by Zack Finley
"Can you contact Shala," I sent Argon. "We need farmers and foresters. If she has families interested in relocating to our keep we now have a place for them."
"I'll try after our meeting with the king, we need skilled villagers of all types," said Argon. "I've not sensed her presence recently, but it doesn't hurt to ask."
We made it to the Klee keep with minutes to spare, but we both wished we’d had a chance to clean up. An escort took us to yet another meeting room where we sat beside Inoa.
Inoa asked us where our duchy sigils were and we admitted to leaving them in our suite. "We'll talk about it later," she commed.
"What is this meeting about?" I commed.
"Your reports out of Ylee, Kavil, and Losan has caused a lot of debate," sent Inoa. "I've been arguing that we need to intervene in Losan to prevent its demise, but others don't understand how that would benefit us."
Argon fetched us both a cup of chee and brought me some breakfast treats. I used the lull to wolf down the treats, while the room filled with many who'd been at last night's reception.
Inoa got up to chat with several of the participants while we awaited the king's arrival.
Cleon came in with King Ruton. Cleon started to stand against the wall until the king gestured for him to sit in the empty seat beside Commander Flexon.
We could tell this pleased Inoa, a lot.
The king looked to Commander Flexon to start the festivities.
"We have learned Ylee and Kavil were overrun by the same forces which attacked Augun and tried to attack Klee. Those nations have collapsed. Our business community is assessing what impact this will have on our nation, especially in light of the near collapse in Augun," said Flexon.
This was clearly unknown to most in the room.
"There are indications, but no direct proof; a similar attack may be underway in Losan. We have not asked the business community to include this in their calculations. We cannot afford for this information to leave this room or it could precipitate the very action in Losan we fear.
"We share a border with Losan. They are one of our largest trading partners, supplying most of this country's metal. If it falls in the way Ylee and Kavil did and Augun almost did, Klee will be affected in a significant way," Flexon said, looking to the king to continue.
"Relations between Klee and Losan are businesslike, but not particularly cordial," said King Ruton. Several around the table nodded at this description.
"King Arvich will not take any warning from us seriously as long as we have no proof of a plot to overthrow his government. Before the last few weeks, I would have had the same response had he approached me with a similar warning. We might have overcome this by sharing details about our own attempted coup with his top advisors. Unfortunately, the likelihood one of them is a traitor makes this option problematic.
"I expect a second coup attempt in Klee. I do not want to provide those hidden enemies with a roadmap on how we thwarted their first coup," said King Ruton. "This makes me uneasy about warning King Arvich at all. If it weren't for the expected chaos on our border, I would just watch things develop."
"When you chat with Shala, find out if she has people in Ylee and Kavil we should rescue," I sent Argon.
"Good idea," replied Argon.
Commander Flexon summarized the new mission for those in the room. "We have three main tasks. The first is to stop any attack on Klee. The second is to secure our border with Losan, so any problem inside that country does not spill over into Klee. The third is to find proof there is a coup building in Losan and a foolproof method to communicate with King Arvich.
"We must accomplish these tasks without alerting our enemies," Flexon concluded. "I will be meeting with you separately to ensure we have the right resources assigned and will appoint leaders for each effort."
I wasn't exactly sure why we were included in this Klee leadership meeting, especially since we got out of the meeting without an assignment. We headed back to our headquarters for the business meeting. Inoa and Cleon messaged they would join us in about 10 minutes.
Argon messaged Findot about needing her to take the Augun civilian corps applications to Olive this afternoon. She was running a series of errands for Tobron and promised to save enough magic for a late teleport to and from Augun.
Shala agreed to meet with us after dinner in our old apartment.
I was the first to arrive at our headquarters meeting room. I was barely able to pour a cup of chee before being joined by Argon and Inoa. Inoa shut the door and announced we needed to talk, and the others would join us later.
"I want to make sure you understand what creating a duchy means for our keep," started Inoa. "By creating the duchy the way he did, King Ruton acknowledges Toffad's Keep is a sovereign nation within the borders of his kingdom. The Klee King's Guard has no jurisdiction inside Toffad's Keep. It also means we are responsible for our own defense.
"I advised the king you could not swear an oath of fealty; that your allegiance was to a higher entity. While this caused a lot of discomfort for the chamberlain, the king was not surprised. He willingly amended the classic oath.
"A duke and duchess are considered royalty. Should the king die without a direct heir, the duke will become the king. If the heir is underage, the duke is expected to assume the king's duties and act as the heir's guardian until the heir turns 24.
Argon and I were stunned.
"Why would King Ruton do this to us?" I asked.
"I don't know," Inoa said. "I know he had planned to honor you as a friend of the crown and present you with Toffad's Keep. He saw that as a great way to cut his annual costs and gain an ally. A win, win. But something changed in the last few days. He began asking Cleon and me a lot of questions about your character.
