Rimelion: The Exploiter

Lisa was still with Lunaris…

The walk back was easier than the walk out, or maybe Lisa’s legs just didn’t notice the slope anymore, because her head was still somewhere near the waterfall, floating in a quiet she hadn’t known she owned.

Nobody spoke.

The path unwound beneath them in silence, pine needles crunching, the monastery’s stone walls growing larger. Even Lunaris was quiet, her steps steady with a confidence that hadn’t been there an hour ago.

When they passed through the rear gate and into the courtyard, Lisa’s restraint lasted approximately four seconds.

“Okay, I can’t hold it,” she announced, and wrapped Lunaris in another hug, gentler this time, but no less comprehensive. “You’re so cute. You’re walking in the mountains. On actual rocks. With your legs. I can’t handle it.”

Lunaris squeaked, laughing. “Big sis, you've hugged me twice already today—”

“And I’ll hug you twice more. Maybe three times. I’m making up for lost hugs.” Lisa pulled back just enough to squish Lunaris’s cheeks between her palms. “Look at this face. This is the face of someone who walked up a mountain. A hero’s face.”

“It’s the face of someone whose cheeks are being crushed,” Lunaris managed through fish-lips.

“Heroically crushed,” Lisa corrected.

Ian stood nearby, stone-free at last, rubbing his aching arms and watching them with that helpless expression of someone who wanted to join in but valued his ribs too much.

A smell arrived.

Warm, buttery, sweet in a way that bypassed the brain and spoke directly to the stomach, the unmistakable scent of fresh cake, carried on mountain air like a rumor too good to be true.

Lisa’s nose twitched. Her head turned.

A man crossed the courtyard carrying a wooden board, and on that board sat a cake. Not just any cake, a flat, golden arrangement of small pastries, each one sculpted into the shape of a tiny dagger.

The hilts were caramelized sugar; the blades dusted with powdered silver, and they were arranged in a fan pattern that looked less like dessert and more like an assassin’s display case had fallen in love with a patisserie.

Poundcake wore monk’s robes, earth-toned and simple, but his sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and flour dusted his forearms like pale war paint.

He set the board on the courtyard’s stone bench.

“For the warriors,” he said. “A blade that nourishes cuts deeper than one that merely wounds.”

Lisa stared at the dagger-cakes. Then at Poundcake. Then at the dagger-cakes again. “Those are... beautiful. And terrifying.” She looked at Lunaris, who was already reaching for a dagger-cake with the focus of someone disarming a trap. “Okay. How long have you been up here?”

He considered the question for a few seconds.

“A loaf does not ask how long it has rested in the oven,” he said. “It asks only whether it has risen. I came when the dough required kneading, and I will leave when the crust has set.” His eyes drifted toward Lunaris, who was biting into a sugar-hilt with an expression of transcendent joy. “The young one’s dough is strong. It needed only warmth and time.”

Lisa blinked. Then blinked again. “Did you just... compare Luna to bread?”

“All warriors are bread,” Poundcake said, as though this were obvious. “Some are dense and sturdy, meant for long campaigns. Some are light and quick, best served fresh. And some...” His gaze settled on Lisa. “Some are baked with a fire so fierce they develop a crust the world cannot crack. But even the hardest crust,” he added gently, “is softer on the inside.”

Lisa opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Then she laughed so loud it startled a bird from the courtyard eaves and made Lunaris look up with crumbs on her chin.

“You’re like Mister Kai,” Lisa said, wiping her eyes. “But baked.”

The faintest curve touched Poundcake’s lips. “Master Kai speaks in rivers and mountains. I speak in flour and time. The wisdom is the same. The delivery...” He brushed a dusting of powder from his sleeve. “Is more delicious.” He paused to let his wisdom land.

Lisa was still grinning when he spoke again. “The helicopter,” he said. “It returns to the city, yes?”

Lisa nodded, reaching for a dagger-cake of her own. “Yeah. I’ve got to head back before my droid burns the house down. Why?”

“A baker who stays too long in one kitchen grows stale,” Poundcake said. He folded his hands, gaze drifting toward the monastery gate and the landing area beyond. “The bread here has risen. My oven calls me elsewhere. If there is room on your flight, I would be grateful for the passage; like a seed carried by the wind to where it is needed next.”

Lisa bit into the dagger-cake.

The flavor hit her like a spell, buttery, layered, the caramelized sugar cracking into something warm and deep, the pastry beneath so light it practically dissolved. She chewed slowly, eyes widening.

“Mon Dieu,” she murmured. “Pardon my french, but this is incredible.”

“The secret,” Poundcake said, “is patience. And butter. Mostly butter.”

Lisa took another bite, then pointed the half-eaten dagger at him. “You can absolutely ride with me. Anyone who bakes like this gets a permanent seat.”

