Author's Nightmare: Chapter 148 (Patreon)

Shango POV: Day 142

Current Wealth: 281 gold 34 silver 47 copper

I’d been working hard on making sure our place in Elswick was secure. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. It wasn’t that we were relatively poor, still, by noble standards, or that we lacked manpower, or that most of our forces were off elsewhere being heroes. It wasn’t that we were seen as illegitimate by a lot of Elswick’s powers. Well, actually, it was all of those things to some extent. Mostly though, it was that if Lord Viras decided to make his move and come for us, nobody would stand in his way. Not merchants, certainly not nobles. Nobody. 

The man was powerful, established and scary. Meanwhile we were only two of those things, at best, and plenty didn’t even have the intellect to realise that much. Our fundamental issue was a lack of deterrent, especially with our forces split. So that was what I got to work on. 

I couldn’t win over the nobility, they cared about time and legacy too much. I might not even get them on our side in a generation. The mercers and middle-classes might be easier, but that would mean diverting precious funds, and only to get a meagre few who Viras could probably buy away from us anyway.

No, we needed actual loyalty, and we needed it from a source the rest of this city wouldn’t have poisoned already. So I turned my focus to the peasants.

The good thing about poor people- especially poor people in the past- is that they’re so used to being shat on by wider society that it’s ridiculously easy to get them on your side. Hell, you don’t even need to stop the shitting. I saw people calling my father a genius back on Earth while he was having people piss into bottles for his sweatshops to meet quota. Like some bizarre, large-scale stockholm syndrome affecting over half the population. 

And it meant that you could turn that zeal into much, much stronger zeal by actually engaging in a bit of philanthropy. 

It was kind of ridiculous. No, not kind of. It was just ridiculous. Altruism was so alien to this shitty planet that I was practically inventing it here. How much of that was our edgy teenaged writing, and how much based in reality?

I didn’t care, the important thing was that it benefited our plans a lot. I started looking into holding a ball for specifically the peasantry of Elswick. Such things were not generally done, and suggesting the idea to my men got me mixed responses. Still, I got to work preparing the funds and ended up settling on a seventy gold budget.

It hurt to use up such a big slice of our savings, but it’d hurt more to have our home stormed by Viras’ men and watch all our shit get stolen. Besides, I was already saving money by using the Velaharo Manor as our venue.

Which, of course, caused its own problem, too. This time of a domestic kind. Phelia called on me shortly after I started making my preparations, and she looked incredibly unhappy.

“Something the matter?” I asked her, my husband-senses nascent and undeveloped compared to some, but still vibrating with terror at the sight of her worsening mood.

“Yes.” She replied, voice dripping with false sweetness. A lie, I knew. The scent of sugar luring unwitting flies into the mouth of a venus plant. I watched her cautiously. “Dear,” Phelia began, “I just heard that you are, apparently, intending on hosting a ball of the peasantry…In our home.”

I kept my face level, knowing that if I showed even a miniscule crack Phelia would pounce on the weakness without even hesitation.

“That’s correct.” I told her. “We need allies, and since the nobility and mercers are beyond reach I thought it’d be best to go for the city’s peasant class.”

Phelia’s jaw tightened, subtly and slightly. It was the sort of expression she’d mastered, conveying absolutely nothing to me except an urge to take back whatever I’d just said. But I didn’t. 

“And you decided to do so by hosting a party for them.” Phelia began, as if she were merely observing some idle fact. As if it were mere coincidence, not intended by her, that her words were coming in a tone that promised an ever greater length of time without sex for every syllable she conveyed. 

“I did.” I told her, deciding to let her obvious anger sizzle and cool against the ice of my calm. It did the exact opposite, as if Phelia took my lack of reciprocated irritation as some personal challenge, inspiring her to ever greater heights.

“And do you care to explain why you chose to host this party, of which the main guests are unwashed, uncultured peasants, within my family’s thousand year-old home?”

Ah, there it was. The crux of the issue. I probably should’ve guessed from the start.

“Do you have a more specific problem with that?” I asked, deciding to let her try, at least, and communicate what was fundamentally no more than an icky feeling in her gut. If nothing else it would be interesting to watch how stupid such a clever woman could sound when venting pure bigotry from her mouth. 

“A specific problem?” Phelia glared. “Other than opening my home to thievery and plunder?”

I sighed. “This will earn us the favour of the most populated group in Elswick, and we need all the favour we can get. After this I’m going to make connections with dissenters among them, spread charity, do things to make the Belahonts a very beneficial force for the peasantry. Make it so that they stand to tangibly lose if something happens to us.”

That’s the trick with causing a rebellion. It’s not what you do to the people, not really. Humans are robust, complacent, long-suffering creatures and will shrug off any number of vicious cruelties or prolonged societal tortures. It’s what you give them, and then threaten to take away. All the biggest revolts of history followed a period of better living standards giving way to worse. 

But Phelia didn’t have my modern historic context to draw on, and even if she had her mind was clouded by tribalism and prejudice. It was like trying to explain colour to someone who insisted on viewing the world through red lenses. 

“You really expect gratitude from these people?” She scoffed. “When have they ever given that?”

“When have they ever been given a reason to?” I shot back, before I could stop myself. That lit the fuse on a “rant grenade” which I absorbed the blast of at point-blank range. It was all I could do not to fall off my fucking chair as Phelia just. Kept. Going. If it wasn’t their being allowed to live on their lands, it was their lack of work being tolerated. If not that, their free defence from all the hostile monsters of the world. I’d never realised just how much she had on her chest about poor people before.

Well, now I knew.

“Phelia, I understand what you’re saying.” I soothed. “But we still need to do this, you just don’t understand the lower classes as much as me.”

“Why?” She snapped. “Because of your madman brother?”

She paused, then, eyes widening, as if she’d somehow crossed a line.

“Yes.” I told her. “Because of my madman brother, and more specifically because of our friends, and a thousand other experiences I’ve had. You can trust Solitaire to invent guns from the future, can you not trust me to do this?”

It was, perhaps, the most ridiculously unfair and cruel thing I could possibly have done. But it was necessary. Phelia, though, only glared.

“Say no,” She growled, “And I’m placing you below your violent savage of a brother mere moments after forcing you to admit his madness. Very slick, Shango. Very clever.” She turned, and stormed out without another word. I didn’t go after her.

Seeing her not only recognise, but dissect my attempted manipulation so instantly, I reckoned the very least I owed her was a bit of time to herself. 

Besides, I’d gotten suddenly tired of speaking with intellectual equals. It really did take a lot out of a man.