"Then he started talking about a duchy. Duchies are rare. They may be awarded to a loyal younger brother to provide him income property and help ensure the continuance of the king's line. Duchies usually do not survive the death of the duke. While the duke's heir inherits the duke's properties, they don't inherit the title. This is the first time I am aware of one being awarded to someone not related to the king. It is so rare, I suspect most in the kingdom do not know what it means."
"He may have gotten divine advice," Inoa said. "He does not have a mate. Before appointing you duke, his heir was one of his cousins. The events in Augun and foiled assassination in Klee have shaken him severely. If something happens to him, he wants to give the people of Klee the best survival chance possible.”
"That is why I asked you about your sigils," Inoa said. "They provide you access to all Klee royal areas of the keep and kingdom. While you can remove them, they cannot be removed from you by another. They also disintegrate upon death.
"If the king dies, you will need your sigils to access the treasury and a host of other secret areas. Most kings and heirs wear them on a necklace, which is never removed."
This was a lot to take in.
"Why didn't he talk with me about this in advance?" I asked.
"I don't think he wanted to give you a chance to turn him down," Inoa answered. "But you should definitely sit down with him and discuss it going forward. Our last king lived a long time, so barring the prophecy or another assassination attempt, this is just a form of insurance. I suspect he will be looking a bit harder for a mate in the near term."
"It means I'm still on the hook for at least 25 years," I countered. "And I now have to expand my efforts to prepare a nation for the dire prophecy."
"Yes and no," Inoa said. "Ruton remains the king, so preparing the nation is still his job. We need to share the prophecy to give him a chance to prepare his people. I believe we need to be very circumspect about when and how because once we tell him, there is no going back. Remember we have a larger mission than protecting Klee, he does not."
"Why were we invited to this morning's meeting?" I asked. "As the heir, as someone who gathered much of the intel into Kavil, Ylee, and Losan, or what?"
"You need to tal
k with the king, I don't know what he was thinking other than you know more about all of this than almost anyone," said Inoa.
"Is this going to cause you and Cleon any trouble?" asked Argon.
"I don't think so. We have made our intent to join Toffad's Keep very clear to him and to others in the command team. Cleon and I want to stay where we are on the king's staff until we get through the crisis in Losan. After that, we'll talk as a partnership about working at the keep full time. We'll move there as soon as we can, but may delay leaving the king's staff a bit longer," said Inoa.
"Let's get the rest of our team to join us," Argon suggested, sending out the invite, with the direct teleport location.
Tobron saved the force magic and walked in, heading straight for the chee pot. Cleon and Alba 'ported in separately.
"How does this initiative with Losan affect our preparation," I asked Cleon and Inoa.
"Our vacations are over, and we are going to be working abnormal hours for Klee. This will put us behind in Toffad Keep business,” said Inoa. “Tobron has suites set up here for all of us now. He and I will move into our suite right away. I'm not bringing much of my stuff so it will be a bit like living in a hotel. We need our people to get to know us. We should eat communally whenever possible to maintain communication and so we don't waste time on food preparation. We can hire caterers to do that for us. I'll commit to at least two hours each day to Keep business,"
Alba spoke for her mate. "We are moving in too. Communal meals work well, though like you all, our schedules aren't always our own. You can schedule me for 8 hours per day for Keep work; that should leave me some time for sleep. Cleon will try for Inoa's 2 hours per day. Let's meet for dinner each day, barring emergencies."
"We still have the mess in Augun to clear up and likely transporting about 120 refugees," I said. "We also have some ideas on Losan, we should discuss before too long. The biggest problem I see is that we are the critical path. We'd be hard-pressed to expand at the rate we need to, even if we weren't out saving countries. We need mages who can help Tobron, help the foresters, interview and vet new people, help get our new people settled, and we need a damn army."
"Marfo is coming," Tobron said with a grin.
"My twin," Cleon explained. "Her mate Jord, too."
"I've already built them a suite," Tobron added. "No need to tell them about the prophecy, but they are ready to come full-time starting tomorrow."
"I've offered my older brother Clive and his mate, Loma, a retirement home," added Tobron. "They are looking to sell their place and downsize. They've agreed to help around headquarters and eventually at the keep for room, board, and utilities. I know them, if we don't get 10 hours a day from them, I'll give up graal. He is a great stone man. Loma sold her appliance business years ago, and she was a combat mage in her youth."
“Argon has a lead on some foresters and farmers, but we won’t know more for a day or so,” I said.
I told them my idea about a large magical battery for our headquarters and eventually our keep, plus smaller versions for communication and other applications.
