Chapter 89:...Prepare for the War (Patreon)

"Your Majesty, the problem is freedom from the financial system. Too many people have it,” Willem said. “What I’m offering you is a network where no one spends, earns, or saves without your permission. Taxes pull themselves. Debts pay themselves. Dissidents find themselves very poor, very fast. Your nobles will call it modernization, your merchants will call it opportunity, and your peasants will call it whatever they’re told. You won’t have to argue or negotiate or even explain yourself. You’ll simply know where the money is and decide who gets to touch it. Efficient, absolute, and delightfully bloodless,” he pitched hard.

Arnoud stared at Willem. “What?”

"What I’m proposing is a payment network. I build it, run it, and enforce it to your specifications. You grant me the royal license, a little start-up funds, and leave the rest to me. Merchants will pay for the privilege of moving their own money. Towns will fight for the right to be included. Nobles will mortgage their estates just to stay in good standing.

"You’ll get your cut without lifting a finger. I’ll get to run the most profitable extortion racket since coin was invented. Everyone wins, except the people who matter least. And if someone doesn't like it? Well, tough. If they want to eat, they’ll need a seat at the table. I’m offering you power, wealth, and plausible deniability, wrapped in one neat little package.” Willem threw his arms up and leaned back into his chair. “Honestly, I’m embarrassed no one's done it already."

Arnoud put his arms on his desk. “I summoned you here so that you could give me your perspective on which command role you should have privately.”

Willem sighed. “But that’s rather boring. I already know what I want, and I’m quite certain that none of the others will choose it.”

“Oh?” Arnoud raised a brow.

“I’m going to be the Commander of Archers,” Willem said. “And you’re going to read this document. Once you’ve read it, you’re going to invite Rolof in here, and ask him how far along he is on designing my product.” He retrieved a paper and set it on the king’s desk.

“Do you know how many people would dare to give me orders?” Arnoud narrowed his eyes.

Willem shook his head “Not an order. A prediction. In spite of all of the short-sighted things that you’ve done, you’ve got something rolling around in that head of yours.”

“I’m starting to question if you have a head at all, considering the role that you suggested. Do you have any experience on matters of bowmanship? Can you even use a bow suitably well?” King Arnoud shook his head. “None of the reports that my people have gathered have ever suggested that you display a proclivity towards the bow, until very recently… when you ordered a bizarre crossbow design from the Heiden workshop.”

“Are you going to give me sufficient freedom to act independently?” Willem leaned in.

“That’s up to my daughter.” He shrugged. “She’s the grand commander. I’m merely acting as her vice-commander.”

“Considering your daughter is far more intelligent, reasonable, and good looking than you are, I believe that she’ll allow me freedom of movement. And if she doesn’t, I’ll have to retract some of my statements.” Willem stood. “But if she does? I can’t see the way that we lose this.”

“What special insights are you bringing into the role of Commander of Archers? I assumed that you would be taking on one of the vanguard roles, or logistics. From what my people tell me of your fighting style, that seems far more fitting for you.”

“Levente is going to be named Marshal of Provisions. Jurre is going to decline a role altogether. Harmon will try for Infantry Marshal, but probably end up with Siege Commander. Arthur will be the Commander of Skirmishers… and Rolof will request an auxiliary role.” Willem tapped his chest. “Do you really want to know why I chose the role of archers?”

“Why?” Arnoud indulged.

“Because if the enemy breaks through and makes it to me, by that point it won’t be my fault,” Willem said smoothly. “Let others dream of dying gloriously. I dream of dying in my sleep, rich and forgotten. Besides… if what I have planned works out, I’ll want to be in the back lines. And everyone else will be immeasurably glad that I’m there.”

***

Almost everything played out exactly as Willem said it would. The only thing that he got incorrect was the fact that Harmon insisted on leading the mage unit. Galahad had that role, however, so his request came to nothing and he was eventually designated as the siege commander. It was a fitting role for a mage that intimately understood the powers they could bring to a field, and had seen combat before.

Everything played out as predicted… including, of course, the most important matter.

“You told the king about our project?!” Rolof demanded of Willem once he came out of the private room where he divulged his command role. “He leaned on my shoulder and said I should do the job well!”

“Our project?” Willem said calmly. “You’re the inventor, but this is my project.”

Rolof scoffed. “What’s the difference?”

