Chapter 4

“Was the hem always this high, my lady?” Aemilia somehow spoke clearly around several pins in her mouth as she knelt to inspect the skirts of Ludmila’s dress.

“It doesn’t feel much different,” Ludmila replied absently.

The mirror stood in its usual place before her, but Ludmila was busy digesting the materials that she had received from the Adventurer Guild receptionist the previous evening to give too much thought to Aemilia’s words. Her lady’s maid probably had the right of it, anyways.

In the weeks since the work had started in Warden’s Vale, Aemilia had grown to become an excellent complement to Ludmila’s activities, becoming familiar with her mistress’ shortfalls in various areas and bringing a sort of harmony to her lifestyle. The unspoken rapport that had developed between them was something Ludmila had never had before, but she now considered it an indispensable part of her daily life. With her household seeing to the mundane, domestic tasks and errands that revolved around the workings of a noble house, Ludmila was able to focus entirely on her own duties as a noble.

“Did it shrink? No – it’s unlikely that Wiluvien would have messed things up,” Aemilia murmured as she brought out a measure. “The dress hasn’t changed…how tall were your brothers, my lady?”

Ludmila looked up from her reading to examine herself in the mirror. She had a vague sense that the hem of her skirt was higher than it used to be, but it was not something she would have obsessed over. Glancing around for a moment, she realized that she had always used familiar things in her own home to gauge the height of herself and her brothers – there was none of that here, obviously

“Just a bit taller,” Ludmila replied. “They were of a height with my lord father…so half a hand, maybe?”

Aemilia made the last few touches on her outfit before she stepped back to examine Ludmila’s appearance. Her gaze roamed over different points of her outfit before she spoke again.

“You should prioritize ordering a new wardrobe, my lady,” she said. “This outfit is getting too short, and you simply cannot wear the same dress every time you come to visit the city. People are sure to notice, and they’ll start looking down on you.”

She has been mentioning this more frequently…

Ludmila stepped down from the footstool in front of the dressing mirror. It was something that she honestly wanted to get done at some point, but scheduling appointments with the various boutiques around the city would be far too time consuming. It seemed that she was never in a single place for more than two days.

The last few weeks had seen her run an endless cycle of going back and forth between Warden’s Vale and E-Rantel, ferrying timber and returning with a handful of new villagers and various odds and ends that could only be purchased from the city. She thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of watching her demesne slowly come back to life and come closer and closer to surpassing its former heights of development, but she wasn’t simply content to watch the grass grow after seeing the fields cleared and sown.

Work was now starting on the next set of fields, with her woodsmen slowly clearing the way for the new development. Most of her time now was spent figuring out how exactly this new development would manifest. She did research on various industries, consulted with her few contacts as well as many of the trade guilds around the city to see how the groundwork for her ideas could be properly laid out.

There were also a couple of new additions to her household in the city, to whom she had delegated various responsibilities to, and the villagers that had first arrived now seemed nearly ready to take care of the new arrivals on their own. With this being the case, Ludmila felt that maybe – maybe there would finally be enough time to take care of all the personal matters that had piled up.

That was before the Adventurer Guild. She had arrived in the city the previous evening with another delivery from the barony, finding a sealed letter awaiting her in the manor. A look of dismay slowly spread across her face as she read the contents and instantly understood that the free time she had been looking forward to was no more:

Baroness Zahradnik,

You are to register at the Adventurer Guild no later than the 8th day of Middle Wind Month. Participate in their activities.

Shalltear Bloodfallen

The beautifully formed cursive of her liege’s handwriting was greatly at odds with the simple message, and Ludmila had turned the paper over several times expecting additional information. Then she realized that it was the evening of the 8th day of Middle Wind Month and rushed off in a panic to change from her travelling clothes to something decent to wear in the city, which consisted solely of her forest green dress that was now apparently too short.

With no carriages available for hire in the city still, she made her way to the main plaza as quickly as she could, jogging past the citizens on the streets and skimming around the Undead patrols. She counted it fortunate that she didn’t get lost along the way. The guildhall already had a crowd of people inside and her late entrance had interrupted the guildmaster, causing him to pointedly follow her with his gaze as she attempted to creep by. Ludmila very much wanted to shrink away from everyone’s notice at the attention drawn to her tardiness. Fortunately, he resumed speaking a moment later.

After several hours inside the stuffy building in a chaotic back and forth between the guildmaster and his members, the assembly had dispersed to make up their minds over the proposal. Still needing to register as an Adventurer, Ludmila had gone to the reception counter where she had received a much clearer explanation about the changes to the Adventurer Guild.

Ishpen, the receptionist, had explained in a refreshingly comprehensive manner and was able to answer Ludmila’s questions to her satisfaction – which she was infinitely grateful for after becoming lost in the melee of words during the meeting. She received her identification after completing her registration and thanked the receptionist for her assistance before returning to the manor.

The nature of the Adventurer Guild had fundamentally changed: so much so that, aside from maintaining the trappings of its identity, it no longer resembled the organization that came before. She came to understand why Lady Shalltear had sent her but, while House Zahradnik had adventuring as a part of their ancestral identity, their duty as nobles had caused them to drift apart from what could be considered a conventional Guild membership and Ludmila wondered if she would truly be able to fit in.

