The Red Spire Monastery had been chiseled out of rock in the Giordanan coast, or so the monks said. Of course, a good deal had been cut from the cliff, forming erratic valleys whose slopes were hovels and shops. The namesake lighthouse was no more than concrete, and a necessary growth at that, lest ships run ashore. That was where the monks were however, with their scrolls and their telescopes and cadavers and who knows what else. I had never paid much attention to the place historically, as they had little impact on heraldry and it wasn’t until the ninth century that they produced a notable breakthrough. It was in flowers of all things. Even I can only imagine what kind of heartbreak that man went through to breed so many generations of flowers in a desert.

The Vassish smuggled themselves into the city by throwing cargo tarps over themselves. They huddled beneath, listening to the growing crash of the shore and held onto one another lest someone’s movements give the ruse up. Only Lucius stood revealed, and rode in at the prow of the ship to greet the guard. A good dozen soldiers, on a collective payroll of the various interested merchant families, lined up at the docks to see what the ship was about. They called Lucius off to answer their questioning, for they knew about the Vassish in the area secondhand.

“What brings you here m’lord?” their representative asked. Communication was nearly constrained by a language barrier, and a pale-skinned, thin-limbed man stepped forward as the only one able to speak Vassish.

Lucius ignored him. The captain of the guard could be identified well enough, and Lucius could speak Giordanan. Despite my best efforts, the boy never learned Altish, but that is not such a great fault. “I’m here to negotiate surrender.”

The guards glanced at one another, and the captain gestured. Some went to board the barge. “Who’s?” the captain asked.

“Yours,” Lucius said. He straightened his back and bellowed, “Men!”

At once, two hundred and fifty Vassish soldiers threw off the tarps and drew steel.

Against drunks and pickpockets, the guards of Red Spire could keep their confidence. Cutpurses and vagabonds were easily managed with gruff voices and stern attitudes. Larger dangers, such as determined bandits or a hungry army, forced them to rely on the protection of their goddess. Unbeknownst to them, that protection had already been bartered on their behalf. For their ignorance, they chose cowardice and compliance, which was correct in this case. They held up their hands and said, “Alright then. We surrender.”

Lucius called forward some of his auxiliaries. “Take their weapons and detain them. We must strike quickly. Tyrion!”

Due to the small size of the settlement, there were few roads to be concerned with, and the voluntaries split their forces into three to sweep. By luck, it was Tyrion himself who found the stone estate of the Medini family. No ambush awaited the Vassish this time. The cry went up and the echo reached Lucius’ ears. Leaving some men to quell the populace on his street, Lucius ran to join the pillaging.

Blood ran down the steps of the entrance. It trickled together as tributaries and pooled down the center, through which he marched. The Medini family had their own guards, four of which laid crumpled in the entrance hall, spear wounds feeding the red river. Servants and workers trembled on their knees, hands behind their heads. They cried and pleaded with steel held to their throats.

“Bring me the manager!” Lucius shouted, and the voluntaries produced the man. “Are you him?”

“Yes, m’lord,” the older man said. He was frail, and even that short of a sentence provoked a bloody cough. With his robes, he looked just like the scholars he sold to, but his loyalty was that of all merchants; to profit. “Who are you?”

“Your enemy, courtesy of Stella Medini’s affections for Medorosa Canta,” Lucius said, and watched as several men broke through the door to the warehouse. The Medini business burrowed through the stone in layers, with the shop front seated in front of their craft and preparation area, and beyond the storage, protected like a vault more precious than their own residences.

The manager hadn’t been put there just because of failing health. He caught on at once. “You must be Lucius von Solhart then. These are Vassish blues if I’ve ever seen them.”

“This isn’t about the gambling debts, if that’s what you’re assuming. This is for giving aid to Medorosa Canta.”

“Canta? But he works for you!”

“He did until yesterday, when he swore a vendetta against us. You’ll have to understand that we’re in a tight situation here. We’ll be taking your things,” Lucius said, and left the manager gritting his teeth at the ground.

He marched through the shop front and to the inner workings of the business. For Red Spire Monastery, the Medini family traded in most every good, but they employed a number of seamstresses to work with the rolls of fabric, and so workbenches lined the buried hall. Rows of glass blocks in the roof let in more than enough light for work, or for plundering. Tyrion strode through the streaks of light to meet him, some blood splattered across his chest. With no sign of a limp or bandage, the blood could only be from his enemies. “Some got out the back.”

“Workers?”

“Aye, they’ll raise an alarm.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll be gone before they can do anything but chase us. How much food is there?” Lucius asked, and continued on to the storage room. The change in temperature was as dramatic as the change in lighting. Sconces hardly even colored the collection of barrels before him, and the stone sucked the desert heat away.

