“I think Piper’s crying,” Olivia opined from her position on the back of the wagon.

  William stopped in the act of loading up said wagon to wipe the sweat from his brow and aim a gimlet eye at his younger sibling.

  “She’s not…” he started to mutter as he turned back toward where the Alchemist’s guild were undergoing their own evacuation, before pausing. “Ah, it seems you’re right.”

  Indeed, the dwarven master alchemist clearly had tears streaming down her eyes as she oversaw the draining of one of the massive silos attached to her guild’s headquarters. Not that she was alone in doing so.

  The general mood of the entire group of alchemists she was overseeing could best be described as… melancholy. Sufficiently so that the many peasant labourers who’d been roped into helping them load up their wagons looked extremely uncomfortable as they worked.

  “…I’ll talk to her later,” William said as he shook his head, turning back to his own task.

  Technically, he had people for this sort of thing, but given he was in the process of emptying his own small personal laboratory, he’d thought it only right to see to it personally.

  Nor was he strictly alone in the task. His sister had volunteered to help him – though that had thus far mostly consisted of her sitting in the wagon while occasionally making pithy comments.

  …Which he could live with.

  The last thing I need is for her to touch something ‘delicate’ and blow her hand off, he thought as he looked down at the prototype proximity fuses in the box he’d just grabbed.

  And his other helper…

  “You doing ok there, Verity? You’re looking a little red,” he asked as he turned to his other helper. “We can stop for a break if you want?”

  He’d certainly not complain if they did. It was still midmorning, so it wasn’t too hot out yet, but moving so many boxes had caused him to work up a sweat. The shirt he was wearing was practically plastered to his torso already – and he idly gripped the hem to use the sodden garment as an impromptu fan to cool his torso.

  “No!” His teammate said instantly, despite the redness in her face as she glanced over at him. “I m-mean, I’m fine with continuing if you are. This isn’t anything compared to working on the farm.”

  Willaim shrugged after he brought the sodden garment up to wipe his face. “Alright, but if you do need to stop, feel free to tell me. I know you’ve already spent a few hours helping your family move today.”

  “S-sure!”

  He nodded, satisfied.

  It went without saying that Verity’s family would be coming South with them. Ignoring her relationship with him, as free orcs the Capital just wouldn’t be safe for them if the Blackstones or New Haven took over.

  Fortunately, the former slaves were a pragmatic bunch, and while Verity had said they were a little saddened about having to abandon the plot of land that had only just been allocated to them – at least once it had been explained to them that Yelena was abandoning the capital, because that most definitely wasn’t common knowledge yet - they also saw the writing on the wall and were happy to have an ‘out’.

  “I understand where she’s coming from,” Olivia said.

  “Verity?” he asked.

  “Olivia!?” the orc gasped.

  “Piper!” the half-elf grunted, sending both them a scathing look before continuing. “It just seems like such a waste. You spent months building all this and now you say you’re going to be burning most of it!”

  Again, that wasn’t common knowledge either. His name had soared amongst the people of Redwater during his short tenure as their lord, given how many jobs and how much wealth he’d brought into the small county while he was building up his workshops and production lines.

  Never mind elevating many of the girls to pilots-at-arms.

  Still, there was a decent chance those feelings might turn a little sour for those being left behind once they realized he was going to be burning everything he couldn’t take with him when he left. Essentially leaving them worse off than when he’d first arrived – because he was taking a number of their village’s skilled craftsmen with him.

  Yeah, I can’t see them taking that well, he thought.

  For that reason the evacuation plans were being conveyed to those who he’d be bringing with him in batches. Going from most important to least important. Of which the Alchemists stood at the top.

  Yelena was undoubtedly doing the same thing on a larger scale in the capital itself. The secret would come out eventually, one way or another, but for the moment the fact that most of the nation didn’t even know a threat was coming helped a lot. As did the fact that the recent attack meant ships and wagons were nearly constantly shipping things in and out of the city.

  “Maybe. The fact of the matter is that we can’t bring everything,” he grunted.

  The reality was that they only had so much transport capacity. The Jellyfish’s bays were already full of Corsairs – some of which were still undergoing repair after being shot down during the fight over the capital, and Yelena had offered him some cargo space and berthing on a few of her Royal Navy ships, it wasn’t nearly enough for him to bring everything he wanted.

  Which made sense given that they were also warships and as such didn’t have that much cargo space either – and that Yelena needed most of what was there for her own transport needs. With that said, that she’d still set aside some of that precious space for him was a powerful statement of how much she valued his future contributions to her cause in and of itself.

  Fortunately for both of them, there were other means of transport available.

  While the invention of airships had left their ocean-bound cousins almost completely in the dust where military power was concerned, most of this world’s trade was still moved using maritime vessels.

