“Round them all up and make them work.” Those simple words set the spears of his budding army to work on the Kuku Bud smoke den. Axel and Lexa spearheaded the work, being the ones to kick in the door while the others milled around the perimeter. Any other drug organization would have fought back, or at least overflowed with panicked criminals. They would have jumped from windows and scrambled down every road, alley, and sewer to avoid the iron clasp of the law.

Those that smoked the Kuku bud had no such self-defense. Only the proprietor tried to squirrel out from a bolthole exit. For lack of any other escape attempts, Polunu was able to stroll over and snatch him. He, along with all of his clientele, were marched to the harbor. Some trembled and wept, but Lucius stepped out to assure them he wasn’t going to kill any of them. His words had to be translated by Isalin, but the old man was very good at his role. “But I am going to punish you. You’ve poisoned not just yourselves, but Aliston, the whole of the Misty Isles.”

“Poison?” The proprietor blustered, marching up to Lucius and getting a spear leveled at him from Axel. “You can’t just call something you don’t understand poison! You’re accusing us of a crime.”

“I can and I am. You’d have been better off brewing liquor than smoking kuku.”

“You don’t even know what it does!”

Lucius scoffed. “I smoked the entire bowl you gave me. If you think I don’t understand it after that, you only have yourself to blame. Now! It’s a hot day, isn’t it?” The sun blazed overhead, like it was trying to boil the ocean and settled for singing their skins. It was the kind of unabated heat that could melt a fly’s wings off. The men he had gathered up had been trying to spend the afternoon in a drug-induced siesta. Standing between spears and the ocea, they only had snarls for their new governor.

“You see that?” He pointed to the sunken ship that blighted the harbor. He didn’t know the story, and didn’t care. The wreckage was an embarrassment for the city, which made it an embarrassment for him. Upon making some inquiries of my own, it seems the captain and this his crew were among those that vanished into the wilderness with the drug-induced sickness. Nobody stayed to tend the ship, and there hadn’t even been a criminal with enough ambition to steal the thing. Without so much as someone to bucket bail the hull, water seeped in over the weeks of neglect, and a rainstorm finally sank it in the harbor. Rot did the rest of the work, leaving a sodden skeleton of swollen timber. “Clean it up.”

The addicts scratched their heads and shuffled their feet. Lucius had to turn to Isalin and ask, “Was there something ambiguous about that?”

The old man shrugged. “I don’t think they see the point, m’lord.”

He turned back to them with eyes like flint. “Polunu, help them see the point.”

The trollkin nodded and strolled up to the group. They were at least twenty, but not one stood with his back straight in the shadow of the trollkin. He picked the youngest of the group, the one with the most openly defiant face, and grabbed him by the arm. The kid screamed as he was tossed into the water next to the ship. Polunu laughed and turned back to the group. Like magic had been worked on them, they all started stripping their clothes off and hopped into the water.

“Excellent work,” Lucius said, crossing his arms as he stood beside the huge guard. The wreckage was in such a sodden state they didn’t even need tools for most of the work and ripped chunks of wood free with their hands. In short order, a back and forth procession began as they hauled the wood out into a dripping heap. He was just getting to organizing rope and axes for the mast and keel when the dockmaster jogged over.

“The ship from Rackvidd has arrived, m’lord.”

“Lexa, you’re in charge,” Lucius said, pointing her at the group of conscripted day laborers. “Take me there,” he said, following the foppish clerk across the harbor. The vessel from the north was nothing more than a little merchant sloop, single masted and burdened with mundane trade goods. The captain was already arguing with a local merchant about payment in gold.

“If you’re not shipping out gold, what the hell are you shipping out? How am I supposed to turn a profit from this town?” the mustached merchant shouted.

“The gold will resume soon. You’re from Rackvidd? You brought me a new alchemist, didn’t you?”

The captain sighed. “Yes, but I wasn’t planning to sit around for the process. She should be coming off shortly,” he said with a shake of his head. “You won’t be disappointed, if her quantity of things is anything to go by.”

On cue, the girl called out, “I’m coming!” as she teetered across the gangplank. She had a chest strapped her her back with dozens of drawers stuffed to bursting with reagents. The only reason the sheer size of it didn’t knock her over backwards was because of the equally impressive stack she carried in her hands: tomes that nearly reached to her sapphire eyes.

Naturally, she tripped.

Lucius clapped his hands onto the books as she stumbled forward, caught them cold. He caught her too, when her face smacked into those tomes. “You okay?”

The girl groaned and hid her blushing face. After some finagling and rebalancing, she took hold of his arm and eased herself onto the dock. Thinking better of doing all the heavy lifting herself, she dropped her alchemy box and freed herself. “That was very unbecoming of me,” she mumbled.

“It happens to plenty of people when they get off a ship.” Lucius set the books onto her box and turned to her. “I’m Lucius von Solhart. Lord Governor of the Misty Isles by decree of his majesty. I take it you’ve come… in response to… Kajsa?”

