Chapter 64: Reinvestment
"What the hell do you mean the tribute is slowing down?!"
The dragon's voice shook the conference room, rattling the stacked papers on the long table, sending a candle guttering, and making the goblin scribe in the corner drop his quill.
"Don't you raise your voice at me," snapped Veliah, standing on the other side of the table, her palms flat on the surface. She dipped her fingers in her glass of water and splashed it out at Barjuchne, who recoiled with a growl and a shake of her head, drops flying from her hair. "It's winter outside. The mushroom circles have died off."
"They'll be back come spring," explained F.P., from her seat on a raised cushion. She examined one perfect nail. "Winter was one of the fairy kingdom's greatest security measures, in fact. In the past, it gave my people time to reinforce and regather."
"But what about my treasure?" asked Barjuchne, looking around the table. "We need the fairy kingdom."
"We'll make do without it. This is a good time to talk about it anyway," explained Veliah.
"Talk about what?" Barjuchne narrowed her eyes. She could smell the danger coming a mile away.
Veliah looked at Rou-Ya. Rou-Ya looked at F.P. F.P. turned her head to look at Blibli. Blibli looked back and forth between all of them, not sure where she was supposed to look, and, being generally overstimulated by the arrangement, began to bubble and melt down into herself.
"Given the fact that you ravaged the landscape and destroyed entire chunks of the kingdom, winter is an exceptionally dangerous force this year," explained Ead, adjusting her hat.
"I did no such thing!"
"You flattened the kingdom's castle," explained Veliah, rolling her eyes. "Even setting that aside, consider the auxiliary damage to the local economy. All those who lost their positions. Their salaries. Their households. The down-river effects of just that alone in the city…"
"Don't you dare say it," started Barjuchne.
"We need to invest in the local regions more, as with Jaesowen Vale," explained the elf. "It is my strong recommendation that we keep all tribute this winter inside the localities it stems from. A full reinvestment in infrastructure, heating, food supplies."
"Never!" yelled Barjuchne. "I'll fly to every last village myself to pick it up if I have to!"
Rou-Ya raised her hand. "The goblin people are in great need too. We have never had access to human resources before. My people could flourish."
The dragon looked at her. "What are you talking about? The dragon clan is doing great! Do you know how many marriages I get invited to?"
Rou-Ya studied her with the flat, patient look of a woman about to deliver news. "My Queen. There are... hundreds of other goblin tribes in your territory. The dragon clan is just the tribe of my blood. In the other mountains, the other forests, there are more of my people. They live in primitive huts with no medicine, no help."
Ei lifted all four of her hands. "My people, too, live in squalor. They are safe at the heart of your kingdom, My Queen. But the young dream of sugars and sweets, while surrounded by wealth enough to supply them all."
"They're ants!" snapped Barjuchne. "No offence."
Ei clicked her mandibles at her, very slowly.
"The people pray in cold churches," said one of the twin saintesses.
"The widows of the knights you killed shiver while giving you their tear-stained gold," said the other.
"Oh come on! You don’t have to say it like that!” replied Barjuchne. “They're probably just excited to have a new shot at the dating market," replied the dragon. "You already got your allowance. Bruschetta gave hers away to help her kingdom's people. You can do the same with yours. Hands off my money."
Bruschetta smiled. "Actually, I only helped a few friends of mine. But there are thousands of people who live in the tall trees. They have hard lives, my queen. You saw them yourself."
"No. You've all already taken enough from me."
"If I may," started Ead.
Everyone looked at her.
"Forgive me. Draconic customs as they are. We are married, by the law of this nation, yes?" she began. "As such, in the bindings of matrimony, as prescribed by the holy church's own teachings, we are entitled to at least a fair half of everything in this mountain."
The saintesses looked at each other and nodded. "This is true," they said in unison.
Barjuchne opened her mouth. Then she shut it. She stared at Ead across the table.
"You clever little monster," she said. "You wouldn't dare."
"Must we argue every time it comes to spending a single coin?" asked F.P.m. exasperatedly. “This must be what being poor feels like. It’s exhausting.”
"Yes!" snarled Barjuchne.
"It takes money to make money," said Veliah. "If we invest in these regions, they will be more productive than ever. You know that. You keep accounts. Look at your own numbers."
Barjuchne sat with her arms crossed, her finger tapping against her bicep. She grumbled, thinking. She knew it was true. The Vale had proven it, turning from a mud village into a boomtown on nothing but safe roads.
