Chapter 13

Ludmila paced up the stairs, a hand going to the Infinite Haversack at her right hip. It came back down again as she took a deep breath.

Preparations have been readied for weeks, Wiluvien has everything that she needs…

Upon reaching the second floor landing, the door to the ‘war room’ opened. One of the locals who had made herself available as a midwife stepped out. Rowena Kemble was a mother of two; a tidy-looking woman in her mid-twenties. She wore the smock and kirtle common to rural villagers, dyed in vibrant autumn colours. Behind her came one of Ludmila’s Death Knight footmen, carrying a basin with used towels and empty potion bottles.

The midwife only seemed to notice her several steps out of the chamber. She stopped to dip in a slight curtsey.

“My lady.”

“How is everything going, Mrs Kemble?” Ludmila asked.

“Miss Linum is resting with her baby inside,” Miss Kemble replied. “We were well-prepared in advance, so things went quite smoothly. Well, except for those Elder Liches. They kept crowding in to watch, so I chased them out.”

Behind her, the Death Knight footman shook its head and seemed to sigh. Ludmila wasn’t sure if it did so because the Elder Liches had gotten in the way or the fact that a village midwife had chased away enough Elder Liches to destroy a decently-sized country. After some consideration, she decided it was the former.

In their particular situation, the midwife was the expert in charge, so they ended up deferring to her the same way that they would listen to a Ranger serving as a tracker or a woodcutter clearing the overgrown roads. Authority and hierarchy stood above all else in the Sorcerous Kingdom; personal strength and station only mattered where it was supposed to matter.

“How long did it take?”

“About five hours, my lady. Turned into a bigger deal than it should’ve been. The Elder Liches were all confused because they weren’t ‘familiarised with the procedures’. The Death Knights were the only ones that kept their heads. Shouldn’t’ve been a surprise since they’ve always had that reliable feeling about them. The baby was born about an hour ago – a boy, by the way – but I stuck around to make sure that nothing happened after.”

“Is Lluluvien inside as well?”

The midwife snorted.

“Naw. She snored right through the whole thing. Makes you wonder what these sisters are made of.”

Ludmila glanced towards the Linum sisters’ bedroom door. They had moved into the manor as their delivery dates drew closer, but since they always worked their shifts, the Half Elves were probably long-accustomed to ignoring disturbances while they rested.

“Maybe Wiluvien will sleep straight through Lluluvien’s labour, as well,” Ludmila smirked. “Thank you so much for making yourself available for this, Mrs Kemble.”

“An honour to serve, my lady,” Rowena Kemble bobbed her head. “Always a joy to see more children around. Gotta fill up our city, eh?”

With that, the midwife went down the stairs and out of the building. Inside the war room, Wiluvien was sound asleep on one of the couches with her newborn cradled in her arms. Ludmila smiled down warmly at the mother and child. Though conceived under horrible circumstances, the baby would be raised with proper care and hopefully make his own small mark on the world.

She leaned forward, seeing if she could catch a glimpse of the Quarter Elf’s – or whatever they called them – ears, but they were covered by his mother’s blanket. Not wanting to cause any further disturbances, she padded out of the room. Back downstairs, Ludmila glowered at the gaggle of Elder Liches.

“It is not the ‘terminal stage’ of an ‘affliction’,” she told them. “She was delivering her child.”

That being said, if the Undead servitors harboured values in regards to the living that were similar to those of naturally manifested Undead, they might indeed view it as a living blight being spewed forth into the world. His Majesty did not carry those views, however.

“Do we have clearance to resume operations?” One of the Elder Liches asked.

“You do,” Ludmila nodded. “But keep in mind that Wiluvien is resting in there. Maintain a Silence spell over her and do not do anything to disturb them for the next day or so.”

“Are there any updates to our orders?”

“The tribes are settling down for the winter,” she said, “so there should be little in the way of new developments. This should also make it easier for us to figure out how many Demihumans there are out there. Continue as you have – Wiluvien should be able to resume her duties by tomorrow.”

Without any temple staff, it was fortunate that alchemical production was well underway. If not for healing magic or potions, it took months for a woman to fully recover from childbirth.

The Elder Lich officers filed back up into the war room. Ludmila went over to the office on the main floor. Within, Nonna appeared to be adding reports to the demesne archives.

“You could have informed me via Message,” Ludmila said.

“Childbirth is neither an administrative task nor a military duty,” Nonna replied. “Your presence was unnecessary.”

“I recall a certain Elder Lich immediately demanding that I run over when Mrs Milo was having her baby.”

“The process was unfamiliar,” the Elder Lich said. “It is no longer.”

Ludmila suppressed a smirk. Nonna had been very insistent that Ludmila come over and explain everything that was going on since the people involved were basically ignoring her. Ludmila and Nonna had been expulsed from the Milo household when the Elder Lich started broaching matters of legality and procedure.

She walked over to her desk and sorted through the various documents that had piled up over the past few days. Each days’ worth was partitioned by Nonna’s daily report, and most of what she saw were updates on various aspects of her demesne. She picked up the small stack of papers and slowly went through them as she leaned against a wall, making sure nothing was amiss and looking for anything noteworthy.

Work on the highway running between the Great Lake and the Dwarf Kingdom had finally been suspended for the winter as the first major storm of the season buried the foothills in two metres of snow. The group contracted for the work, as well as the other dwarves working around the Sorcerous Kingdom, had returned to their homeland for some sort of religious holiday. They would resume work on the infrastructure in the city later that winter, and construction of the highway would continue in the spring.

