I would pen down the name of the village we pitched tents in that evening, but it was such an inconsequential thing that the name has changed thrice since, and bears little meaning at all. The monastery in charge of the thorp, on paper, has been in disrepair and mismanagement for decades, a problem we were never able to find the cause of. A statistical anomaly perhaps, but it made for a quiet place to build cookfires.

While the chef turned salted meats into stew, the whole congregation of the ship came round together. The crew enjoyed easy camaraderie, riding on secondhand glory without having fought for Rackvidd at all, but it entirely stifled the conversation between Lucius and Aisha. Our third companion seized the opportunity, nearly bursting with need to speak to someone, for he had not even been given one book for the voyage.

Sammy planted himself beside the two of them, chewing a brick of biscuit with grim determination. “The king is going to monetarily reward us, right?”

Lucius first saw the tightening of Aisha’s lips, and strove to answer. “For something like this? I think the king will make an exception and be quite openhanded, for a price.”

“That’s not being generous then, is it?” the doctor responded.

“Nobles are expected to be generous, as a means of keeping the loyalty of their vassals. Vassals who are rewarded well are expected to perform better. It’s a give and take.”

Aisha said, “The rumors I’ve heard are that King Arandell is dead broke.”

“Not at all,” I said, imposing myself into their conversation as I sat down with the first bowl of stew. I wasn’t impressed by the food, and needed a scrap of stimulation to wet my appetite. “It was the previous king that was impoverished, and did everything he could to hide the fact. King Arandall merely spends within his means, and has made enemies among the lesser nobility who had grown fat on his father’s foolishness. Now, they spread rumors because he does things like employ the Raymi family to lead expeditions south, rather than them.”

“So,” my pupil responded, “I expect he’ll hand me a chest of silver, and a job. Which, when you think about it, is really just an opportunity to get more of his money.”

“With less fighting, hopefully,” Sammy said, drearily looking out to the last vestiges of light in the sky.

“With more, hopefully,” I said. “It’s what Lucius is best at, afterall. The worst thing to happen would be some kind of remote governorship. But that too could be managed to success.”

“Wouldn’t that just cause problems with the locals?” Aisha asked. “If a foreigner were put in charge of them by decree of someone they had never seen?”

“If he were put back into Giordana, yes. But the king is not such a fool. There are many regions that have been stripped of their nobility, by war or disease or what have you. While some will decry bringing in a new ruler, to live without one is even worse. Some people have become very outspoken about the whole arrangement however. They’ve created a mythos of self-governance beneath the gods, as though that ever existed.”

Sammy asked, “I thought you were an engineer, not a politician?”

“I’m neither. I’m a scholar, and when certain essays take on a life of their own, I pay attention.”

“Essays?”

~~

The Ashe Family had under their roof, Jacque Mordare busy putting quill to paper. Jarnmark had the luxury of prominence but separation. Across the seas from those that might be affected by his musings and charm, he safely coaxed the ladies Ashe into a sensual lull and sucked from them coin. The man was a charmer, if nothing else, and had the kind of fierce spirit that prickled at the very thought of attending Master Wilhelm’s displays at the Arena.

Though I didn’t say it in public at the time, lest the sailors hear, he objected to the martial tournament on the very grounds that he suspected what did happen would. That some noble fool like Edvin would brutalize his fellow man because he had gathered unto himself the power of wealth and girded himself in status unearned. A striking man of both figure and ideas, with the surprising knack to convey them both. Alas, I found him to be a hedon and a glutton, but I have more years behind me than the ladies Ashe, and, to say the least, was not one to be charmed by his smile.

While the rest of the Ashe family attended the tournament, he remained in their palace, accompanied by some dedicated servants and eating meals cooked by their chef. He strolled their gardens, enjoyed the safety of their house guards, and by their coin never went in want for paper and ink with which to complain about the status of the nobility. This incongruity was resolved because the Ashe family proved to be very amenable to his reformist beliefs, at least ostensibly.

I myself was visiting Jarnmark at the time because I had reason to believe a godling had crawled into the world somewhere in the western mountains, a monstrosity that might one day butt up against Vassermark’s expansion. I shant say how I had detected this intrusion, for the method still works to this day. While I was fine to leave the humans to themselves when it came to the regular beasts of the misty lands, clashing at the edge of the map, a godling was entirely another matter. When I learned that Jacque could be found so close at hand, I took some time to visit the fellow.

Once he realized who I was, to say he welcomed me was an understatement. I’d be lying if I said I was the kind of man to turn down hospitality, and in due course the two of us were quite drunk upon raiding the Ashe family wine cellar. Then, the thoughts in his head began to spill out of his lips. “It’s all a bit vulgar, isn’t it? This whole thing. This palace of luxury, passed down the generations so each might add more art, more golden gilding, another wing, another contractual tendril to a neighboring enterprise. These nobles, they’ve grown so fat on their prosperity that they’ve blotted out the sun from the farmers. It’s vulgar to look at, even from the inside.”

“This is the prosperity of stability,” I told him.

“There comes a point when prosperity has grown fat and can no longer be called such. This about us, we’re in the belly fat of a dragon right now, snoozing upon a hoard of gold.”

“Iron mostly.”

Jacque sneered and returned to the bottle. “Iron, gold, gems and art, it’s all meaningless. You don’t need it to survive. These things are products of civilization, not a result of man’s nature. As such, they are all the same.”

“And what do you know of man’s nature?”

He was too drunk to realize I was not myself a human. “Man is an animal suffused with wisdom, but in his natural state would hardly show such a thing, for there is no reason to, no impetus. Before cities and towns and roads and laws burdened the world like so many chains and mires, man had no shortage of goods and food, for he was in nature where such things are aplenty. Only in a city are people so foolish as to do away with their very sources of life!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. His opinions were like those of a child. He had excised the gods from nature, which I confess is a reasonable stance to make. They are horribly unnatural parasites, but not the way he conceived of it. The man spoke like an atheist in denial. I supposed he thought the heart of a city was the courthouse or something of the like, rather than the temples and shrines. Part of me wondered whether he understood the function of a heart, literal or poetical.

Jacque took my laughter as agreement, and continued his spiel. He even leapt up, bottle in hand, pacing the room. “With the advent of settlements, man’s wisdom came to use, and he mixed his labor with the things of nature–”

“Making them his own, yes. I’m the one who wrote on that subject, some years ago.”

“Yes! And as it is man’s nature to die after so many years, his creations outlast him, and by vulgar tradition, these things fall to the children of the creator. From that advantage, they first begin to rob and extort their fellows. One small advantage is plied to a larger advantage, and so on over the years, decades, centuries, into this!” The writer threw his arms to either side, sloshing red wine across the rugs. He probably broke some maid’s heart, but he did so without fear because he had besotten the youngest of the ladies Ashe and she could never see anything wrong with him.

“Please, if you would, answer an old man this question. What would you have done about these vulgar traditions? The ones which have so comfortably kept you fed and drunk?”

“Destroy them,” Jacque said, without a moment’s hesitation. “Wipe the slate clean and let us, in our cities, set society straight by rational thought. We’ve centuries of practice at it now. We wouldn’t make such a broken society as this.”

“So you think you can reason your way to utopia?”

“Not me alone. The will of the people can however. Didn’t I tell you? I believe in democracy.”