She turned her head and looked at the maid, standing quietly behind her chair.
"What do you think?" asked the dragon.
"They are correct, my queen," replied the maid. She bowed her head, her eyes closed. "My family lives in the capital. The streets, the houses... even there, it can be challenging. And I dread to think what it is like in the countryside." She opened her eyes. "Your people fear and revere you. But in my opinion, it would be better if they loved you. After all, you would have them then. They would be yours, fully. Isn't that what you want?"
Barjuchne's eyes widened.
"...You know," the dragon said slowly, "I've never thought about it that way. You're right."
"Oh, why are you going to listen to her but not us?!" snapped Veliah. "Nothing personal," she added.
"Because she has no financial incentive," replied Barjuchne, her hand reaching back to stroke along the maid’s shoulder once before folding back onto the table. "She gets a salary no matter what she tells me." She waved the elf off.
"What?!" yelled Veliah. "After we had to go through all that trouble just to get you to give us an allowance?!"
Barjuchne rose, putting her hand over her heart with the full solemnity of a monarch delivering a benediction. "My love should be enough for you all."
The maid blushed and looked away, hiding her face behind a pulled-taut strand of her dark bob.
Veliah crossed her arms. "I lived with you in a cave. Sleeping on rocks," she said. "How can you be so clever but so stupid at the same time? It makes my blood boil." She gathered her papers, stacking them with sharp, furious precision, and rose, her nose lifted. "You know, you really are becoming more and more of a dragon as time goes on. Have you noticed that? You've changed."
"Ah, come on," said Barjuchne. "I'm not that bad."
"You will be, at this rate. I stayed with you to get away from my father, remember that," replied Veliah curtly, and left, the door swinging behind her.
Barjuchne winced, then looked back at the others from the doorway, and the others began to awkwardly rise themselves.
"I still like you!" said Blibli happily, oozing after the rest. "Even if you're horrible to orphans, the poor, widows, and the needy!"
Barjuchne groaned audibly, her eyes rolling back toward the ceiling.
Was she really that bad? She didn't think so. But then, she had never exactly been a reliable judge of the inside of her own head. Maybe she wasn't seeing things objectively. Maybe a dragon's eyes, even the double-lidded ones, were simply not built for looking in some specific directions.
"Fine!" she yelled at the emptying room. "FINE!"
"Pull!" yelled the labourers, and the ropes and the systems moved. Great beams swung and realigned overhead with a groaning of timber.
The river ran half-frozen to the southwest, its edges locked in ice, its centre black and fast, and on its bank stood a four-legged hydra, large as a barn, the snow settling on her black leathery exterior.
This was the river with the missing bridge to the south of the mountain. She had crossed it herself once, after returning home post Veliah’s rescue from the pirates.
On her back lay several large metal beams, and her many heads worked them, gripping, lifting, holding, and placing, each one a crane.
The villagers on the far bank watched her with awe and fear, and some of them with a dawning of something else that had no fear in it at all.
The first beam fell into place, spanning the black water, a treacherous crossing but a crossing, and several cheers rang out across both banks, small and stunned and then swelling.
By night's end, with the hydra's heads working as cranes through the dark, that bridge would be entirely reconstructed.
"Ow! Stop it!" snapped Barjuchne, lying flat on the ground in the winter forest, her face inches from an anthill. "Treasonous asshole!"
She blew the fire ant off her finger, along with its poisonous goo, and glared at the mound. Then, grumbling, she looked back down and tapped the sides of the surgically opened anthill with one claw.
The dungeon power answered her. The compacted dirt walls of the mound's interior began to transform, shifting, compressing, and firing into solid, tiny bricks. Chambers straightened. Tunnels widened and arched. By the time the change settled, the anthill's inside looked like a proper, tiny fortress, an ant palace, deep and dry and sound.
Finding what looked to be a storeroom, she packed in several large bundles of sugar, wrapped in leaves, sealed them up, and closed the anthill over it all with a careful pat.
Something stung her again.
"Ow! I'm trying to help you!" she snarled, as another one attacked her, the hive's swarm agitated beyond all reason.
The church in the hollar was a poor church in a poor place. The people inside it were huddled together against the cold, their breath filling the air, visible, one fire burning in the hearth. An old priest, a single priestess, and several children sat in its light. Snow fell past the window in fat, silent flakes.
Then the shaking started.