Her family occasionally worked to fill requests to supplement the income of the demesne, but the nobility at large were usually clients of the Adventurer Guild. Each administrator would set aside a portion of their budget and, in combination with the system of subsidies pioneered by Princess Renner, make a cost-benefit analysis over whether commissioning bounties and various requests would be worth the revenues that would be gained or lost if they did not.

For the nobility, it was a system grounded in cold practicality: one that ensured an efficient means to field an effective response to the periodic threats that appeared in the lands. Between the thousands of fiefs in Re-Estize, Adventurer parties with strength ranging from that of village militia to those that rivaled small armies could, if required, be contracted – with none of the expenses involved in training and maintaining a standing army, as well as handling its logistical challenges. It was a godsend for poorer nobles who could not afford the upkeep associated with armed, professional retinues, and a way for wealthier lords to maximize their resources for other concerns.

With the advent of the Sorcerous Kingdom, however, the powerful standing army of Undead with negligible maintenance costs had usurped the mainstay of Adventuring. The new mandate of the Adventurer Guild, by all appearances, was in response to this new reality. Rather than monster exterminators, they were now an expeditionary arm of the Sorcerous Kingdom. As the bulk of the state’s military might lay in the Sorcerer King’s personal forces, this meant that such an organization would be used for exploration, cultural exchange and diplomacy rather than to participate in foreign conflicts.

Seeing that Ludmila possessed skill sets that were now in high demand by the reformed Guild, Lady Shalltear must have sent her to contribute in what was reportedly a personal project of His Majesty. Hopefully, she could produce some positive results for her liege, to whom she was already greatly indebted to.

“My lady, it’s almost time,” Aemilia’s voice drew Ludmila from her ruminations.

Ludmila took a deep breath and refocused her thoughts before leaving the solar to descend to the main floor of the manor. Even as she thought about the New Adventurer Guild, her responsibilities as a noble pressed at her from another side. After weeks of adjustment, the nobles of the duchy were finally starting to settle into the new administrative systems of the realm and a formal meeting of the House of Lords had been called.

As far as she could tell, it was exactly that – a formality. While the Kingdom of Re-Estize convened a legislature which was attended by a multitude of aristocrats, the Duchy of E-Rantel had less than two dozen who held the suitable rank to attend. The Upper House of their parliament – the Royal Court – was more than enough to ensure that the various aspects of their single duchy were kept in working order.

Still, it served as a forum for the various nobles to air their grievances and bring attention to problems that spanned more than a single fief, so she supposed that there were some merits to such an assembly. It was not something that couldn’t be done in a more informal setting, however, and so far the Sorcerer King’s administrators working in the city were very much adequate for keeping the flows of bureaucracy running smoothly. To Ludmila, the call to assembly reeked of the pomp and circumstance that her lord father always held in contempt. She couldn’t imagine that she would appreciate such a pointless activity either. Lady Shalltear had made more than a few disparaging remarks about the endless regular meetings of the Royal Court, so it seemed that even high nobles could share that same distaste.

As Ludmila made her way across the gardens to the Royal Villa, she continued to weigh the benefits of such activities against the time that she seemed to never have any more. Along the way, she spotted a familiar figure in a cobalt gown headed in the same destination and picked up her pace to close in on her.

“Good morning, Lady Corelyn,” she greeted her friend with head respectfully lowered. “I hope the day finds you well.”

“Ugh, don’t do that!” Clara Corelyn replied with a horrified expression on her face, “It just feels wrong.”

“It would be improper to address you otherwise, my lady,” Ludmila felt the corners of her mouth creep upwards.

The recently enfeoffed Countess gave her a sulky look.

After Ludmila had shared her thoughts on how the Royal Court would probably approve of her ambitions as long as she put together a convincing case, the fretful young woman had gone about doing just that. Most would be enthralled and distracted by her radiant and demure appearance, but she came from a long line of outstanding administrators and shrewd merchants and was now in a position to exercise her own substantial skills. A week later, her proposal filled a large binder with concepts, plans and projections that made Ludmila’s head spin when she had been asked to review it before submission. Clara was a Baroness the last time Ludmila had departed from Corelyn Village with the most recent group of new tenants, and by the time she sailed back down again from Warden’s Vale, the Royal Court already accepted her proposal.

It was always startling how quickly the Sorcerous Kingdom could process matters that would take months – or years as Clara’s case would have surely taken – of deliberation by the courts of Re-Estize. That was if it was not simply dismissed outright as ‘too ambitious’ by highlords who were constantly wary of upstart threats. The Sorcerous Kingdom did not care for Human politicking, they did not fear the risk of uprising and they definitely spared no thought for customs that had been observed by the aristocracy for generations. Clara’s proposal had simply been approved and not only had she been granted Baron Vintner’s old title, but the entire stretch of the riverlands from the city of E-Rantel to the border of the Slane Theocracy.

