11.2.0

"Are you insane?" Dirk exclaimed in frustration to his seneschal, looking at the mountain of correspondence heaped on his writing table. It looked as though it would take days to sort through it. He had little interest in such banal affairs at the moment.

"Most of it can be dealt with quickly, Lord Blackpool," Cai reassured. "Besides, you have at least three hours to kill before Sleeping Beauty wakes up to play. Much of this cannot wait."

The prince sank into his chair and glared at the pile of documents as though he could intimidate them out of existence.

Cai began with the good news, as always. "Portia had their accountants prepare a summary of the first month's mine revenue. They transferred the gold into your treasury late last night." The seneschal handed the prince the immaculately organized report describing every facet of the transaction, including mining costs and currency exchange.

"She met the tax guarantee in the first month!" Dirk muttered, staring at the number at the bottom of the page. He was stunned. She had, in fact, far exceeded it. In a few weeks, she had surpassed the tax revenue paid by all of his other nobles in the past year put together. It was nothing short of amazing. The amount of money involved left the usually unflappable prince breathless.

"If this continues at such a pace, we will need to expand the size of the royal treasury. It's a very good problem to have, my lord," Cai grinned. "I'm afraid though that your newest noble has created something of an uproar with Count Blathmoor."

"What did she do now?" Dirk asked.

"Apparently he is not pleased about the dam, given his own county's reliance upon the river for agricultural purposes. He wrote to her threatening to petition you for a writ granting him permission to bring suit to prevent her from completing it."

"A writ?" Dirk repeated, incredulous. The archaic practice of suits between nobles brought before the king had not been practiced in Karteia in at least three generations. Conflicts were normally settled by warfare or personal combat now. He disliked Blathmoor. The count was of his father's generation and confused age with wisdom. The man was pompous and stubborn, but Blathmoor supplied a hefty number of troops to Blackpool. That alone forced the prince to take his petition seriously.

"And naturally she had to write back," Cai added. "Portia showed me a draft of the correspondence, tactfully addressed to 'Count Blather-More.' Zyrdicia suggested that he is a brainless coward, futilely trying to mask his feebleness and incompetence with paper and empty threats."

"An apt observation," the prince noted grimly. Few would have dared tell Blathmoor the truth in such naked terms. He wondered, however, why she had failed to mention the incident to him.

Cai continued, "The letter also had a ten page addendum citing Karteian legal authority supporting her position. It documented four centuries of our common law brilliantly."

"I cannot imagine how she found time for that!"

"She didn't. She has a whole staff of comparative legal scholars in Lyr. Portia managed to slip our civil code books out of the library long enough for her scribes to copy them. They produced some sort of heavily annotated, cross-referenced version, and used it to analyze the issue of the water rights. The result was a thorough treatise on the subject."

Dirk found it bizarre. No one in Karteia bothered to consider what the law actually said. All that mattered was what the king said it was, and who had troops to back the legal contention up. She could have killed the Count on a whim. Instead, she chose to toy with him, twisting the game's rules to strangle the man. He recognized that she was merely playing. Soon enough she would want to respond with more than words. Of that Dirk had no doubt. Permitting her to kill Blathmoor eventually might prove useful, ridding him of one more contentious aristocrat.

"And," Cai added, motioning to the rest of the pile of papers, "These are all requests from officers to reassign their squadrons to Dagonia. These are just the ones who are asking. There are rumors of troops unofficially reassigning themselves. Various northern noblemen claim that their peasants are running away to offer service to her instead. The whole country wants to live in Dagonia at the moment."

Dirk stared out a near-by window, thinking. Her popularity could become problematic. Maintaining mastery over her was rather troublesome. If there are housepets in Hell, they must be very much like this, he thought wearily. Like a frolicsome, hellspawned puppy waiting to rip his kingdom apart if left unattended, her capacity for mischief knew no bounds. She required constant oversight Her nocturnal nature made that job difficult in that it meant that he could rarely sleep. Not that the task was without its charms. She now spent considerably less time away from Castle Blackpool than she had upon her arrival.

"What reasons do the officers give for requesting assignment to Dagonia?" he wondered, yawning.

"They run the gambit from nationalistic fervor and dedication to Saxarba to trite claims such as 'the scenery there is better,'" Cai responded. There was no question that the 'scenery' referred to was not the landscape.

Dirk caught his vassal's eye and permitted a hint of a smile to escape his lips. There was no denying that she made a decorative addition to his holdings. After the slaughter of Mora Valley, hardened soldiers accustomed to dealing with prune-faced nobles like Blathmoor tended to be awe-struck by the sight of her. Those troopers she smiled at or laughed with tended to come away from the encounters completely mesmerized.

11.2.1

"Well, why not?" Zyrdicia asked, perplexed.

"Because they do not have the right to choose to whom they belong. Soldiers and peasants belong to the land. They do not move from province to province at will, serving whomever they find most beautiful or most beguiling," Dirk explained with uncharacteristic patience as he drew her into his lap.

At his request, she had returned early from her nightly rampage in the South. She had just related the story of her most recent terror in Camarand. The White Forest, near Castle Greystone, was ablaze. Thick clouds of smoke from the sylvan inferno blanketed the surrounding counties, stinging the eyes and lungs of the residents there. The thought of prolonged, inescapable suffering for them amused Dirk. As long as they resisted surrender, it seemed fitting that the land should be unlivable. He hoped Erick's ill father choked on the smoke. He was very pleased with her.

He had anticipated her petulant reaction to his insistence that she cease her efforts to coax all his subjects into her barony. She had been predictably argumentative. He knew that he could gain her acquiescence with little effort, though. He was quite certain he possessed the necessary skill to train this particular disobedient pet.

"But the peasants don't do anything in those other places," Zyrdicia argued, pushing his hands away. She was on the verge of agitation. He was interfering in her game again. "It is a waste of resources. They should be where they will be utilized. No wonder your economy was in shambles before I arrived!"

"How they are utilized is not for peasants to decide," Dirk responded calmly.

"Then decide for them and redistribute them all to me," she pouted. "I need the bodies for the dam construction. There is a labor shortage. It will take months for Lyrian slavers to gather me enough to import. I need them now!"

"No. The nobles to whom they properly belong would be outraged. It could unleash a domestic war against you."

"So I'll kill whoever is angry and take the bodies I need! Problem solved."

"I have no patience for such distraction as long as the South remains unconquered." He moved her hair to the side. His kissed her throat invitingly. "I suggest you focus your talents elsewhere."

Zyrdicia regarded the ceiling intently. She was determined to get her way. She always did when they played. "They can't be worth much in those other places. What if I pay their former lords compensation for the loss of labor?"

He sighed in frustration. He found her terribly annoying when she fixated upon something like this. "Purchasing peasants is a common practice. You would have my permission - provided you bring every transaction to me for approval. Under no circumstances will I permit you to meddle with troop allocation! Do I make myself clear?"

"I couldn't care less about your troops. I cannot help it if they idolize me. When I first arrived here, I warned you that they would worship me someday." Though she enjoyed the adoration, she recognized that it was in her interest to keep as much of his army out of Dagonia as possible. She finally relented and nuzzled against him affectionately, certain she had won, again. Her eyes filled with deceptive innocence as she regarded him and whispered, "I just want my dam finished. I promise I will behave."

"I insist that performance of that promise begin immediately," he announced with a self-satisfied gleam in his eye. He was just as confident that he had won.

Oblivious to games in which they were involved, the people of Karteia continued to migrate toward the glittering, new wealth of Zyrdicia's province. It marked the largest population shift in the North's history.