"King Corco, this must be some kind of misunderstanding!"

Before his feet kneeled Sawo, administrator of Saniya. The self-ent.i.tled warrior was really grinding Corco's gears with his servile att.i.tude, but there would be advantage in humoring him for mow. Listening was better than talking, he reminded himself.

"So what is it you misunderstood?" the king asked with a kind smile.

"Oh, it is such a tragedy." The warrior covered his face with his hands to display his supreme sadness. "What happened was such a terrible mistake! How could this ever happen? This poor servant thought a foreign army had invaded the great southern kingdom! Like any good official would, this servant simply did his duty. This servant risked his life, and the lives of all the warriors of Saniya, in an attempt to repel the foreign invaders and defend the city until the return of our great king."

"So you didn't see the flags?" Corco asked, smile unchanged from the bulls.h.i.+t.

"Who would trust those flags? In the end, the soldiers were all foreigners. We had to be careful to not become the victims of a terrible ploy!" The man shuffled towards Corco on his knees. However, before he could come close enough to try anything, the pole of a halberd landed on the floor between him and his target. Predictably, it stopped the groveling mess in his tracks.

Still holding on to his smile, Corco looked over to the one who had opened the gates for them, a tall, weak-looking official. Iyo, was how the man had introduced himself.

"Yeah. Okay. You got anything to say about that? Since you let us in without confirming our ident.i.ty, wouldn't Sawo's interpretation make you a horrible traitor?"

"That is not the case. King Corco may excuse this official, however, not all of administrator Sawo's words are the truth." With a shallow smile, the man answered in a calm and collected manner, despite Corco's unfair accusation. The entire att.i.tude reminded the king of the old prime minister Chaupic.

"Lies!" shouted the fat warrior in response. "Do not believe the rat's slander! He is vermin, sent by the Ichilia brood! Unlike me, who has always been a loyal servant to House Pluritac. Only due to my foresight would I hire warriors from within the local population, rather than rely on the Ichilia influence. Otherwise, if the rat had been allowed free reign, they would have taken over the entirety of Chawir long ago!"

Nothing but a short motion of his head and the soldiers around him understood their king's wish. Another heavy pole dropped onto the flailing administrator, this time on his back. As the man reeled in pain and gasped for air, pressed into the floor, Corco looked over to the smiling politician, to await his response.

"Administrator Sawo does speak the truth, in this one instance. Indeed, administrator Sawo has hired only local men to become his warriors. However, his goals were far less n.o.ble than stated. Rather than resist the Ichilia clan in favor of House Pluritac, administrator Sawo has trained commoners of Chawir into warriors, fed them and clothed them to guarantee their loyalty to Sawo alone. All of it has been done in an attempt to become a lord himself, to build his own army and rise to the highest ranks of Medala n.o.bility."

"Nonsense! There is no proof for any of this!" Again Sawo shouted, but this time, one stern look from the king was enough to shut him up.

*Really annoying.*

He wanted to solve this whole incident in a quick manner, but he had to remain fair as well. Now that he was king on his own lands, arbitrary decisions based on gut feeling would be poison for his reputation, and ultimately his entire operation. A tyrant could never implement a proper rule of law the people would believe in.

"Okay. I can't really prove intent. Or rather, I might be able to, but that sounds like a pain. So let's try a different route: How many warriors are there in Saniya right now?"

"Including their families, the total number of warriors is eight thousand. However, most of them, around five thousand total, are young men with no or only small families, ready for battle," the official answered off the top of his head.

"Good, then what's the total population of all of Chawir, to your best guess?"

"According to the last census, there are about fifty thousand people in Chawir, twelve thousand of which call Saniya their home."

"That sure sounds like a lot of warriors to me. Even rich territories only have a ratio of about ten percent warriors to commoners; those warrior clans usually have large families, so less than half of them actually serve the lord in any capacity, unlike here, where the total number of fighters alone makes up more than half the warriors in Saniya, not even counting other servants and officials. With this many regular fighters, with such a large standing army, how could they ever be fed and paid?"

As Corco followed the chain of logic, Sawo's face began to sweat as his eyes grew larger. Now, he was no longer complaining of injustice, though that pole pressed in his back might have had something to do with it.

"Let's do the calculations for now, Corco continued. "You have around fifty thousand people in the entire territory. Of those, twelve thousand live in the city and don't produce food. Not only that, around five thousand are cultivating warriors. Cultivators have much higher energy consumption, so we can comfortably count one warrior as two people. The territory itself has only small amounts of farmland. The lavender gets you no food, while the rest of the population mostly lives off of fis.h.i.+ng and herding, plus the occasional tiny farm with average yield. So we end up with thirty eight thousand herders, fishermen and farmers having to feed essentially seventeen thousand mouths, plus themselves. Does that seem realistic to anyone?" Corco looked around the room. After he had left Sawo's sweating face, he saw Tama suppress a grin next to him, while Iyo still held onto his unreadable smile.

"It does not," public servant Iyo replied dutifully. "Since his arrival in Saniya, administrator Sawo has recruited more and more warriors to bolster the numbers of those loyal to him. The measure was a temporary one, only meant to last until administrator Sawo would be acknowledged as the lord of Saniya by the southern n.o.bles. In order to fund his hubris, administrator Sawo not only increased taxes and depleted the treasury, he also installed several bandit groups all across the Chawir waterways, a method to take in taxes a second time. These bandits are, in essence, a further part of the administrator's forces."

"Slander! None of this can be proven." Though he was still flat on his belly, the administrator repeated himself like a broke record. However, by now his voice had reached a much higher pitch than before, a clear sign of his panic.

