Chapter 6

“They’re getting braver.”

“They are.”

Dame Verilyn’s stalkers latched onto them the moment they left the merchant inn, and Nemel’s sense of alarm swept aside the muddled feelings from their discussion over breakfast.

Nemel only noticed a handful tailing them from a distance, which meant that there were probably twice that many observing them who were too inconspicuous for her to detect. No one approached as she and Dame Verilyn strolled around the city, but those that she saw seemed to have sorted themselves out and were now more focused on their main task than one another.

The overcast skies started to break up as midday approached, allowing the sun to intermittently peek through the clouds. Though Nemel’s equipment bestowed protection against the conditions that aerial mages were usually exposed to, she appreciated the warmth nonetheless.

As they continued on their way, a chill that had nothing to do with the weather seeped through her when she saw where they were headed.

“We’re going there for lunch again?”

“I was asked to,” Dame Verilyn replied. “Beyond that, the food quality holds to a high standard. Most importantly, the owners of these bakeries will be reimbursing me for any purchases I make on this trip so it’s basically free food. There are also no lines to get stuck behind.”

Nemel cast a dubious look up at the Undead mascot on the bakery’s sign. It undeniably had an impact, but who went around calling their shop ‘DEATH BREAD’?

The man at the counter immediately brightened upon their approach.

“Welcome,” he smiled. “How may I serve you?”

“Hmm…the bakery at Engelfurt had some wonderful meat pies – do you make them here, as well?”

“Indeed we do, madam,” the shopkeeper nodded. “What would be your pleasure?”

“Is there anything made from the local game?” Dame Verilyn asked, “If so, I’ll have six of those. Also…you fancied the wildberry obsttorte the last time, didn’t you, Officer Gran?”

“Erm, yes, that’s right.”

“Then one of those, too,” Dame Verilyn told the shopkeeper. “Pack five of those meat pies away, please.”

They waited in silence while the shopkeeper put together the order. Nemel examined the food on display. It was, for the most part, what one could find at any respectable bakery in the Empire. The only difference was what was in it – or rather, where what was in it was from.

Her gaze travelled away from the displays, going to the wall above the counter. A recently-carved plaque with the symbol of the Baker’s Guild was mounted on the wall.

“Don’t the guilds test their masters’ products before recognizing them?”

“They do,” the shopkeeper’s lip twitched. “The master Baker provided them with a sampling of our fare. It took them two weeks to render their judgement.”

Nemel wrinkled her nose.

“…they ate two-week-old meat pies?”

“They did. Fortunately, the owners had the foresight to issue us Preservation containers. Those inspectors had to eat everything eventually. Still, even with guild membership, business is as you see.”

Membership with a craft guild was a guarantee that the establishment met the standards of that guild. Under normal circumstances, people gave goods of a shop that bore a guild emblem the benefit of the doubt.

The shopkeeper placed their order on the counter. Dame Verilyn handed Nemel her share. Together, they started eating in front of the store.

“I really appreciate it,” the shopkeeper said. “It’s perfectly good food, but the people here are still scared to death of it.”

“Maybe it’s the sign,” Nemel muttered.

“It’ll be a great laugh once people get over themselves.”

“So no one else buys food here?” Nemel asked.

“People who can afford to eat elsewhere eat elsewhere,” the shopkeeper answered. “Those less fortunate come around late at night or before dawn so they aren’t seen. Well, there was one lady who came by yesterday evening – an Adamantite Adventurer from out of town. She wasn’t scared of our stuff at all. Ordered a lot, too.”

Nemel looked out towards the street, glancing at Dame Verilyn out of the corner of her eye.

Just how many meat pies have you eaten since we arrived?

For her part, Dame Verilyn displayed no visible reaction to the man’s account. Nemel turned her attention back to the shopkeeper.

“Will the shop be able to hold through until things start to change?”

“We’ve got no worries about that,” the shopkeeper said. “The owners said they’ll back us for as long as it takes. Well, we don’t have much in the way of losses with how cheap the food and fuel delivered to us is. Once traffic from the Dwarf Kingdom picks up again, things’ll be fine since they’re perfectly happy to eat produce from the Sorcerous Kingdom. It’s too bad you came in during their holiday – the mushrooms they export make for some excellent pies.”

Passers-by eyed them as they ate. A beautiful Elf and a noblewoman in an Imperial Air Service uniform, eating food that no one else dared to openly. An ‘Adamantite Adventurer’, too. Nemel wondered what sort of effect they would have on the shop’s business.

Dame Verilyn licked her fingers clean and wiped them on a Trooper’s Towel. Nemel nibbled on her obsttorte as they strolled back in the direction from where they came.