  Of course, they’re still not as fast as airships, so anything we want to be safe during the trip will need to be sent well in advance of the Northern fleet’s arrival, he thought. Which means they’ll have to be on the boats in the next four days. Anything after that runs the risk of being captured.

  Because the Royal Navy wouldn’t be protecting them. That would require them to engage in a fighting retreat all the way down the coast.

  …Though that might happen anyway, given that Yelena was leery of being seen to abandon the capital without any kind of fight whatsoever. As it stood, the plan was for the navy to engage the Northern fleet’s forward most elements before fleeing at all speed once they ‘realized’ they were outnumbered.

  Tyana had not been in favor of that plan at all given that she couldn’t guarantee that her fleet would be able to successfully disengage without suffering losses.

  He shook his head. He could worry about all of that in a day or two. For the moment his focus was on getting out what he could while he could.

  And for today, that meant as much fuel and ammunition as he could reasonably move. Enough that the Jellyfish wouldn’t be totally useless if they had to fight another engagement before he got his new production lines up.

  “Perhaps it seems like that,” he said. “But it won’t take nearly as long to get things running the second time. The tools and the buildings? We’ll be able to replace them easily enough. No, the most important part of my operation is the people - and they’re coming with us.”

  Again, magic came in clutch when it came to bootstrapping a production line. You could quite easily skip the bit where you needed to make the tools to make the tools you’d actually need.

  So long as you had mages of sufficient skill and familiarity with those tools.

  “Will they come with you though? I mean, these are their homes, aren’t they?” His younger sister looked pensive. “I know I miss home.”

  “Well it’s a good thing we’re headed back that way then.” He smiled. “And as for my workers? Well, hopefully they’ll see the wisdom in coming with us.”

  Because he wouldn’t be giving them a choice in the matter. Anyone that worked on the Corsairs or the Jellyfish knew too much to be left behind. To that end, he was prepared to ‘sweeten the deal’ by offering berthing for their families as well as a significant cash bonus for anyone that came with them – as well as the promise that they would be coming back eventually and that any property they owned would be returned to them at that time no matter who moved in during the interim.

  He had that authority as the lord of the land.

  And if anyone declines anyway? he thought. Well, I’m sure Yelena could offer me the services of some Royal Marines.

  He’d once declined the services of said marines because their loyalty was foremost to the queen and not him or the land he owned. And it was for that reason he’d call on their services now instead of his own ‘homegrown’ troops. The last thing he wanted was to divide their loyalties by forcing them to essentially kidnap their own neighbors.

  Again though, hopefully it won’t come to that, he thought.

  Not least of all because anyone he did bring with him using that method he likely wouldn’t be able to trust anymore on any of his future production lines.

  In that regard, it might be simpler to not waste transport space on them at all, he considered. We just have to ensure they’re near the silo when it’s time for it to be denied to the enemy. Maybe frame it as a farewell party of some kind?

  Then he’d say it was an accident.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Or better yet, enemy sabotage!

  He paused.

  Perhaps that was too much? It seemed like too much. Even if it was an elegant solution.

  He’d speak to Marline about it before doing anything. He’d promised the whole team that he’d let them ‘vet’ his future actions now that his harrowed nature was out and this seemed like the sort of thing that nearly crossed the line.

  Maybe.

  Idly tuning out Verity and Olivia’s quiet conversation on whether or not his many workers would choose to join him on their exodus south, he turned toward the nearby silo and the many workers scurrying about the base of it.

  The massive metal structure was still hard at work, continuously pumping out Corsair fuel into metal barrels via a pipe. Barrels which would in turn be transported by horse-drawn wagon to the docks and loaded onto a waiting ship.

  And seeing the two things side by side, he found himself struck by how anachronistic the whole thing looked. By how anachronistic this whole world was. Things like basic chemistry remained miles behind their equivalents on Earth during the same rough time period, yet when it came to other things like plumbing or ventilation, the locals were almost close to the tech level of the first and second world wars.

  Hell, they had welding tools!

  And as for things like iron or steel production? Well, he’d been to the smelting plants just inside the capital, and he could definitively say that its output was absurdly far ahead of what it should have been. Yes, the process involved a lot of mages, but that didn’t mean the base ingenuity behind the process was slacking either.

  “Even so!” Olivia continued turning back to him. “You know you wouldn’t have needed to go along with any of this if you’d gone with mother’s plan. There wouldn’t even be a war!”

  She said that last part rather emphatically. Which he thought was good. He didn’t doubt her ambitions played some small role in her bringing this up, but for the most part he was rather sure she was more interested in avoiding the coming conflict.

  The recent attack on the capital… well, it seemed to have brought some things into perspective for his quite sheltered sister.

