Lucius von Solhart set the capital ablaze with gossip in less than a week, and fled to the south before it could so much as singe his coat. He left behind a shadow image, more shocking and mythical than real. Only the royal decree awarding him governorship of the Misty Isles remained real in the minds of the nobles and working class. That condemnation stayed real, and people of all social class shook their heads at it. The Misty Isles was akin to a death sentence, and only a phoenix could rise again from such a funeral pyre.

I will skip to the beginning of this fate, missing only a single event of note, but that is merely for the time being. I will return to that surprising introduction soon, after first establishing what it meant to be the lord governor of the Misty Isles.

Imagine a city, but rather than roads there is sea. In place of buildings there are islands. The scale is enormous, the way rats view metropolises like Hearth Bay, but the density is less than sea foam. Where in a city one might find a workshop beneath three homes, with clothes lines bursting from windows and competing chimneys, the equivalent in the Misty Isles has a half-abandoned clutch of hovels and an untilled field more weed than crop. The locals are scrawny, but not for lack of food. The Misty Isles are nearly drowning in food of all kinds. Fruits, game, fish, even insects for the brave of stomach. This richness of nutrition had curiously led to a certain kind of apathy about eating, which I suspect comes from the lack of feasting culture.

The islanders did not grow up building memories of festivals, of gorging themselves on roast hogs and the like. With no native plant rich in sugar, they did not produce pastries and candies to delight the tongue. The only pleasure they sought out was the smoke of the Kuku plant, and they would go to great efforts of collection and processing to reduce those waxy flower bulbs to powdered sticks of spiritual bliss.

It was the folly of Vassermark to colonize the place, but they had their reasons. Gold mines primarily. I hadn’t bothered to scout them out myself because gold was and is nothing but currency. For a true philosopher, there’s nothing easier in the world to get than money. But, of course, economic theory will tell you that as a kingdom and its associated markets grow, one must increase the supply of money. Sometimes, clever banking institutions can issue loans and debts and so forth, but this was a trick for the future. At the time, nothing beat cold metal in the hand.

Except human laziness it seemed.

The warehouses of Aliston, the seat of colonial power for Vassermark, sat full to the brim with gold ore and no capacity to extract the precious metal. Rows upon rows of barrels overflowing with the glittering rocks, like a brewer’s keg house. There were so many that the workers had tossed some beside the road. The barrels had molded and cracked from the rain, splintering enough to make a cooper cry.

“How is this possible?” Lucius asked, dumb struck at the sight. Three uneventful weeks at sea had left him wobbly in the legs, forcing a near drunken stagger to him on land, but the shock was nearly enough to knock him over. He rubbed his eyes, thinking perhaps the southern heat had induced some form of mirage haze that was more confounding to his senses than anything in the Giordanan desert had been. Heat and pestering insects there were, but the burdened gold was real.

The former steward of the city slumped against a doorframe with a shrug. He swigged from his bottle of crude moonshine and gestured at the warehouse. “Tis as ya see, muh lord,” the man said, his words as slurred as his shirt was unbuttoned. “The prisons produce but… well, there’s nothing we can do with it. Can’t even ship it out.”

Lucius spun on him, more questions in his head than he could fit out his mouth. “And you don’t have thieves? There’s… barely two guards.”

The steward, by name of Lamdo, laughed. “And what would thieves do with it? Can’t buy nothing with it, same as us. Can’t escape with it neither. Ya need a damned galleon like you had to even get here.”

Lucius swallowed and found himself suddenly wishing he had stayed aboard that lumbering, four masted vessel of the sea. “But… how? Everyone in the capital thought Aliston had been abandoned, gone rogue, collapsed!”

Lamdo shrugged and scratched at his overgrown stubble. “Well, we had a bit of that. But it was just the priest that went rogue, ya see, muh lord.”

Lucius held his tongue in regards to the liquor. This isn’t to imply it did not wrankle the young man that his primary contact for governing the Misty Isles was a fat drunk, but a wise leader knows there is a method to addressing problems. Sequencing them correctly. Spending energy where it is most profitable first. “What do you mean the priest went rogue? They left? Did they defect to Aillesterra or something?”