The short girl had perked herself back up, hands on her hips as the sea wind billowed the hem of her dress. Her smile flipped. “I’m sorry. Do you know me?”

“Ah, no, I mean, as part of preparations for coming here, I made some inquiries about available alchemists and well, your likeness is rather identifiable. I hadn’t been told who was coming, and it just came together in my mind. Sorry, that was an error of etiquette on my end. Forgive me. But, you are Kajsa, aren’t you?”

The girl crossed her arms and didn’t answer immediately. “I am yes, and I’m the best scientist you’ll be able to hire.”

“So you’re a Master Alchemist?”

Kajsa clicked her tongue. “I said that you’d be able to hire. Master Alchemists are all chained to their temples. They’ve given up on the world and devoted themselves to ancient tomes and rituals. They’re of no use to you, Lord Governor.”

“As long as you can handle the mass purification of gold ore, you’ll be the savior of this town.”

She beamed and thumped her chest. “That’s plenty easy. I can handle it no problem and I’ll tell you right now that I’ll even have time to fix other issues!”

It occurred to him that she might be able to work with Sammy in the refinement of the Kuku bud, but that was a problem for the future. Cash flow mattered first and foremost, he even had one merchant peering over his shoulder and running mental sums. That captain was to be his spokesperson, proof to the mercantile community that there was money to be made in the Misty Isles now that he was in charge. Lucius turned to him. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Lupin.”

“Lupin, after you make your arrangements, I’d like to invite you to the manor for dinner.”

The man grinned and bowed so deeply it was like he could smell gold on the ground. “It would be my honor, Lord Governor.”

Lucius turned back to his childhood friend. “Well then, let’s get you acquainted with the problem and we can sign the paperwork after, yes? You’ll want to know the scope of the work. Axel! Have one of the men carry these things to the manor, would you?”

Kajsa flinched. “Make sure they’re careful! No spills, no stains, no nothing!”

Lucius laughed as the dark skinned warrior walked over. “You hear that? Don’t drop the alchemy stuff or the alchemist will be upset. You’d never be able to eat or drink in peace after that, so be careful.”

Axel stopped, one hand outreached to the luggage as he glanced at Kajsa.

She cleared her throat. “I’m not an apothecary. I don’t work with poisons.”

Lucius shrugged. “So she says, but I still wouldn’t anger our alchemical savior. Be careful with them all. Especially the books.”

“Yes, sir,” Axel said. He gave a bow, and carefully picked everything up himself. He coordinated with his twin about the management of the kuku bud users, and Lucius headed off with Kajsa in tow. Their walk was quiet as he tried to think of how to properly talk to the girl he hadn't seen in so many years, and who didn’t recognize him anymore. Thankfully, the trip across town was not particularly long.

“Here’s the raw materials we need you to process,” Lucius said as the guard pulled the warehouse doors open.

“Right, right. I hear the mine is quite product…tive…” Her jaw dropped and she swayed on her feet. She rubbed her eyes like the heat might have caused a mirage, but the barrels remained. “Are you kidding me?”

Lucius shrugged. “It’s enough that large scale processes can be used, isn’t it? I’m told there are efficiencies to be gained from working in quantity.”

She stood there, at a loss for words. Then she started using her fingers for some abstract form of mental arithmetic. “Wait, hold on, how long was this assignment for?”

It was Lucius’ turn to clear his throat. “I believe the message said that it would be for at least six months?”

“I couldn’t process this much gold ore in three years. Are you crazy? I’d have to build an automated factory or something. Do you have any idea the raw manpower that will be needed? The fire! Think of the fire. I could consume an entire forest smelting this down. And the chemicals. If I process the purification brine here, I’d slaughter the entire estuary, the coast, the fish, the everything. This is just impossible to do without sinning against the goddess.”

“Okay.”

“Okay!? What do you mean okay? Nothing about what I just said is okay!”

“The factory. If you need to build a factory, that’s the cost of business. As for the chemical spills, we’ll have to find a solution for that, but you just tell me what your problems are and I will figure out how to solve them. If fire is a problem, I’ll find a solution. These islands are volcanic, we might be able to make something work that way. For now, take the purest pieces you can, clean them up with the current tools, and I’ll pay Lupin enough for him to bring back what supplies you need.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not in the least. I need to make the Misty Isles the most profitable colony of Vassermark, and I’m not going to let anything get in my way.”

Kajsa started to laugh. “Do you have any idea how expensive a factory would be? The complexity! You’re asking me to do something that an entire temple backed by the king would struggle to do!”

Lucius smirked. “And they’d struggle because they’re constrained by being a temple and him being the king. Don’t you find it liberating to work in obscurity?”

“You’re a greedy noble, you know that? You’re asking the impossible of someone you just met, and promising the world. What are you? A two-legged dragon?”

“I’m just a man who can see the big picture.”