Blood Shaper-Chapter 46Book 3:

“Alright.” Kay nodded to Curcius, who nodded back before sitting down. “Does anyone have any questions for Commander Mapsight before we move on to the next topics?”

Kay’s gathered advisors, who were more and more becoming a ruling council, as his “advisors” were quickly becoming ministers and government officials themselves, all shook their heads or said “no” in various ways.

“Great. Overall, before we move to the next topic: We took the port, with little damage on our side, and freed all the slaves that were there. A large portion of them chose to return to their lives, but almost as many chose to stay and become citizens of Avalon. Enough of them have experience in running a ship that we can probably get a few of the ships we kept up and running in a short time.” He pointed at his Financial Minister, “That’ll give us some options for trade to the north, so see if we have anything that might be worth sending that direction.”

Cyrus nodded and started making notes.

“We’ve already sent a group of people from our architectural and building people down there to start making the port into someplace worth trading in, and they should get there a bit quicker than the last two trips in that direction since the road in that direction got started before the expedition left.” Kay glanced down to consult his notes, “We’ve also managed to hold onto a number of skilled people from the freed slaves that I think would work well in leadership positions, so we’ll need to see if they’ll work for that. Otherwise, we left a group of mages and manipulators to clear another channel out of the bay. Based on their projections before we left to come back home, they finished it while we were still in transit. That means that anyone that wanted to leave has probably already left with their ships and what cargo they could take with them.” He checked his notes again, then looked up with a shrug, “That’s the basic overview of the things that didn’t get covered. Since we’ve still got some travel time in both directions, we’ll leave those topics until we have more information about any of them.” He looked around the room as he asked, “Any questions or comments?”

Amanda leaned forward from her seat near him, “I also sent some of my more promising subordinates along with our builders to take over any administrative duties and to organize and record any of the goods that we kept following the departure of anyone that didn’t want to remain with us. Once we have regular message traffic, they’ll send missives about anyone they think should be recruited for certain Ministries or recruited to other positions.”

Murunel drummed on the table with her fingers for a moment. “Has the group we’re sending already left?”

“They should have set out… two hours ago?” Amanda answered after checking some papers.

“Damn,” The current Minister of Resource Acquisition muttered, “I just realized we should have sent some of my folks with them to see if there’s anything on the way that’s worth anything. I’d be good to mark down spots with useful resources to set up villages or towns or the like in the area.”

Kay looked over at his friend, “They can’t have gone too far in only a couple hours, especially with the supplies we sent with them. Couldn’t you fly some of your folks to them, then head back?”

“Really?” She perked up from her mild slump. “If that’s alright, I’ll run do that now.”

“Anyone have any topics that we definitely need Murunel for?” Kay asked. No one replied, so he nodded at her. “Be safe.”

“I will!” She rushed out the door. Murunel hadn’t wanted a leadership position when Kay had first offered, but she’d ended up in one anyways. When he started looking for someone to fill the position she’d ended up in, every other candidate had turned it down, citing the huge gulf in experience between them and the gold dragon. Since no one else would do it, Murunel begrudgingly accepted to post, at least until Kay found “some other sucker that wants to sit in meetings instead of getting real work done”. As much as she grumbled about the position, though, she was really serious about doing a good job.

“Anything else relating to the port?”

“Do we have a name for it yet?” Someone asked.

“No. I think it’s best if the people who actually end up living there name it.”

“Are you sure?” Cindy asked with a sly expression, “We could call it ‘Camelot’.”

“Think you’re funny, huh? Do you and Eleniah workshop together?”

“No, we’re just spiritual twins.” She smirked at him while she elbowed the elven woman next to her. “We both love taking you down a few pegs.”

Eleniah smacked Cindy’s elbow away from her ribs. “I get that you’re teasing him, which I do love, but I like it when I’m included too. Stop using Outworlder jokes.”

“It’s not really a joke as much as a reference. See, when he used Avalon as a name, he was-”

“Don’t care.”

Several people rolled their eyes or sighed at the antics, and Kay decided to cut it off. “Right, now that we’re done with that, let’s move on. I was gone for a few months; who’s got reports for me?”

Everyone did, even if it was mostly various ministers telling him what had happened. Very few things needed his actual immediate attention, which was a sign that he’d done a good job so far recruiting his various leaders. The fledgling economy they’d started was doing nicely thanks to an infusion of capital from the treasury he and Eleniah had “liberated” from the Nelamian group back in Tumbling Rapids. Goods were being produced, and jobs were being created, which was helping people make money so they could spend the money buying said goods or services, making the whole thing go round. The road that’d been carved in Tumbling Rapids direction was also helping trade flow to them.

The Adventurer’s Guild was also doing well, mostly because Kay was putting in requests with them, but some groups or individuals were starting to put in requests for different things. Two different groups of people had come to Kay before he’d left on the expedition to ask him for permission to move into currently untamed areas and form settlements there. He’d given permission after a few interviews with the leaders, and both groups had hired adventurers through the guild to get them where they wanted to go and clear out any nearby monsters when they got there.

The city of Avalon itself was also growing both physically and in population numbers. The drawings and diagrams David put in front of him weren’t that helpful in actually picturing what the various new buildings, neighborhoods, and what sounded like a rapidly growing entertainment district actually looked like, but he could walk through the areas later.

As for the population growth…

“I’m sorry, what?” Kay picked up the list showing the number of people joining Avalon each month, then did a double take at the graph on the sheet below it. “What the hell?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Who’s in charge of our population growth and that kind of thing?”

