“Another success,” Jason yelled as he watched a glassmaker’s assistant place the mirror in a protective box and wrap the cloth over it. The loud sound of metal ringing with heavy blows from the ironworks next door forced him to raise his voice.

The king turned to the man standing next to him and gestured at the stack of similar boxes on the workbench. “Alex, why do we have so much inventory?”

“Because we make more money having them sit here, my lord,” Alex replied, and smiled at the confused look Jason sent him.

He quickly explained, “We made a deal with a prominent noble in Brighton that we would not sell these until after their royal ball in exchange for two mirrors at twenty gold apiece. I had only expected to be able to sell these for three or four gold at first, and even then, I thought prices would eventually stabilize lower.

“Besides,” Alex speculated, “I would presume they will be prominently displayed at that ball, and every one of those nobles is going to want one. If we keep our sales to a reasonably restricted quantity, we should be able to make several hundred gold in total before switching to the middle-class customers and their smaller mirrors.” He grinned. “For most, a couple hundred gold would be an amazing fortune. For you,” Alex mock-glared at his king, “it will likely be spent on various city improvement projects in a few short months.”

“Ahh, but those projects will improve lives, Alex. And those happy lives will cause more people to want to move here. And those people will help me produce even more. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

Alex nodded begrudgingly. “I certainly wouldn’t have imagined that our town could grow into a small city this quickly. There are so many houses being built that if someone tells me in the morning that their house is the last one on the street, when I try to find them at noon, I’ve walked a dozen houses too far.”

Jason laughed. The contract says I win the scenario - and my freedom - once I’ve grown the kingdom to 200,000 and kept it for half a year. The several thousand I’m at now are a great start, but there’s no way I’ll be able to meet those numbers with only immigration. At some point, I’m going to have to start expanding.

Besides, if that “keep it for a half year” part isn’t ominous, I don’t know what is. I’ve got to be ready for whatever they might throw at me. I have a feeling this disease is only a taste of what they’ll do, non-interference agreement notwithstanding.

Alex continued, “The only downside is that I had come to like the smell of a small town. Now I’ll have to get used to the city stench again.”

“Not for long,” Jason replied. “The pipes for both water and sewage should be finished shortly, and then there will be much less incentive to ‘accidentally’ dump your chamber pot out in the street,” the king stated, visibly frustrated with the current issue. “I understand not wanting to carry a pot full of waste all the way to the river or the latrine fields below the town, but seriously, it’s amazing we hadn’t had a disease outbreak until now.”

Alex nodded in agreement but didn’t comment further.

“How are we doing with the disease victims?” Jason asked Alex.

“I heard Phipp is trying to get an updated count, but I think more people have fallen ill. Your pamphlets have been distributed through Enderton and the rest of our villages, your majesty. They were received well from what I hear. Those who could read them spread the news of what was written and the rest appreciated the useful fire-starting material.

The king scrunched up his face into a very undignified half-grimace, half-laugh. “That’s painful to hear, but I suppose they’ll serve a purpose twice that way.”

Alex laughed out loud. “In reality, your majesty, I only heard one story of that happening. Many more people seemed fascinated by the strangely consistent letters, even if they couldn’t read. I had those passing them out suggest it might be valuable and that they might want to save it for when they or their children learn to read. I hope I didn’t step out of line too far by speaking about your plan for education.”

“Of course not,” Jason reassured him. “It would be good to get the populace excited about what they’ll be able to do. Once they learn to read and learn some other subjects, a plethora of new career options will open up for them in our new economy.”

“That is about what I thought you’d say. In other news, I heard back from Gerald.”

“Gerald… the ambassador?” Jason remembered.

“That’s the one.”

“Go on, then. What news did you hear?”

“Well…” Alex started, “His initial reception wasn’t the greatest.”

“How bad was it?” Jason asked, feeling his adrenaline rise.

Alex grimaced. “He practically got thrown out of the courtroom. The king told him to come back and tell us we could either pledge our loyalty to him or face the tender mercies of the Silver Kingdom. Then, he apparently implied that he might not allow us to choose their rival, and we had a time limit to give them our answer.”

Jason growled, “They won’t like the answer I have to give them.”

Alex hurriedly continued. “Apparently the Marshal stopped Gerald before he was able to leave the city and convinced him to stay for a few days while he tried to reason with the king. Hence the letter being sent rather than our ambassador carrying the news.”

Only slightly mollified, Jason asked, “Any chance of that succeeding? And why would he do that on our behalf?”

“Remember those mirrors I said we sold?” Alex asked.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Oh. Was he our exclusive buyer? Even then, while I’m sure trade is a powerful motivator to avoid war, surely that wasn’t enough to make him push back against his king. What makes him buying our mirrors so important?”