“So will these fellows finally approach us this afternoon?” Dame Verilyn asked.

“I’m not sure,” Nemel answered. “When it comes to stuff like this, people prefer negotiating in less public settings. Master Chiru always sets up his stand in the southern plaza; they’re not going to make any aggressive overtures in the plain view and hearing of hundreds of people.”

“Does being seen and heard by strangers matter when it comes to what they want?”

“It can,” Nemel replied. “There are dozens of big factions in the Empire and probably thousands of little ones, so there’s always the chance that someone nearby is in the pocket of another faction. They’re all rivals for influence in different arenas and there’s an intricate web of relationships wherever you go. The Emperor removed all major obstacles to his authority and people have kept their heads down since then, so most of what happens is pretty small and local.”

Nemel put the remaining half of her obsttorte away to save for later. Over lunch, the skies had cleared completely, offering an unobscured view of the Azerlisia Mountains. The frozen peaks gleamed in the midday sun over foothills laced with fresh snow.

“Small and local…” Dame Verilyn’s tone was curious, “do you have any examples of these factions’ activities?”

“Honestly, it’s pretty normal and it’s usually not bad. People push for influence: craft guilds use it to secure rights and better rates for their members, Nobles and other wealthy interests might use it to promote business, help make expansion easier, or secure contracts for resources and labour. The problem is when it starts getting bigger or more aggressive.”

“And this is still ‘small and local’?”

“Yes,” Nemel nodded. “In short, influence can be used to alter the economic and political battlefield and remove the competition. Businesses can be forced under because rivals holding a superior negotiating position will out-compete them. A Noble house or faction can slowly take over the economy of a city if its members are skilled enough and its rivals aren’t. Once they do that, they essentially hold the lynchpin to an entire County or March and then they’ll shift their attention towards the rural fiefs in the territory.”

For the first time in Nemel’s recollection, Dame Verilyn cast a lingering gaze westwards towards the towering peaks.

“My father was doing something similar…I think? He consolidated power by gathering his family, biding his time until we were strong enough to wipe out our rivals. Or maybe that’s not quite the same. I suppose we were considered war potential rather than this political and economic power you Humans invest so much into.”

“In the old days,” Nemel said, “powerful Nobles could do that. That’s actually how we split from Re-Estize. The Imperial Army was established early in the Empire’s history, so, after that point, it became ‘political’ and ‘economic’, as you say. I guess what I’m describing is how Human factions rise to power when open warfare isn’t an option: they gain influence over urban centres and their surrounding territories. At the point when competition becomes too stiff for legitimate means to gain any ground, things can get really dirty. Rivals can be implicated in crimes or otherwise set up to fall out of imperial favour and the Court Council will purge them. This just repeats itself until the entire area is in line with the faction that presides over it.”

“The Emperor doesn’t do anything against this influence over his new appointments?”

“Hmm…how do I put it…it’s not something you can ‘target’, it’s more like a set of economic and political realities that slowly shift over time. The newly-promoted bureaucrats are especially vulnerable: they don’t have the skills or awareness to realise that their new titles are in a place that already works in the presiding faction’s favour. The conditions they find their new fiefs in aren’t ruinous, so they more often than not just do their best within the boundaries that have been set for them under the assumption that things are ‘normal’. That’s the problem when you have a pure bureaucrat in office: they tend to only see numbers and the technical side of things. Unless they start learning how real Nobles do things, they remain oblivious.”

Nemel’s parents considered such ‘newbloods’ excellent examples as to why their family’s traditions and aristocratic education held an advantage over the cold bureaucracy that the Empire tended to promote. The rules that dictated imperial politics gave true Nobles an undeniable edge against all of the ‘talented individuals’ promoted in the wake of the Bloody Emperor’s actions.

Her family’s overall strategy was to use their training and skill as Nobles to defend themselves from the machinations of other Nobles while remaining absolutely loyal to the Imperial House. Its success was in no small part due to the fact that House Gran’s main incomes came from their involvement in the Magic Item industry, which hinged directly on the main branch of the family and vassals whose families had been with them for as long as anyone could remember. Loyalty was their best defence, but many dismissed it as a weakness.

Exerting pressure against House Gran was extremely difficult without being overly disruptive and thus drawing the eye of the Court Council. No one dared to risk that – especially with the current Emperor. The reason why Nemel had become caught up in things was that she had stupidly stuck her head out by insisting on a career in the Imperial Army in her whimsical effort to stay connected with her friends and enjoy a bit of personal freedom.

As it was often said, everything became clear in hindsight. Nemel no longer had any desire to work in the Imperial Army. Once enlisted, however, the only way for women to be prematurely discharged from military service under honourable conditions was to get married and retire to family life. Men were stuck until they served their terms, which were calculated according to the resources that the Empire had invested in their training and future retirement.