A quake. Dust fell from the roof. Everyone startled. "Father, the roof," said the priestess, worried the snow weight had finally brought the old thing down, and she gathered the children in against her.
Another quake.
Silence.
"Stay by the fire," said the old priest, and he went to the door to look.
It opened before he reached it. The old man stumbled back in surprise, and a terrifying, black-cloaked, tall figure stood in the midst of the doorway, the winter blowing white behind her, the flakes of snow seeming to melt, to vaporise, before they ever touched her.
He had never seen her before. But he knew her by heart, because his faith had written her image into his mind.
The dragon queen stepped into the old church, stepping past him, her presence filling the little room. "You live in this dump?" were the first words she said, looking around at its squalor with open disbelief.
"M-m-m-my queen!" he stammered and fell to his knees, bowing his head.
Her eyes scanned the destitution. Her nose moved, reading the air, the mires of sickness and infection in it. The old, sagging floorboards bent and creaked as she stepped forward, thudding heavily, her tail sweeping behind her toward the priestess.
Terrified, the priestess stood forward, pushing the children behind herself.
"What– what do you want here, your majesty?" she asked, remaining vocally respectful, but her posture clearly guarding the children as she made herself a barrier between the dragon and them.
Barjuchne stared at her. Then, reaching out, she reached over the priestess's head. The priestess flinched.
Barjuchne lifted a child up from the group, holding her in the air. The girl was skin and bones, light as a bundle of sticks. "Hey there," said the dragon, gently. "How long have you been here?"
The priestess reached out and snatched the girl back, pulling her in and guarding her. "She has been with us since you took her father, dragon. He was a good man, bound in Lord Parsmuth's service," said the sister, her voice shaking with something that was not fear. "Leave her be!" She pushed the children away behind her. "Stay back, children."
"Sister!" pleaded the old priest. But the priestess would not hear him. She had little love in her heart for Barjuchne, and she was not going to pretend otherwise, even now.
Barjuchne stared quietly at the priestess, at the child, at the room.
Then she nodded and turned to leave.
"This place is going to be torn down," said the dragon.
"You monster," said the priestess, cold and level. "Your evil knows no bounds."
Another quake.
Snow fell past the open door.
"Eh?" Barjuchne stopped and looked back at her, genuinely puzzled. "What are you talking about? It's being rebuilt. Here." She dropped a large coin purse into the old father's hands. His arms dropped an inch under the weight of it. "You'll be receiving annual funding from now on. And I'm going to have the church send you another two helpers. You're going to need them."
With that, she walked out, her massive tail sweeping the snow behind her.
The priest and the priestess exchanged a long, confused look. Then, cautiously, they went to the door.
Outside, in the churchyard, filling it and spilling past its fence line, a construction team was at work in the snow, and the frames of an entirely larger, modern church, an orphanage, and a school were already rising, the surveyor's lines strung bright against the winter.
All across the kingdom, the repairs began.
Lizardmen brought writs and notices to construction teams in every province, to mayors and governors and heads of faith, organising the start of what would come to be called, in the histories, the Great Foundation.
The wealth that the Black Mountain had gorged itself fat on began to pour out once more in streams.
Bridges, roads, and the connections between places were the first target of the rebuilding. Then wells and access to wood and charcoal as fuel. Third, the most desperate were held above water. The churches, at the saintesses' direction, redirected their tithes inward, into food and shelter programmes across the nation. Priests and priestesses went out on pilgrimage to the remote villages, carrying medicine and news, and the image of a black dragon stamped on their writs.
Winter was falling.
But there was nowhere that snow was left untrodden, because workmen's boots pressed it down, all across the kingdom, from the titan forest of the Vildt to the streets of the capital, and the sound of hammering carried through the cold air like the drums of war.
Barjuchne stood outside the mountain, alone, at the edge of the main path.
The old sign stood there on its weathered side, crooked, covered in snow, tilted at an angle that suggested long surrender. She looked at it for a while.
Quietly, she reached down and brushed the snow off it.
'Stay out! Only death inside!' read the faded paint, in her own old handwriting, from a lifetime ago.
The dragon pushed it upright on the side of the path, packed the base firm with her claws, checked it, and then turned and went back home, her tail dragging its long, contented line through the snow behind her.
As she left, a cold wind blew through the pass.
For a brief second, one might have imagined that the silhouette of a person was standing there. But as the gale passed and the snow blew on, nothing remained.
The sign tilted again, slowly.