"If any of this is true, then that would be at the very least a misappropriation of funds. That's one accusation I can prove without doing much actual work. You have books here, right? A way to prove how much you've been spending and on what item?" Corco asked, as his harmless smile had a stand-off with the vapid one held by Iyo.

"Of course, my king," the official answered.

"Good, good. Let's give him the Capone treatment then. I have brought with me fifty or so people who can read and write Yakua and are well-taught in accounting and administration. How about you show us those books."

At last, the remains of Sawo's facade fell away as his fat body squirmed under the weight of the halberd.

"No, my king, it was a mistake, please-"

"Can we get this b.a.s.t.a.r.d out of here? This is p.i.s.sing me off. Just hold him somewhere I can't hear him for now, until we know exactly what crimes he's committed. I can still judge him then." Under Corco's frown, Sawo was dragged out of the room, kicking and screaming.

Finally, the door to the small study atop Rapra Castle closed and peace and order returned to the room.

"King Corco," carefully, Iyo began to disturb the peace, "if this servant may..."

"Yeah, you're still here, huh? Okay, first lesson. You can use p.r.o.nouns. No more of that 'this servant' c.r.a.p. Just save us all the trouble and say 'I'."

With a nod of acknowledgment, the servant continued. "If I may, I have worked on the administration of Saniya for the past two seasons. As such, I know very well how the books have been handled and could surely be of great a.s.sistance in uncovering the truth of former administrator Sawo's crimes."

"Sure you could," Corco said without much care in his voice. Even so, he leaned on his hand as he observed the man's smile. "Now tell me why I should trust you. You're just as much appointed by Spuria Ichilia as the other one, and only a few hours ago you betrayed your nominal master by letting us through the gates. You seem much more insidious than Sawo, who's at least transparent in his goals, if nothing else. Why shouldn't I put you together with him and save myself the trouble?"

"My betrayal is the very reason King Corco should trust me." Unperturbed by the threat, the servant didn't waver in either voice or smile, all throughout his answer. "In the end, I am a poor man. Forced to move to a far-off territory by my masters in the Ichilia clan, I was put under the helm of an dimwit. Sawo had his plans from the very start. It could be said that from the moment he left for Saniya, he had betrayed the Ichilia clan.

"However, I became aware of the man's ambitions only some time after we had arrived, when Sawo had already begun to build his own armies. With the deed done, I could not return to Huaylas any longer. Now I am stuck here, since Lord Ichilia will see me as a traitor just the same as Sawo was. Of course, none of it would have proven a problem, if only Sawo's plan had been more along the lines of reality. If I could become the head advisor of a new estate, I would have given my all to support him.

However, his plan has never been more than fantasy. Any man with experience in matters of warfare could see that Sawo's so-called army would never withstand the charge of real warriors. Further, it has been centuries since a new House was established and never under such peculiar circ.u.mstances. What would make Sawo d'Ichilia so special? Thus, I was stuck. I could betray Sawo for the Ichilias, but it would only get me killed as a traitor. Staying loyal to Sawo would only ever end in my swift demise as well. As such, I chose the only option which offered a chance at survival."

"And so you picked me," Corco concluded. "Let's repeat the important question though: Why would I trust anything you say? Why take the risk?"

"Obvious: I will be very useful to the new king. As king, Lord Corco will need to control the territory of Chawir. Taking over will be much more difficult if King cannot understand the exact operations under Sawo. As the administrator's right-hand man, I am very much privy to this information, thus my value. As far as my own loyalty is concerned: At this point, my only chance is to subscribe to King Corco, heart and soul. I will be more loyal than any of your men, not because of my devotion, but because my life depends on it, and to me, my life is more precious than anything."

Corco stared down the servant for a few long seconds, before he nodded his head.

"Fair enough. You can go and support my men as they look through the old doc.u.mentation. Know that you're on probation, so I'd advise you to tread lightly. You're dismissed." With a snappy bow, the servant turned and left the study. Even after the door had been closed, Corco's eyes were still focused to his front, onto the invisible back of his new, enigmatic servant.

"Tamaya, get some of your people to look after the guy. Make sure he doesn't spend a single second alone."

"Yes, King Corco." Tama, who had remained silent until now, answered in a proper manner.

"Also, do you have any people positioned in Huaylas?"

"A few, but Huaylas was never our priority. I can ask Arguna to send extra."

"That's alright, I don't need many. Find out if Iyo d'Ichilia has any relatives left on Ichilia land, and whether or not he cares about them. He might turn out to be much less pragmatic if his mother ends up as a hostage."

"Of course," Tama offered a subtle smile. "As an aside, I have seen the offices, while you were organizing troops. Even with all that help from your people, looking through that mess of papers will take days. What should we do with Sawo and his men until then?"

"That's simple. Put them in the prisoner's camp outside the city."

"Prisoner's camp?" Confused, Tama looked out of the opened window, over the river and the city walls, in search of the elusive, hidden camp.

"No need to look, it's not there yet. They'll build it themselves. If they start now, they can get it done by the time night falls. Have Atau oversee their work and let him work out the details of the prison. This is perfect, actually. For the first phase of our development, I'll need a lot of workers, and now I have thousands of free laborers, all young and healthy men with cultivation."

Corco looked outside, into the yard. Out there, his first work force sat around, encircled by his first army. In antic.i.p.ation of the future, he couldn't prevent a genuine smile from stealing itself onto his face.

"Looks like our revolution is off to a good start."