  That being the, well, ‘human cost’ of war. Something that had been all too abstract for her before now.

  He also knew that she still cared for Tala and was worried about her…

  …Also, it was rather fortunate that Verity was read in on his mother’s whole plan to engage in a little tacit treason, otherwise that outburst might have made things awkward. Which Olivia knew. His sister might have had something of a gossipy nature, but she wasn’t a total idiot.

  She’d spilled things to him in the past because she trusted him – and while that had certainly come back to bite her in the ass, he couldn’t say she’d been necessarily foolish to trust her family.

  At least in the abstract.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “There likely wouldn’t be two Northern fleets bearing down on us if I’d gone with mother’s plan. And we might well have avoided a civil war entirely in favor of a fairly bloodless coup.”

  If he’d married Tala, and then they’d installed Olivia as the countess of Summerfield, he couldn’t see Southshore siding with the Crown against three other duchies. The North could do it because they had an incredibly outsized military, but as a southern house, there would have been little Southshore could have achieved beyond keeping the now traitorous House Summerfield navy occupied while Southshore and New Haven crushed the Royal Navy in a two on one fight. No, they’d be forced to side with the rebels – and faced with four duchies, there’d be little Yelena could have done but surrender.

  Again, this was all theoretical, but he could see it playing out that way with some reasonable certainty.

  And in the process, his house would get to become a duchy and he’d be married to the heir of the most powerful duchy in the nation – if not part of the new royal family, assuming that was the route the Blackstones intended to go down.

  “But at what cost?” he continued. “We’d avoid a civil war, but all the free orcs in Lindholm would likely be stripped of their citizenship and forced back into slavery.” He made sure to look his younger sibling in the eye. “Including Verity here.”

  The half-elf’s eyes widened a little as she glanced at the silent green skinned woman. Clearly, she’d realized she’d put her foot in it. She’d also likely not been thinking about that. Just that a war might be avoided.

  She made a complicated expression. He knew she liked his team – with perhaps the notable exception of Bonnlyn.

  He continued. “It’s good you’ve learned the cost of war. I’m proud of you, sister. But you also have to realize, there’s a cost to not fighting too. Perhaps we could have avoided this most recent attack on Blicland if we’d surrendered to the Lunites years ago when they called on us to rejoin the ‘Empire’. But then we’d just as likely be stuck in an endless war with the Solites.”

  As he said that, he realized that his sibling hadn’t been read into the fact that the enemy behind the most recent surprise attack had definitely been Lunites.

  Shit, maybe she wasn’t the only one with loose lips?

  He continued anyway, ignoring the way her eyes had widened.

  “And perhaps there wouldn’t be a war coming if I’d married Tala, we’d made you a Duchess and then forced Yelena to surrender without a fight.” He sent Verity an apologetic glance. “But then there’s a decent chance we’d be fighting slave rebellions for the rest of time, at least once ‘Queen Blackstone’ started insisting that all the currently free orcs in the South needed to be put back in chains too.”

  “You would,” Verity promised quietly. “I’m… not going back.”

  He smiled, proud of her. She’d come a long way. Then he turned back to his sister.

  “Unfortunately, conflict is a reality of life. You put two people in a room and they’re going to have differing opinions on how to do things. And unfortunately, when each side refuses to bend to words, they’re going to resort to other methods.”

  Olivia stared at him, but it was Verity who spoke. “That’s… pretty bleak, William.”

  Really? He didn’t think so. It simply was what it was. War was diplomacy by other means. That held true across worlds and dimensions apparently.

  He shrugged, remaining focused on Olivia. “The best you can do, that any of us can do; is to hold to what you believe is right even if that means fighting for it - and hope that when your time is up, you go to the grave confident that you made the right choices.”

  Olivia stared at him for a moment, before glancing away.

  “Well in that case, I still think this is all a waste. If you’re going to fight, can’t you at least use all this for something? Instead of just burning it.”

  Ah, she was being petulant now because she didn’t want to admit her big bro had said something super profound and cool. He smiled.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know? Set a trap or something?”

  He laughed. “How? It’s a bit difficult to set a trap for an enemy that’s going to be floating nearly two kilometres off the ground when they arrive.”

  “You could use bait, like you did with Al’Hundra?” Verity said.

  Olivia squawked. “Wait, what do you mean like with Al’Hundra!?”

  William shook his head.

  He supposed the concepts were thematically similar. The enemy fleet had been two kilometers up. Al’Hundra had been a few hundred meters below sea level.

  Unfortunately, Al’Hundra had been an animal. A very large, very old, very majestic and ancient animal – prior to him blowing her ass through her brain – but still just an animal.