She was promoted to Countess since the resulting demesne would be far larger than what her former rank was expected to manage. While this was technically true and would have certainly been a great honour granted to a lord in Re-Estize, the way the Sorcerous Kingdom saw it seemed more along the lines of using the appropriate rank for the designated authority and nothing more. The reply that came along with the promotion was similarly succinct.

There was no fanfare or ceremony or anything else that normally accompanied the rise of a new high noble; only a short list of expectations and instructions for her to immediately get to work on realizing the projections outlined in her proposal. A secure and reliable flow of exports and commerce, as well as the payment of taxes and the lease of Undead labour was expected after each harvest. Any developments that resulted in deviations from her development schedule were to be reported without exception.

The curt missive did nothing to put off the new Countess, who set about reorganizing all of the territories abandoned by their former lords. She had even chartered a new town, straddling the highway which formerly acted as a boundary between the Corelyn and Vintner Baronies. Clara asserted that it would become an important harbour in the future.

Needless to say, she went from being one of the wealthiest nobles in the duchy to the most wealthy noble in the duchy by far, as well as the most influential to the Human subjects of the Sorcerous Kingdom. Beyond the new harbour town, her other ambitions included refurbishing the highway between E-Rantel and the border of the Theocracy and optimizing it for commerce, building a new, fortified bridge over the Katze River and returning the fertile riverlands to full productivity within the next two years. Clara also had the distinction of being the first noble in the realm to have her oath of fealty ratified by the Sorcerer King, though this contract too had simply come in the form of a ubiquitously stamped document rather than any semblance of a personal ceremony.

Though Ludmila’s liege was now Lady Shalltear, the Countess still held a higher court rank and Ludmila would observe the proper public forms; it was probably because Clara knew her dear friend’s obstinate personality all too well that the idea it might continue on indefinitely horrified her.

As they entered the palatial Royal Villa, Ludmila broached a question.

“Have you any idea why the House of Lords is convening, my lady?”

“Not at all,” Clara replied. “I only came to know about it just before you arrived in the harbour, and we arrived in the city together. The notice that I received was not accompanied by any details.”

They slowed as they approached what appeared to be the hall prepared for the assembly. According to the laws adopted from Re-Estize, Countess Corelyn’s rank should have made her a member of the Royal Court. Her being uninformed seemed to indicate that the Sorcerous Kingdom had indeed decided to keep the highest level of the legislative branch separate from the nobles of the duchy, who were technically direct vassals of the Sorcerer King and thus a part of his court.

It was something speculated over for the past few weeks, and a decision that most would agree upon as sound; E-Rantel’s territory and population was relatively small and did not require such a disproportionate membership in the Royal Court. It meant that they would continue to function in much the same manner as they had when the duchy had been a part of Re-Estize, and any appointments to the Royal Court would be for a specific purpose rather than to appease the desire for intrinsic rights. It was still legally a right, however, though no one seemed inclined to exercise it unless they had a compelling reason to do so. Everyone was too busy, and no one cared enough to make themselves needlessly busier.

The assembly hall was one of several similar rooms on the main floor of the Royal Villa, which could be used for anything from banquets and balls, to the sort of meeting that they were presently called to attend. Several rows of long desks fashioned from rosewood were arranged in a semicircle around an ebony speaker’s stand, and many of the seats available had already been filled. The room’s drapes had been drawn fully open, allowing the morning light to fill the hall, gleaming off of the painstakingly polished furniture and floors. Ludmila could not discern any pattern to the seating arrangement so she walked around with Clara until they found a space where they could be seated together. It was roughly five minutes until the session was supposed to start, so there was not long to wait.

When the time came, the doors closed. A murmur of confusion arose. There were only Human nobles in the room – there was no sign that there was anyone that could be seen as a representative of the Royal Court. It was only momentary, however, as Countess Jezne rose from her desk in the front row and went to stand at the dais. Heads turned to exchange looks with one another over the idea that one of their own had risen to speak to them, and one other thing, as well.

Before the Battle of Katze Plains, the majority of nobles representing their fiefs in the territory were men. Re-Estize was traditionally a patriarchy as well: women were mostly looked upon as a means to create dynastic ties. In the wake of the battle, however, most of the noblemen and their male heirs had been slain – those that survived had fled with their families with the memory of the massacre at their heels, abandoning their lands. Left in their wake was mostly a hodgepodge of spare sons, single daughters and bereaved widows and mothers.

It was at this point that Ludmila understood that the rules of the political arena had been upended, and the power dynamics now reflected those traditionally attributed to meetings between the noblewomen of the court. The Matron of House Jezne was a well respected figure that was looked up to by nearly all the women of the duchy, and so she had become the natural choice to represent them as their speaker. One could almost sense that minds were being reconfigured in that moment, re-aligning themselves to accommodate this new reality – it was probably inevitable that the House of Lords would petition for a change in the succession laws, as well.

Countess Jezne waited patiently as the assembled nobles settled themselves again before speaking.

“There are several points on today’s agenda to be discussed, but I shall start with the most prominent amongst them.”

Her customarily caustic tone that many were familiar with was entirely absent, replaced with a formal voice that could be heard clearly throughout the room.

“The Baharuth Empire has submitted its petition to become a client state of the Sorcerous Kingdom.”