Next, was a bulletin from the E-Rantel Festival Committee. As one of the local leaders, Ludmila was technically a part of the committee but had never attended any of its meetings. It was the sort of thing that civilian Nobles loved to spend inordinate amounts of time preparing for, but martial Nobles simply threw liquor at. According to her friends, it was perhaps the only time when one would see members of the Royal Court, the House of Lords, the guildmasters and the spiritual leaders of the city in one place. If one were to summarise it in a word, it would be ‘chaos’ – especially with members of the Royal Court constantly trying to outdo one another.

Ludmila frowned over the details of the bulletin, which provided updates to the information and timelines of various projects surrounding the first of the nation’s new festivals.

…how many statues?

The Sorcerer King Grand Thanksgiving had originally been slated for the autumn harvest, but the size and scope of the affair had grown so much that it had been delayed until the next autumn harvest. At first, it felt like a formalised date to mark the end of the season – something not much different from the local harvest festivals held in every territory.

And then, the Prime Minister added the statues.

Perhaps spurred on by the appearance of the tribute from the Azerlisia Mountains, Prime Minister Albedo had decided to throw in a few statues of her own. According to Clara, Lady Shalltear had taken offence to this ‘blatant and shallow usurpation of others’ achievements’. It didn’t sound like something Lady Shalltear would say, so Ludmila guessed it was something far more direct and provocative. Ninety-five per cent of the committee had fainted from the overwhelming pressure emanated by the two royal courtiers as they verbally sparred against one another. A short recess was called after that.

A week later, Lord Cocytus added a parade to be held by the Royal Army. Lady Shalltear added majestic Frost Dragon flyovers to the parade and free transportation for those that wanted to come to the city to celebrate His Majesty’s grand festival. Lady Aura and Lord Mare threw in riveting entertainment: exciting battles and ‘adventures’ in the Adventurer Training Area. More and more ‘features’ were added, and the harvest festival went from a single day to three. At last counting, it would last for two weeks.

This was not so bad in itself, as the citizens tended to take a sort of break after the harvest anyway, but the most recent bulletin announced the addition of more statues, each over a hundred metres tall. One set would be displayed in the city and they were deliberating over where to put the rest. Having a few modest statues was all well and good, except Ludmila had no idea where in the city they could place multiple statues over a hundred metres tall.

She set aside the bulletin, praying that they wouldn’t tell her to stick one in Warden’s Vale. Aside from work associated with her administration, there were also reports from the Ministry of Transportation and the Royal Army. Ludmila stopped at the bottom of the army reports, finding a correspondence from Lord Cocytus. She unsealed the letter and skimmed through its content before raising it in one hand.

“Nonna,” she said, “did anything else come with this delivery? Did the bearer have anything to add?”

“Documents from the Royal Army are personally delivered by military personnel,” the Elder Lich replied. “The civilian administration is not privy to its content, nor did the servitor performing the delivery convey any additional missives.”

Ludmila admired the professionalism of the administration’s Elder Liches, but she still wished that they would be more personable at the same time. Admittedly, it was better than having a clerk that grew too curious for their own good. By all reports, her former nation of Re-Estize was decidedly not a bastion of administrative professionalism. Additionally, be it under a corrupt official or a well-meaning one, there was always a certain amount of ‘permeability’ in Human-run administrations.

Contrary to his brusque manner of speech, Lord Cocytus’ handwriting flowed elegantly over the letter’s crisp sheets of paper. A bit too elegantly perhaps: it seemed that he used an ink brush rather than a pen. The letter was prefaced by a formal greeting of several sentences before moving on to present its content.

The months-long assessment and reorganisation of the Baharuth Empire’s domestic security arrangements was moving on to its next phase. First came the long and involved process of slimming down the Empire’s eight Legions into six. This had reportedly raised all sorts of issues on the Empire’s side, as such a monumental change had massive economic and demographic repercussions. Officially, they had acquiesced to the Sorcerous Kingdom’s ‘advisory’, but Liane said that the Empire’s Administration was ‘working like hell’ in order to mitigate disruptions caused by the dissolution of two whole Legions.

This paved the way for supplementary forces from the Sorcerous Kingdom to assume their posts in the Baharuth Empire. The Empire’s protectorate status allowed it a nearly unlimited degree of freedom when it came to all aspects of its governance, so these supplementary forces were simply leased out to be used by the Imperial Army. One might say that it was a ‘forced lease’, but, at the same time, the leased forces were far superior even when compared to the combined might of the two dissolved Legions while being a fraction of the operating cost.

What was left now was the integration of these leased forces with the Imperial Army. The Grand Marshal and his general staff had come up with several recommendations for the Empire, but the Empire was ultimately allowed to do as they saw fit. Invoking the overruling clause in their relationship as suzerain and client state was not something to be done lightly, after all.

Instead, Lord Cocytus had opted to send a liaison to advise the Imperial Army on the deployment of their new security forces. As the Baharuth Empire was a Human one, he had decided to ask Ludmila if she would serve in the role as one with ample experience commanding the Royal Army.

It would be a long trip, but winter was as slow a season for Humans in rural territories as it was for Demihuman tribes. Her winter schedule was equally slow and uneventful: mostly overseeing the ongoing development efforts that would proceed regardless of whether she was there or not. She had meant to fill that time with her work in the Upper Reaches, but that task had been unexpectedly catapulted forward as well.

What remained was her work in the sparsely-populated remainder of the Upper Reaches and her ongoing research for the development of Warden’s Vale. Taking on a role as an army liaison was the perfect opportunity to learn about the Empire, presented at as close to a perfect time as possible. It was as if everything had been preordained, though she couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of masterful architect could have engineered the flow of events in such a purposeful way.

That being said, she would be a fool if she let such a golden opportunity slip by. A first-hand look at the Imperial Legions was exactly what she needed.

Ludmila went over to her desk and settled down to pen out a reply.