  And while he didn’t hold too high an opinion of Tala’s mother, she wasn’t an animal. At least in terms of intelligence. Morally it was a different story. So even if he created some kind of barrage balloon, he didn’t think she’d be lured in by something as simple as a bunch of fish guts.

  Besides, even if he could think of something to bait her with, there’d be no way she’d be dumb enough to…

  He paused as a thought occurred to him.

  “Olivia, you’re a genius!” he shouted, making both women jump.

  Though not for long, as Olivia jumped down from the wagon to grab his shirt. “I know that! What I don’t know is why my big brother was apparently baiting a god-beast! Why were you anywhere near a god-beast!? Did the Queen put you up to it!?”

  --------------------

  “No, I refuse.”

  It hadn’t taken him much time at all to get an audience with Yelena at the Academy – the Queen’s current base of operations given the almost complete destruction of the palace during the attack. They were actually in the headmaster’s office currently, and he’d been allowed a private meeting. Which was good, given this plan very much relied on the utmost secrecy.

  As such, the only people present were Griffith, Yelena and Tyana. He supposed it might have been possible that Solanna might have been allowed to attend, but the spoiled princess had apparently already fucked off out of the city again.

  To which he could only say good riddance.

  “You’ve barely even heard me out.” He most definitely didn’t whine.

  The queen shook her head tiredly from behind her desk. “And that was enough for me to veto this insanity outright.”

  “It would work.”

  “Perhaps.” Yelena pursed her lips. “But only because it’s insane, unprecedented, and only marginally less scandalous than inviting the entirety of the North to negotiations here in the capital and poisoning them all.”

  “It violates none of the rules of war,” he pointed out.

  “Only because no one’s ever thought to do it before!”

  “Because most people lack imagination.”

  “Because most people aren’t…” she paused trailing off.

  “Harrowed? Perhaps a little mad?” he chuckled, ignoring the slight wince of Griffith at the reminder of exactly what he was.

  Which hurt a little. They’d not exactly had a chance to sit down and talk, given about everything that was going on. And that conversation was long past due.

  That wasn’t his focus right now though.

  “I was trying to be polite,” Yelena said tiredly. “But yes. All of the above.”

  He leaned back. “It’d work though. And it’s not a warcrime the first time. And it’s not like any of our competition is in a position to repeat the feat. We’re pretty much the only people that can.”

  “We’re not in that position though,” Griffith said slowly. “We need every resource we can get. And you’re suggesting we squander one of our most valuable.”

  He found it funny that they were speaking in euphemisms now. As if saying the proper words was somehow taboo.

  “Use,” said an unexpected voice. “If we come out ahead in this exchange, then we squander nothing.”

  “Tyana!” Yelena looked betrayed as she stared up at her Admiral daughter. “You’re going to go along with this!?”

  The Admiral’s expression was cool, as she glanced between a now beaming William and her tired looking mother. “I’m a navy woman, mother. More than that, I’m an Admiral. I deal in assets gained and lost. That’s my bread and butter. And what your boy is suggesting here… well, I wouldn’t see it coming and I doubt that bitch Eleanor will either. It’s… unprecedented.”

  “Because it’s insane!” Yelena didn’t quite yell, but it was a close thing – and served to highlight the bags around her eyes.

  The woman looked tired. Which he didn’t blame her for. Not that she was the only one in the room to look that way, but she certainly looked the worst. He had to wonder just how many meetings she’d already had this morning alone. And that was ignoring the massive pile of paperwork on her desk.

  Again, he was reminded of the show of faith inherent in her almost immediately agreeing to meet with him when he messaged her.

  …Even if she seemed determined to dismiss his incredible idea outright just because it was a little taboo.

  He felt for her a little. Soon they’d be abandoning her seat of power - and with that fact she likely felt like everything was slipping away from her. She was desperate for some measure of control - and that meant holding hard to what symbols of power she had left.

  Unfortunately, if she wanted to win this war, that had to change.

  “The line between insanity and genius is measured only in success,” he pointed out lightly.

  Yelena sighed, and while her head didn’t quite hit her desk, it was a close run thing.

  “If we do this, I want to take the assets required to do it out of your share of our current bounty,” she said quietly. “I can’t be the one seen to approve this.”

  That was fine by him. He couldn’t hold onto all of it anyway. He was only a Count, so he would have needed to ‘sell’ it back to the Crown eventually.

  “Done!” William grinned. “Does that also mean I get all the credit afterwards?”

  He had been fine with muddying the water regarding his technological contributions to the cause thus far, but when it came to military feats? Well, he wanted them all.

  “Infamy, more like,” Yelena said. “You’re welcome to it.”

  George didn’t share her pessimism. This was going to be great. Sure, William had started off this week worried they wouldn’t have enough time before the Northern fleets got here. Now… now they couldn’t get here fast enough.

  He couldn’t wait!