can to make this better. Just give it a bit of time.”
I nodded, not entirely placated, and Nodel stopped rubbing my back to step back. “Unfortunately, we do have a slight complication.”
“What’s that?”
“Some of the women with children are concerned about how their children will be welcomed back in their homes. They have concerns about their safety. Others still don’t want to take their children from everything they know to live in the north. I’m told it’s rather cold and hostile, and that the capital is more comfortable.”
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“...They don’t all want to return,” I sighed, realizing that this was not going to be as without complication as I had hoped. I winced with a realization. “That might be a problem. It will seem like we’re withholding them and keeping them from returning. And they’re also all women.”
Nodel was silent for a moment. “Well. Actually. There is also a man, a Velgein who arrived and informed us that he had sired a child here as well. The mother is Horuthian. The child is still with her.”
“Oh,” I said, dumbly. “I didn’t… huh. Did you already dispatch soldiers to the home?”
“No, I came to talk to you first.”
“Good,” I said, standing. Nothing’s ever easy, but we’ll just have to deal with these issues one at a time. “Let’s take this one case at a time and figure out what to do.”
* * *
What had seemed like a straightforward operation to return an enslaved people to their homes rapidly unraveled into a complicated mess of specific circumstances and unusual situations. One Velgein woman claimed to have fallen in love with her owner, who had fallen for her in return, starting a secret family. She did not want to return north. Another Velgein woman had been owned by someone in the capital who also had a Velgein man enslaved, and he had forced them to breed like livestock. They had already had five children, who the owner had not freed, and when the soldiers went to claim them, they only found three. The two oldest had already been sold, disappearing in an off-the-books transaction.
There had been no real laws dealing with that, and even our reforms failed to address a case like that. Whoever had bought those children had no reason to step forward without the Kingdom adding additional reforms. There were still likely countless circumstances we were failing to account for.
“I’m not sure how to deal with this,” I confessed to Seranedra as I sat with her at the end of the third day.
She looked at me with a comforting smile, which even then caused my throat to constrict, momentarily distracting me from the real struggles of these people and instead making my chest thump.
I looked over at the small community of half-Velgein children that had formed as a distraction. “You’ve been doing excellent work with them. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. It’s our pleasure. We’re used to dealing with children at the Church.”
I nodded, thinking over my few memories of going to the Church as a kid. The one that stood out the most was when I had filled out my paperwork at five years old. I had only barely started working on Church reforms in my mind, so there was still a lot I needed to learn. My brows furrowed as I started to assemble a train of thought.
“How does the Church currently determine who to fill out identification papers for?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… well, the Al’Tiolese aren’t allowed in Churches, and presumably that would have been the case for Velgeins living in the Kingdom as well, at some point in the future Rugnor had planned for,” I said, thinking. I had been pretty sure Shirel had some Al’Tiolese blood in her, though. “But what would happen if a half-Horuthian, half-Al’Tiolese child tried to come in with their parents? Do you even need both parents? What if a mixed child came in with only their Horuthian parent?”
Seranedra gave it some thought rather than answering immediately, which I appreciated. Eventually, she hummed, and began to speak. “It would likely depend on the specific Church and the priests saw to them. If there was a concern about a child, but both parents were from the local community and had their own identification with the Church, the Church would have no choice but to register the child as a citizen. Both parents do not need to be in attendance, so a less strict priest might register a mixed child with their Horuthian parent, perhaps even unknowingly if the child looked more or less like a Horuthian, and once they have identification paperwork in place, it would not be an issue for their own children in the future.”
The Kingdom’s utilization of the Church for identification paperwork left a lot to be desired. The records were never fully consolidated, with only generalized census information about births and deaths sent to the capital each year, practically an afterthought compared to the chests of gold that were sent. The local records were, sometimes, updated, usually only for serious crimes or the person’s death. Since people did move around the Kingdom, “my identification was registered in a different city’s Church” was a common thing city guards would hear if someone was taken into custody. Usually, a second, non-birth record was written for a criminal just to put it on record, but this led to aliases and false identities until the person was known by the local guards or priests.
More often than not, the records would never be compared against each other, leaving original records without updates. Technically, a citizen’s birth record was proof of citizenship, which is why even people in settlements would make trips back into the walled cities to register their children at age five.
In practice, most people just assumed that if someone looked Horuthian, they were a citizen, and if they did not, then they were not. More often than not, this was close enough to the truth, and more importantly, citizenship barely seemed to even matter. It was, more or less, just formalized racism. The Al’Tiolese already lived within the Kingdom, and they were not there illegally, as their whole nation had been absorbed by the Kingdom. They simply existed within the same cities but with less rights and less opportunities.
Aside from the Velgein border to the north, which was a literal mountain range, the Kingdom did not actually share borders with other people. The east was a wild forest, the west was an ocean, and the south was a desert. This idea of citizenship, in the first place, was likely a holdover from when the various walled cities were independent territories which warred with each other, before unification.
“Why can’t we just… register every child born within the Kingdom as a citizen?” I asked.
Seranedra began to speak, but no words came out. After a momentary pause, she shut her mouth and looked contemplative.
“It would provide the Kingdom with more accurate census information about births in each region, which would help give more accurate information about food requirements,” I said, beginning to count off my fingers. “And also deaths, registering the ones we otherwise would miss, to ensure we weren’t overlooking high mortality events like plague. It would also make criminal record-keeping easier, as everyone would be accounted for, at least those native to their city. It would expand the pool of people we could conscript from, should we ever need to prepare for a war again. Most importantly, it would give every child rights, so that they aren’t sold or traded like beasts, or left to die unaccounted for.”
“The only reason I can think of not to do that is tradition and existing rule of law,” Seranedra said. “Some priests might not like it, but if the king commanded it, it could be made to be so.”
I thought back to the last few days and how many things had surprised me about a straightforward task, and sighed. “Before I do that, I want to make sure I’m not overlooking anything. Would you ask your grandfather about it for me first? And the other priests you know? Especially anyone with a connection to the south, where the Al’Tiolese population is higher. Once we’ve gathered as much information as possible, we can take the best action for the children.”