“I’m Westinghouse, you’re Tesla.” He gestured between them. “But yes, I told the king. He seemed unaffected. But I’ll note that he stayed sitting, undoubtedly to hide his tumescence at the golden opportunity I placed before him.”

“Why would you tell the king when I haven’t even begun to try creating a prototype of this ridiculous idea of yours?” Rolof shook his head.

“External pressure,” Willem explained. “I always find that my contracted employees work best when they have a feeling of a boot on their neck.” He tapped Rolof’s shoulder. “Don’t disappoint the king, now.”

Willem walked away from an agape Rolof, a little pep to his step. As the rest of the Six Drakes tirelessly discussed amongst the coming war each other in the training hall, he walked away to catch up with Sarah. She was sitting in the corner of the room alone.

“Writing sad poetry about your miseries?” Willem asked.

Sarah didn’t look at him. “Your princess has insisted that I stay here and act as the local guide to Avaria. A foolish request. None of them trust me in the slightest,” she said, shaking her head with a bitter smile.

Willem leaned against the wall and slid down until he sat beside her. “Tell me, then.”

“What’s to tell? They’re really quite careful with their spies,” Sarah said. “All shape shifters receive rather brutal treatment. I spent the majority of my life in the same cave, being transported from job to job. I suppose that they expected that one of us might try something like this, eventually. They just didn’t figure that I would spin a web of my own. Or that I valued my life so little.”

“So… you’re quite worthless as a guide.” He shook his head. “I hope you haven’t told anyone else that. It would make this plan of mine to keep you alive a little bit harder.”

Sarah laughed. “Alive? There are no happy endings where I’m from. Only merciful ones, bittersweet ones. I should have died many, many years ago. I’m closer to a zombie than anything else.”

“And how does that make you feel?” Willem asked. "Do you think your resentment toward the system is actually a displaced anger toward your parents? Have you considered that your dependency on the lava is a metaphor for your fear of intimacy? Is it possible that your hopelessness is just a subconscious desire to return to the comfort of the womb?"

Sarah looked at him. “I’m feeling a strangely strong desire to bludgeon your head in right now.”

Willem nodded. “Wouldn’t blame you. Where I’m from, we had this thing called psychotherapy. You’d pay them money hand over fist, they’d ask you how your mother treated you when you were five, and somehow that’s supposed to explain why your heart’s about to melt like candle wax at ninety-eight.”

Sarah looked intensely skeptical. “Are you joking with me?”

Willem shook his head. “No, they had an entire field of study about it. In my day, people needed to pay someone to help them cope with things like not getting enough likes on a picture, being called the wrong name at work, or feeling sad because their neighbor got a nicer grill."

Sarah listened intently.

“We built machines that talk across continents, cured diseases that used to wipe out cities, put men on the moon,” Willem summarized. “We also had grown adults paying strangers to whisper in their ear, or being walked on a leash in public places. There were fetish groups for pretending to be furniture or animals.” He shook his head. “I considered it something of a blessing when my eyes got too bad to use the screen for long. My homeland was… bizarre. But I rather liked it.”

Sarah scooted in closer. “Tell me of it. Your home,” she said.

Willem smiled, looking up toward the sky. Nothing quite like odd stories to cheer someone up.

***

The news of the second Grand Crusade very quickly spread across the known world.

In Ravenveld, the announcement of the Second Grand Crusade was met with a roar. Bells rang across the towns. Banners were stitched overnight. Nobles held feasts where songs of righteous conquest were sung with new fervor. Priestesses declared the war a sacred duty, the long-overdue reckoning of a wicked land. Young men paraded through the streets in polished boots, boasting to anyone who would listen that they would march into Avaria and return as heroes, landowners, legends. Blacksmiths filled their forges. Tailors stitched ranks of uniforms. Even the poorest farmer talked of the crusade as if it were a harvest waiting to be gathered.

In Avaria, there was no such clamor. The slaves, of course, heard nothing at all. The oligarchs sat fat and comfortable, trading rumors of minor disputes and new inventions while the wider government reeled to prepare for what was coming. To the elite, war was something that happened elsewhere, to other, smaller peoples, not to the great engines of Avarian wealth. Even when war had come to them once before, it had never reached their own soil. They couldn’t see why now might be different.

But they would, soon enough.

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