Alternatively, they could be deemed unfit for service. The Battle of Katze Plains had resulted in roughly 4,000 soldiers retiring due to mental health issues.

Fortunately for Nemel, an unprecedented alternative had appeared in the form of Dame Verilyn’s desire for vassals to help manage her land.

“The way you make it sound,” Dame Verilyn said. “Some people will eventually become so powerful that they can challenge the Emperor.”

“It’s not that easy,” Nemel replied. “The Emperor is backed by the Imperial Dynasty – the three Ducal houses, their cadet branches, and the Imperial Harem – the Imperial Army, the Imperial Ministry of Magic and the Imperial Magic Academy. That’s pretty much half of the Empire’s wealth, all of its military might, and the institution that directs the future of the Empire’s leadership. Also, one can only rise so far before they risk the wrong sort of attention: if the Emperor doesn’t like the way that someone is sticking out, they’ll be set up to fall and the cycle starts all over again.”

This was what Nemel’s father considered the most insidious aspect of it all, a systematic ‘sterilisation’ of the Empire’s civilian aristocracy. Every Noble attainted was generations of tradition specific to that lineage destroyed, replaced by something cold and empty. As a result, the Empire as a whole was diminished. He even went so far as to privately say that the Imperial Dynasty was slowly killing off a part of the ‘soul’ of the Empire. The traditions of the martial nobility were carried into the Imperial Army, but civilian aristocrats had no such recourse to preserve their collective heritage.

Since the Imperial Dynasty was rarely the target of such measures, it felt as if they were slowly rendering the rest of the nobility impotent against the political and economic machinations of the Imperial House. When Fundamental Principles of Magocratic Governance was published, he was somewhat mollified as it was written by a duke’s daughter and directly proposed to address the issue.

“Hmm…I could make sense of about a quarter of everything that you just said,” Dame Verilyn told her.

“Eh?” Nemel blinked, “But doesn’t the Sorcerous Kingdom have Nobles? You should have at least seen something like this going on.”

“It isn’t as if these types of Nobles go out of their way to explain every little thing they do,” Dame Verilyn shrugged. “Also, I have a sense that the sort of thing that you’re describing would be terminally idiotic in the Sorcerous Kingdom. Nobles like Lady Zahradnik have a mysterious way of seeing straight through people who run afoul of His Majesty’s will. Once they are identified, an investigation incorporating mind control would settle the matter.”

“I see…”

Dame Verilyn had mentioned something about mind control in Engelfurt. It would certainly put an abrupt end to anything of the sort.

“Since my charming people would be breaking one of your laws or customs or whatever here,” Dame Verilyn told her, “you’ll just have to point these things out to me as we go. Your house excels at defending itself against these activities, yes?”

“I’ll do my best…um, what am I to you, anyway? The vassals of Knights don’t usually have fiefs, so I’m a bit confused over that.”

“That is a very good question. I don’t recall anything existing in the aristocratic hierarchy that matches. How about the default ‘Minion’ – it’s a reliable classic.”

“Er…I don’t think I would be able to live with everyone calling me ‘Minion Gran’. Maybe a titled appointment? What else did you have in mind aside from managing farming villages?”

Dame Verilyn furrowed her brow for a good long while.

“I admit that my efforts at the whole demesne management thing have been dismal. How about you take over all of that? Once you prove your capabilities, of course.”

“A-are you sure about that?”

“Don’t get too excited, it’s a mountain.”

“What about the villages that you mentioned?”

“I said that there was land enough for ten villages along the riverfront.”

“Oh.”

Nemel started to mentally tabulate everything she would need to get started. Having land was all well and good, but it sounded like there was no infrastructure or anything beyond the land itself. Nemel had no money or people…Dame Verilyn mentioned something about Goblins…how many potatoes would they produce? Could they even grasp the concept of tenancy? Did Goblins even farm?

“If it’s too much for you to handle…”

“No, it’s fine!” Nemel hurriedly answered, “I can do it. At least I think I can. I suppose I’m something like a bailiff…or a seneschal?”

“Whatever you like,” Dame Verilyn told her. “As long as I get my taxes.”

They stopped in front of their merchant inn, where Dame Verilyn held out the packed-up stack of meat pies. Nemel looked down at them in confusion for a moment before taking them in hand. As Dame Verilyn’s follower, wasn’t she supposed to be carrying them in the first place? She needed to review what she had learned of being an attendant from her parents and her sister.

“What’s going on now?” Nemel asked.

“I’m going to change,” Dame Verilyn said. “Deliver these to Zu Chiru’s stand. I will see you there.”