Alex explained, “The Marshal is a unique title in Brighton. While publically in charge of the guards and soldiers of the city-state, he’s also the private head of their intelligence arm.”

“He’s their spymaster?” Jason asked.

“Precisely,” Alex confirmed. “It’s a poorly-kept secret among the nobility.”

“And merchants, too, if you knew it,” Jason commented.

“Well,” Alex sighed, “I am technically a noble.”

Jason looked toward the man in surprise. “Really?” I remember the first day I was here; you seemed to have trouble remembering your backstory. Is this the result of the controlling AI filling in some blanks? Or maybe I imagined the confusion, and you were just uncomfortable with whatever happened, he wondered.

“Yes. I wanted to be a merchant, though, and building that up became my all-consuming focus. I haven’t used my family name in normal conversation for over a dozen years.”

“Huh. I had no idea.”

“It’s not something I talk about, much. Though it does allow me a better understanding of how to interact with the upper crust of society and take their money,” the man said with a smile.

“Why would you not flaunt your title of nobility, though? It seems like you’d get a lot of use out of it,” Jason asked.

“I will admit that the status was useful as a teenager with the young ladies, and I am still on Brighton’s registry of nobility, so I have not given up any rights in the court,” Alex responded. “But I learned from an early age that gold buys more than a title ever will.”

“I’ll have to ask you more of that later,” Jason said. “You were saying that the Marshal is the spymaster of the city, and buying the mirrors triggered something for him. What’s the significance?”

“Gerald said it seemed to make him realize that we might be an economic powerhouse after all and that he was finally connecting some dots. We, of course, don’t know for sure what he was thinking,” Alex reminded his king.

Jason continued with his questions. “How much spying - or normal information gathering - do they do?”

“That I don’t know,” Alex admitted. “But I would assume that much of their focus is pointed in the direction of their rival cities. I wouldn’t expect most of the small towns in our vicinity to have more than a few informants that report when one of their messengers travels through. There’s just not as much that happens in the sleepy little villages.”

“Would they have missed the hundreds of people who have joined us in the last couple of months?” the king asked.

“It would have been hard to miss it altogether, though they might not have realized the significance at first. Still, I’d hate to be Pierce as he explains that one to the king.”

“Pierce?” Jason asked.

“The Marshal,” Alex clarified. “He’s going to have a heck of a time riding the line between trying to explain that we’re a capable, independent entity, and the fact that he didn’t warn his king about us in advance. If our city isn’t infested with spies now, trying to make up for the oversight, I would be stunned.”

---

“The good news first,” king Archibald of Brighton decided.

Pierce sat in front of his old friend, his glass of wine untouched except for a single, polite sip.

“All those commoners we heard reports about who were packing up and moving? They actually weren’t headed to Silver City,” Pierce said. “It turns out they weren’t lying.”

“I see,” the king said, then looked at the man opposite him. “I’m guessing that leads you to the bad news.”

Pierce nodded and continued. “Their destination was the unclaimed lands. Enderton, almost exclusively. And the kingdom that we heard about from their ambassador is real. Small, but real,” he hedged.

The king stayed silent, and Pierce swallowed, his throat unreasonably dry. “They do seem to have been able to drive off the Silver forces, but I have a hard time believing the stories I hear. More than one report claims their king called down thunder and lightning from the sky to strike his enemies. It is impossible, of course, but I cannot discount the tales entirely. The kingdom exists, and some level of military power exists. More than that, I cannot be sure.

Pierce slipped out of his chair onto one knee, head bowed. “My king, I humbly ask your forgiveness. I have failed you.”

The king of Brighton sat, lips pursed, for a full minute before he spoke slowly. “It appears we’ve been hunting a boar in the copse ahead of us when the one to our side lay hidden, ready to charge out at any moment.”

He sighed and looked at the man on the floor. “If anyone should have seen this coming, it was you. Perhaps I have been too lax and have not pushed you to your limits due to our old friendship.”

Pierce kept quiet, his eyes fixed to the floor.

“Don’t fail me again, old friend.”

Pierce stayed still as he heard the king’s chair slide back and the sound of footsteps fade away, out of the room.

I kept my job and my head, he thought sardonically. That’s a great way to prepare for the royal ball tomorrow.

He rose to his feet and headed out of the palace, relieved to get off with such a light warning, but dreading the conversation with his family that would soon take place. I am sorry, Victor, my son, he thought. I may have ruined your chances of an engagement with Cassandra. I do not think the most attractive gift in the world could make the king inclined to hear my request right now.

I did not even get a chance to ask the king to reconsider his message to the new kingdom. I cannot delay the ambassador much longer. What am I going to do now?