“Enough for a few days, but not enough to get to Lord Raymi,” Tyrion answered. One of the soldiers cracked open a barrel, spilling its contents of rice out and ashamedly tried to scoop it back in.

“It’ll do for now,” Lucius said.

“What will it be then? You said we’ll be gone?” Tyrion asked. He had enough experience to effectively give commands merely by glaring at the right people, in the right way.

“Medorosa will be here soon enough. This is no place to defend.”

“They outnumber us though.”

“For now,” Lucius said. “The longer we deny them a fight, the more attrition of will they’ll have.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Do you mean to march through the desert in a chase? We must make for Lord Raymi or stand and fight.”

My pupil laughed. “What? You don’t like two to one odds?”

Tyrion’s lips curled up. “I’ll take five to one odds against these southern barbarians without flinching, but a fight must be won before the first blood is drawn.”

“Come. I’ll show you,” Lucius said, and left the men to the pillaging. Tyrion followed behind, and the two of them emerged from the Medini building, back to the crevice of city. After some inspection, and under the indignant gaze of locals, Lucius led the way up to the very top of the cliffs that the city had been carved from. The wind blasted across the two of them, blowing salt in across the sands of Giordana. “This is the problem.”

“What?” Tyrion asked. “No gambling arenas?”

Having not actually lost any bets recently, the insult tested Lucius’ composure. Had anyone been there to hear the insult, he would have had reason to cut the man down. Alas, he had to suffer the insult. It was meant at the original Lucius, and he knew that. “No walls. If they come in by foot, they’ll rain death upon us or starve us out. We’d have to build our own palisades, and then we’d still be up against the cliff’s edge without retreat.”

“So we take the food and shove off west.”

“They’d overtake us in a proper ship and sink us. I have no hatred of Aquaria, but I’m not in a rush to meet her embrace.”

“Are you just going to degrade our options?”

Lucius grinned and pointed behind him, to the weed spotted hills of the Giordanan desert. “We just need to bring more allies to our side, and then we will outnumber them instead. Simple, isn’t it?”

This made the lieutenant frown and narrow his eyes, but he was wise enough to consider what wisdom Lucius was getting at.

“Within a day’s march of here is a silver mine, filled to the brim with slaves. Debtors and prisoners; men who would happily turn their tools against their masters given the chance. We won’t even need to take them in, merely bring them with us to the west and disperse them. All with a wagon train of silver for our trouble.”

Hunger alit in Tyrion’s mind, greed that had always been there and yet chained by proper behavior. What Lucius gave him was justification to revert to savagery and feel no shame about it. “Are you sure about that? They like to hide their slave pits from us.”

Lucius grinned. “How else? The bookies told me all about it to try and get me to pay up my debts. They were quite confident they could get me there, never to breathe free air again.”

Tyrion threw his head back and bellowed a laugh. “Good, good! I’ll rally the men to get a wagon train and see which of these Medini’s will lead the way to keep me from gutting them.”

The leader of the voluntaries descended back into the settlement, and left my pupil alone up there. With a stomach near empty, he would have loved nothing more than to descend to a popina cafe and gorge himself, to take for himself a fishmongers entire stall and fill his stomach with the fresh meat.

He was still being watched though. If not by his own men, then by the people of Red Spire Monastery, and by the distant scrying of Golden. That bird had roosted upon the lighthouse, departing only to circle like a vulture, impatient for his meal. Lucius would have to provide that meal soon enough, for Golden still remembered the ancient days of sacrifice, when heretics and criminals were strung out across the streets in gibbets to be feasted upon. The succulent flavor of despair seasoning their meat so he could rip into their livers and hear their screams. Such delicacies were no longer permitted to the Divine Beast, at least not in public.

The last warlord of Giordana, the Yellow King Hassa, abused the tradition to the point of terror, till entire cities were decorated with bones. Slums were plundered for people to butcher, and prisoners of war crucified across the roads into Giordana. That fool thought he could buy the favor of a goddess by bribing her agents, and in the end spent five years rotting from the inside due to poison. One organ after another decayed within him, eventually leaving him bedridden and crying for healing stigmata, but no blessing ever came to him.

That man taught me a great deal, and I took wiser action than him. I did not seek the goddess’ favor. Her emissary’s assistance was all we needed, and that could clearly be bought. In much the same way a honeybee communicates with his brethren, Golden circled this way and that in the air, always returning to one direction off from North.

The way to the slave pits where he had been promised fresh meat.