He bowed, the motion deep and unhurried. “The loaf is grateful to the oven that receives it.”

They ate together in the courtyard, all four of them, plus two monks who materialized silently, drawn by the scent. The dagger-cakes vanished with alarming speed. Lunaris ate three, then a fourth because Ian offered his, then a fifth because she argued the fifth was technically a different flavor even though it wasn’t.

The sun had shifted by the time Lisa brushed sugar from her blazer and stood. The mountain shadows were lengthening, turning the courtyard stones from gold to amber.

“Okay,” she said, stretching. She turned to Lunaris and pulled her into one last hug. “Keep walking, Luna. Keep getting faster.”

Lunaris hugged back. “I will. And when I’m fast enough, I’ll come find you.”

“You’d better.” Lisa pulled back. “And take care of Sir Leafington.”

“Always.”

Ian bowed, his arms still faintly trembling from the stone. “Thank you, Lisa. For everything.”

“Thank Charlie,” Lisa said, waving a hand. “She paid for the exoskeleton. I just drove in my helicopter.” She stopped. “Well; rode, or is it flew in it? You know what I mean.”

She turned to Mister Kai, who stood at the gate, hands folded, expression unchanged from the first moment she’d met him. “Thank you for the tea,” she said. “And for the... water metaphors. They were surprisingly useful.”

Kai inclined his head. “The mountain does not thank the rain for falling. But it remembers.”

Lisa laughed once more, shaking her head. “Goodbye, Mister Kai.”

“Until the river bends again, Miss Lisa.”

She walked toward the landing zone, Poundcake falling into step beside her, a cloth-wrapped bundle of leftover pastries tucked under one arm. The Kestrel-9 waited where she’d left it, matte black and pulsing blue, its rotors dormant but ready.

The pilot’s voice crackled through her earpiece. “Ready for departure, Miss Lisa. One additional passenger?”

“Yeah,” she said. The rotors hummed to life, and the monastery shrank beneath them: stone walls, swept courtyards, a waterfall that was barely a thread of white from this height.

Lisa pressed her forehead to the glass and watched the mountain let them go.

Below, two small figures stood in the courtyard. One was still. One waved, bright, wild, both arms, the exoskeleton catching the last of the sunlight.

Lisa waved back, even though Lunaris couldn’t possibly see it.

The clouds closed, and the monastery vanished.

—

Dmitry governing the city…

The City Hall of Altandai had been designed by someone who understood authority.

Dmitry approved.

Thick columns, high ceilings, stone that absorbed sound rather than amplified it. Every footstep shortened. Every voice dampened. The building didn’t welcome visitors so much as it evaluated them, and most people instinctively lowered their voices upon entry, which was exactly the point.

Architecture was branding. His father had taught him that. “The building speaks before you do. Make sure it says the right thing.”

The Grandmasters had understood this, at least. Whatever else they’d gotten wrong, and the list was extensive, starting with “built an entire economy on slavery” and ending with “lost a war to a girl who doodles in meetings”, they’d built a City Hall that communicated permanence.

Dmitry intended to keep that.

Everything else was negotiable.

He sat behind the largest desk on the second floor, which he’d claimed on day one by the simple method of sitting in it and not leaving.

The previous owner, some junior Grandmaster functionary, had apparently fled the city during the liberation. Dmitry had his belongings boxed, catalogued, and stored in a basement room within the hour. Efficient. Respectful, even. The man could retrieve his things whenever he wished.

Assuming he came back.

Assuming there was still a city to come back to.

Dmitry turned to the next page of the ledger and frowned. The agricultural reports were promising; Shad’s crop rotation proposal was genuinely intelligent, if one ignored the attached twelve-page manifesto about “plant suffering”.

Queen was apparently working on that.

The infrastructure budget was hemorrhaging silver faster than Tyler’s projections had accounted for. Water purification alone consumed seventeen percent of the provisional treasury. Waste removal, another eleven. Energy channeling for the residential districts—

A crash.

Dmitry didn’t flinch. He’d learned not to.

“I’m fine! I’m fine, I’m completely—”

Another crash.

“—fine.”

The door to his office swung open. Wwung was generous; it was more of a controlled collision, and Mirael stumbled through, clutching a stack of documents against her chest with both arms, one of which was also trying to hold a cup of something hot.

Physics was not on her side.

Mirael played as an elf. Tall, sharp-featured, hair the color of birch bark pulled into a braid that was slowly unraveling from what appeared to be a losing battle with gravity. She had the posture of someone raised in a library and the spatial awareness of someone who had never successfully navigated one.

She was, however, extraordinarily competent.

Dmitry had tested this on day two. He’d handed her a tax collection summary that was missing four entries, contained two mathematical errors, and had one name misspelled. She’d returned it in eleven minutes with all seven issues flagged, a suggested correction for each, and an apology for “taking so long.”