“We don’t have a dedicated Ministry for it right now, so it’s under me until we finish setting one up,” Amanda answered, “Why?”

“I thought our population growth had mostly stabilized after the group from the Clans came? Where are these spikes coming from?” He turned the graph around and pointed out what he was talking about.

“Our growth is mostly stable, but there are some larger groups that decide to migrate here for one reason or another-”

“I can see a family deciding to come over or even a group of families that are close to each other, but where are these village-sized groups coming from? There are three of them that happened for the two months I was gone, and more before that! One of them was five hundred people!” He started flipping through the reports, looking for more info. He found the right sheets and skimmed through them till he found what he was looking for. Frowning, he moved to the next page, then the next. “Why are all of their answers about where they were coming from the same? ‘South of here’, ‘the south’, ‘some distance south’. They’re all just various ways to say south without giving us any real information. They don’t even mention where they lived here before this!” He flipped through more sheets. “… And all their reasons for immigrating here are so bland! ‘I wanted a new life’, ‘looking for better opportunities’. What the hell?” He looked up at Amanda and paused in the middle of his tirade once he saw her expression. She almost looked… worried? That was not an expression he’d seen from the eminently confident Amanda before.

He stopped as she started slowly answering, but it sounded like a bunch of buzzwords from some corporate official, nice sounding but with no real substance. Slowly, he took some time to think through the clues he’d already seen. Loads of people, all coming from south of Avalon, none of them with real answers of where they came from and all of them with copy and paste answers about why they came to Avalon, across multiple groups arriving at different times that supposedly had no connections to each other, at least based on the paperwork in front of him. It didn’t take long to come to an answer.

Slowly, Kay turned to look a few seats down. “Anthony?”

“Yes, sir?” A short, pale human answered. Said a short, pale human being, the illusion that Islandil had decided to be her public face as spymaster.

“How important is plausible deniability going to be for me? The only way to really know if someone is being truthful is System Oaths, and I can just avoid those if I need to…”

“Hmm,” The illusion grabbed their chin and made a thoughtful expression, “There are some other ways to see if someone is telling the truth, all of different reliability. There’s a handful of Skills you could get, and of course, there’s always just raw experience in dealing with people. In general, I’d say that anything that would definitely anger powerful people should probably be kept close to the chest, especially right now. Specifically in this case, though…” The illusion looked at Amber through its peripherals, “In this case, the people that would get angry are people that are already mad at us for a number of reasons, so it wouldn’t be that much of an issue.”

“Right.” Kay turned back to Amanda, “So then, Prime Minister, when would you have shared with me that you went to that town that was giving your village trouble thanks to a pro-Nelamian mayor as part of an anti-slavery group?”

“I wasn’t ever going to say anything like that since it’s not what happened. I truly went there to try and learn as much as I could about the people that were harassing my home.”

“Then why-”

“I was recruited by the anti-slavery group after I’d already been there for some time.” Amanda’s lips curled up in the tiniest smug smile Kay had seen.

He had to repress the urge to facepalm. “… And when were you going to bring that up?”

“When I had to.” She gestured at Isla’s illusion, which nodded back at her. “Certain people were aware of it,” She also traded a nod with Eleniah, who Kay turned a glare on, “And we decided to give you plausible deniability like you guessed. We were certain that we weren’t doing anything you’d actually dislike, so…” She shrugged. “We’re certainly benefiting from it.”

Kay sighed. “Right.” He very deliberately looked around the room at everyone. “The government of Avalon is not officially supporting any anti-slavery groups that are freeing Nelamian slaves and smuggling them here. Officially we denounce slavery, and it is a crime in Avalonian territory. Any slaves brought into our lands are automatically considered freed, all government officials, guards, and soldiers are to free any slaves they find, and there will be no discrimination against former slaves tolerated in Avalon. All of that being said,” He made direct eye contact with Amanda, “We will not officially support any organization performing acts in other countries that are considered criminal in those countries. Because of that, no member of our government should be seen associating with any such organizations, regardless of personal feelings.”

Amanda bowed to him. “I understand, my lord.”

“Good.” He sat back in his chair. “Any more topics.” He went around the table looking at people, and they all responded negatively until he came to Cindy.

“Actually,” She said, “If no one else has anything, I think it’s time you come visit my area of responsibility.”

Kay raised one eyebrow. “Well then, does anyone have anything else? Then I’ll call this meeting adjourned. Good work, everyone.”

People started heading out of the meeting room, and Kay felt a small weight drop on his shoulder. “That was a bit obvious.”

“I hope so since I was trying to be. We’ll be covered against any truth-seeking shit this way as long as no one can recreate the tone I used.”

Invisibly on his should, Isla chuckled. “It’s not perfect, but like I said, we’re going to be in conflict with them anyway, so it’s fine.”

“I’d prefer not to get into any wars just yet.”

“Oh, it shouldn’t get that bad. Most of the people coming here are gathering from various safe places there were before this; no one is actually coming straight here.”

Kay grunted and mentally made a note to “lose” a bag of money where Isla could get it. “Right.” He looked over to Cindy, who was still sitting. “Any reason we’re waiting?”

“Everyone is sworn to keep what they know a secret, but we’re keeping as much as we can locked down anyways.” She replied. She stood as the last person left, “Right, let’s go walk in circles till your little see-through friend tells us we’re clear.”

“I’m not see-through; that’s a different kind of invisibility. I’m actively showing an illusion of what should be there.”

“Whatever. Let’s go do some spy shit.”

Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om