Lamdo shrugged. “Don’t know, muh lord. Lots of people go missing round here. Ya see, there’s plenty of Vassish here, the free men and such, or freed men as it were– men who finish their sentences– that sort of… drift from the city to the towns, to the villages and then they’re gone. You know, it’s like putting food out for a feast! At first it all stays there on the table as the proper people eat, but then you see servants sneaking plates off for themselves, and then scraps get to hands of the scroungers and orphans and so on, and what they don’t finish goes to the dogs and then, well, you can’t follow the food after that, now can you?”

Lucius stared at him, and watched as the portly man chuckled in self-satisfaction. Lucius never cracked a smile. “So, you’re telling me the royal appointed priest who… I take it he was in charge of processing the ore?”

Lamdo nodded. “Sure was. Made it real clear to all of us that the brine would kill us if we touched it. I, uh, hear the locals use the stuff for spear fishing, but I don’t trust a damned thing the locals do.”

“And the priest? Is gone now? Took the recipe with him?”

“Yes, sir, muh lord.”

Lucius turned his face skyward. He ran his fingers through his blonde locks and prayed for a moment. Prayed to the ineffable God, the clockmaker. No answer came, but he made a decision. “Send word to Rackvidd that a replacement priest is needed at once. Payment to be negotiated upon arrival.”

“On what ship, muh lord?”

“The one that brought me here. Now go!”

“Me?”

Lucius grabbed the steward by his sweat stained shirt and almost hauled him off his feet. The steward was nearly twice his age, but Lucius had infinitely more experience with violence. When he snarled, the man went pale. “Yes, you, Lamdo. Who the fuck else would I be talking to? I am your lord governor now. My word is law, and until I get situated here, you are the only one I have under my direct command, aren’t you? Now run your ass down to the dock and get a fucking letter on that ship!”

With a flick of his hand, he sent the man running. Of the two guards for the warehouse, one walked over with his spear lazily upon his shoulder. “Will that be all then?” the guard asked.

Lucius gestured with his hand. “You’re coming with me, back to the manor. You stay here and look official godsdamn it.”

The guard with the short end of the stick frowned, and all three of them glanced at the city streets. There was a hint of cobblestone buried beneath the mud. The stones showed where cart wheels had cut ruts, and more often than not glistened with donkey shit mixed up in the last rainstorm. Even the locals had better places to loiter than between whitewashed walls that baked the festering street. But, the guard produced a tin of chewing tobacco and packed his lip as he closed the warehouse gates up and took his post.

Lucius and the talkative guard made the trek across town to the top of the hill where the manor sat. The manor itself was a monument to the state of the colony. Grand at the bottom, built by a heavy stone foundation, but falling apart where cut funding had switched it to timber and paint. Originally, it should have been a castle, but along had come an accountant asking how a castle was to be attacked if the island couldn’t be captured. The Vassish navy had to keep the entire archipelago safe, lest Aillesterra gain a foothold, so who did the castle protect against? A revolt?

Still, it overlooked Aliston in all its sweaty glory.

“Where is everyone?”

The guard responded by holding his hand over his head to take a measure of the sun. “Napping, most likely. Too damn hot to work.”

“So they get back to work later?”

The guard laughed. “Later is for drinking, my lord. Some watered down beer to refresh the spirit.”

“And then?”

“Oh, then they might do some work, but that’s generally to facilitate the cooking of dinner. Lot’s to do about boiling a stew, you see? And then, well, who’s going to pay to import candles to work by night? That’s silly, so you may as well put off the work till the next day.”

Lucius shook his head. “And I imagine everyone must be an early riser, when they’re so well rested.”

“Actually, yes. You might find it hard to believe, but you’ll understand in the morning.” The grin the guard had said Lucius wouldn’t like the truth.

He wanted to spit on the city, but adding his own spit would somehow make him complicit in the willful poverty. “I need men. If I’m to turn this place around, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“I’ll tell the captain to call in the eager ones,” the guard said.

“Good, I want to meet with them right after breakfast tomorrow morning. For now, I’m going to enjoy my first proper meal in weeks and think about what I’m going to do.”

The guard bowed. “I’ll tell the servants to prepare your bed for two, my lord.”

Lucius’ cheeks reddened, but everyone had seen Aisha disembark with him. “Right, see that you do.”