Our partners immediately saw the benefit batteries could provide. Inoa said normally by the time you were skilled enough to execute something like this, you'd be so secretive you wouldn't want to actually do it. Alba said it might be more common than we knew having heard some masters harvested their apprentices' magic routinely for their own use.
Alba could also see a real benefit to storing flesh magic for use during emergencies.
Tobron thought we could conjure several huge stone blocks under our buildings to store magic. I said the magics no one ever had enough of were force and flesh magic. I offered to be the magic donor for whatever he and Inoa dreamt up. We could modify Argon's charging spell.
Argon offered as many gems as we needed to make a bigger portable battery.
I suggested we consider methods to drain our apprentices and help them build their capabilities faster. This sparked immediate outrage. I countered with the advantages to having them tie into our charging system before going to bed if their magics were above a certain level. Not as good as executing a more complex spell but it should help them continue to improve. Looked at that way it was less exploitive and more constructive. I just said it sounded an awful lot like what Tobron had described during his time with the mage corps, except there the magic was wasted.
Argon and I had to get back to Augun to fill up sani-units, and everyone else had a bunch of things to do.
Tobron said he'd post a suggested assignment roster and schedule for us all, our recruits, and for the four relatives. He asked us to modify the schedule as needed to reflect other activities and duties and to let him know if we had more time available. He reminded us no one was going to spend the night in Toffad's Keep until we had completely inspected every inch. And we needed combat teams to help with the inspection.
Before we left, Tobron said we would have a caterer serving meals for the entire staff starting with dinner tonight. One of his recruits had contracted with a caterer at the market. He expected to have the large kitchen and dining room ready by then.
He'd dragged his brother in to manage the new warehouse complex and hoped to have a place for our refugees by tomorrow. The warehouse would only be a shell, but the living quarters would be better than the slave camps. Braka, one of our recruits, had shown a talent for purchasing and he was busy arranging for food deliveries.
We gave Tobron our current stack of skills assessments from our refugees. He'd give them to Luzo, another of our mundane recruits, who was pulling together all the applications we'd received so far. We agreed to have Findot provide them to Luzo as she received them.
◆◆◆
Chapter 13
Servicing sani-units in ex-slave camps spread all over Augun dragged my water magic down noticeably. Like the camps we'd visited earlier this morning, the groups were in a better place emotionally. We took their applications for the civilian corps and sent the king's guard applicants on their way to either Flom or Asme depending.
The ranks of our new recruits had increased since our last contact. Moving them all was going to be a big challenge and we told them they needed to choose a camp leader for us to work with. They were relieved to learn we expected to move them out of the camps within a few days.
Most of Toffad's Keep recruits were female. About half had at least one child. No foresters or farmers but we did have several cooks, bakers, leather and textile workers. Most of the children were female. My mind-reading app showed they were hopeful but still very wary. There were a few people in the camps I would not have accepted due to their larcenous nature, but fortunately, none had applied to join us.
Argon 'ported back to headquarters to coordinate with Findot as I wrapped up the last camp. I brought the last batch of skills assessments back to headquarters. Argon and I popped over to Losan next for a relaxing lunch.
"Have you noticed no one actually uses the com cards we leave?" I asked, digging into a dish Argon had recommended. I added. "This is very good," pointing to the dish. It was some type of meat with purple vegetables. It was surprisingly spicy, with the heat flaring for seconds after each bite. Until this dish, I had considered the Jaloan food filling but boring.
Argon chuckled as I began chugging my water. She suggested I add some of the condiment served on the side. I put a spoonful of it in my mouth to taste. It was like magic. The heat from the original dish receded as the effects of the condiment spread.
"Most people adjust the amount of pracch they add to the dish to match the spiciness they desire. Most don't eat pracch by itself," Argon sent.
"Most didn't have their mouth and throat on fire, either."
"I would have warned you if you weren't so smug about how bland your meals have been. While I prefer tasting the subtle nuances of each ingredient, I am aware many Jaloans prefer stronger flavors. I suspect we should acquire an assortment of spices you can sprinkle on your food, so it is more to your
taste."
I added a drop of pracch to one edge of the dish and after only a few adjustments created the perfect spice level for the dish.
"You were talking about the com cards," Argon prodded.
"We have left cards with people at the guilds and businesses all over two kingdoms. Only bankers or charlatans have called us back. It is very disappointing."
"I expect our experience is quite common. Most mages are reluctant to spend even the small amount of magic needed to power a com card without being sure it isn't wasted," said Argon.
"Well, I'm not willing to let Orik ignore us. I think we should definitely pester him until we get some answers."
Orik's receptionist was distressed when we 'ported in after lunch. Whether he was more worried about our magical aura or our lack of appointment wasn't clear.
He disappeared into the back offices, promising to have one of Orik's apprentices meet with us.