She’d also knocked over his inkwell on the way out, but nobody was perfect.

“My lord,” Mirael said, depositing the documents on his desk with a thud that suggested they weighed more than she did. The cup wobbled. She caught it. Tea sloshed. She caught that with her sleeve. “The morning reports.”

“Mirael.” He didn’t look up from the ledger. “How many things did you break between the stairs and this door?”

A pause. “Defining ‘break’ as…?”

“Requiring replacement.”

“…one,” she admitted. “But the filing cabinet was already leaning.”

He finally glanced up. She stood at attention, or her version of it, which involved her left foot slightly behind her right as if preparing for an emergency retreat, ink staining three of her fingers, and her braid now featuring what appeared to be a paper clip.

“Sit,” he said.

She sat. Instantly. Like a private receiving orders. The chair scraped against stone, and she winced at the sound.

Dmitry opened the first report. Scanned it. Agriculture... still bad. Tyler’s token distribution; on schedule. Dock repairs; delayed but within acceptable parameters.

“The housing petition,” he said without looking up. “Block Fourteen. Status?”

Mirael straightened. Here, the clumsiness vanished. When she spoke about data, about reports, about the precise details of administrative reality, she became someone else entirely. A person who could recite population statistics the way other people recited poetry.

“Rejected, my lord,” she said.

Dmitry’s pen stopped.

“Elaborate.”

She pulled a specific page from the stack, pulling it cleanly, without disturbing the others. “Block Fourteen houses approximately two hundred and thirty former… laborers.” She said the word carefully, the way everyone did now that the word slave had become politically inconvenient. “The block was owned by a consortium of three Grandmaster families, all now deceased or exiled. Under the Crown seizure protocols, the property transferred to County jurisdiction.”

“Yes,” Dmitry said. He knew this. He’d written the protocol.

“The residents have been occupying the block rent-free since liberation. Four days.” Mirael’s eyes flicked down to her notes. “You authorized a provisional loan program yesterday: low interest, deferred payment, structured over eighteen months, to allow residents to formalize their tenancy and begin building credit within the new economic framework.”

“I remember.” His voice was patient. “I also remember thinking it was generous.”

Mirael swallowed. “They refused.”

The pen set down. Gently. “All of them?”

“All of them, my lord. Unanimously.”

He leaned back. “On what grounds?”

Mirael hesitated, and for a moment the clumsy version of her flickered back, a slight fidget, a glance to the side. “Religious,” she said. “The residents of Block Fourteen are adherents of Tivalath. The God of Freedom.”

“I’m aware of the deity.”

“The… core tenet, my lord.” She pulled another page. He noticed her hand was steady, but her voice was careful, as if she were delivering a diagnosis. “Tivalath’s doctrine holds that all forms of obligation are chains. Debts, oaths of service, binding contracts; they consider these spiritually equivalent to bondage. Taking a loan, even a favorable one, even one designed to help them…” she trailed off.

“Would make them slaves again,” Dmitry finished.

“In their eyes, my lord. Yes.”

Silence.

Dmitry stared at the wall behind Mirael’s head. Not at her. At the blank grey stone that someone, in a century past, had decided needed no decoration. He appreciated that about stone; it didn’t have opinions about theology.

He tapped the desk once with his index finger. Twice. Three times.

“I offered them an eighteen-month loan,” he said quietly, “at four percent interest, with a six-month deferral on initial payments, structured specifically to accommodate residents with no credit history and no prior income.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I could have charged eight. I could have charged twelve. The previous administration charged nothing because the ‘residents’ were property and property doesn’t pay rent.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And they refused.”

“Yes, my lord.”

He exhaled through his nose. Not quite a sigh. Sighs were for people who hadn’t already decided what to do.

“Thank you, Mirael. I’ll need the Block Fourteen property assessments, maintenance cost projections, and a list of alternative tenancy applicants within the hour.”

She blinked. “Alternative…?”

“If the current residents will not formalize tenancy,” Dmitry said, standing, “then the county cannot subsidize their occupancy indefinitely. The maintenance costs for that block alone are—” He glanced at the ledger. “—fourteen silver tokens per day. That’s fourteen tokens not going to water purification, not going to agricultural wages, not going to keeping this city from eating itself.”

Mirael glanced at him. “You’re… preparing an eviction assessment?”

“I’m preparing options.” He straightened his tie, a habit that had followed him from Earth, even though ties served no function in Rimelion beyond making him feel like the room belonged to him. “Have the report ready when I return.”

“Where are you going, my lord?”

“To speak with someone who might talk me out of it.” He paused at the door, then added, without turning, “Carefully.”

Mirael nodded, already reaching for a fresh page. Her elbow caught the teacup. It wobbled, spun, and somehow miraculously did not fall.

Dmitry didn’t see it. He was already in the corridor.