A New Star Chapter 108 (Patreon)

I spent the next couple days showing the two around before we returned to the estate. We hadn’t gone that far, just some distance east and west through the mountains, but not even far enough to hit either empires borders. Not that the borders mattered in the mountains, but it was useful as a reference for distance and to orientate oneself with where one was in the Wilds. Not that the borders had markers up here in the mountains, but still.

Nor did I take the two of them any further, even to the point where they could see the Shiverwood, as it was still too early for that. In other circumstances, that might have been chaffing for them, but unlike exploration in the Settled Lands, the Wilds were far more dangerous and taken far more seriously. Even considering how little we had done, the two had been rather nervous, and showing them a lot of the dangers and beasts and what to expect in the mountains had only gone a little way to settling them down. It was another reason to do shorter, less challenging expeditions at the start, letting them acclimate to the Wilds and start to learn. It would be good to keep at least some sense of fear and nervousness, but I needed them able to function without locking up or being too nervous to push forward at a critical time.

We returned to the estate to find it much the same as always, with one key exception. In the time we had been gone, Angela had taken the train north to join us, which I had been expecting, though I hadn’t thought Lester would have been done with her initial training and preparation quite so soon. It turned out, after a short conversation, that he was not done with her initial training, though she had gotten most of it. Instead, he had sent her up here quickly the day before with a for-your-eyes-only message that he didn’t trust through any other message system or network. It was a short note, just stating that he had found a critical problem related to the ‘group of interest,’ which is what we were calling that weird death cult that was still around and causing trouble. Considering the links they had to several notable events, if he was saying he had found something important regarding them, we would need to take care of it, or at least investigate it quickly before the trail went cold.

Luckily, my only real obligation coming up was my fifteenth birthday, which was still months away, and wouldn’t necessarily be all that much of a celebration. Considering that Lester’s message had been marked as urgent but not emergency, I made plans for us to take the early morning train the next morning. That would put is in the capital in the middle of the afternoon, but unless I wanted to have the kids really push themselves to get their faster by running, that was about the best we could expect. I could make my way their faster using The Dark and several other affinities, but I didn’t think any of the other three were up for something like that quite yet. Even if they said they could do it, I wouldn’t want to arrive in the capital with all of them totally exhausted and needing a couple days of recovery.

Angela was impressed with their quarters, but then again, the three of them were pretty impressed with the estate overall, even the two from noble houses, so I took it with a grain of salt. After seeing them settled, I moved down to the lab and grabbed some potions and elixirs. Whatever we were going to be walking into tomorrow, and likely the next week, I wanted us to be a little more prepared than the few things I had at the Count’s capital estate. That also brought up the thought that we should find somewhere ourselves to use as a base of operations, preferably something we could secure without a lot of notice so it wasn’t obvious we were operating out of it, but that could wait for another time.

The morning train was a very early train, and that meant we had to be even earlier, considering we had to get up, do our morning routines, get packed, and make our way down to Umberton and the station. It was still quite dark when we left the estate, and the first creeping tendrils of gray weren’t on the horizon until after the train was pulling out of the farthest northern station. Some day in the future, possibly a closer future than many thought, Umberton would be just another stop on the northern spur. For now, however, it was the last stop before the Wilds, and it would stay that way for a handful of years, at the very least.

The ride to the capital itself was rather tedious, with only a few stops along the way and nothing much exciting happening. I suppose it was good for the others’ nerves, and for the train business in general, that we weren’t attacked or had some spectacular breakdown, but it made the trip rather dull. Without access to a lab or a library, there was little I could do on the way, taking some time to concentrate on my affinities and try to work on them as I could. The one thing I had found about The Dark from all the travel was that I could keep myself anchored to a moving vehicle even when immersed in that stranger realm. It would have been a real pain if entering The Dark had caused the train to leave me behind with a whoosh.

When we reached the capital, the sun was well progressed through the clear blue sky, the Fall season having progressed just a bit. The days were growing shorter, and I had estimated the planet’s tilt to be a bit on the deeper end. Given that, the seasons were a little harsher at the extremes, and the days got longer and shorter to a greater extent than might have been on other worlds. Considering the length of the day in winter, it wasn’t all that bad, but it was something to keep in mind as my exploration branched out.

“Lester,” I greeted the knight when we reached the Count’s estate.

“Lady,” he said with a proper salute. We shed our cloaks and traveling gear before joining him in the dining room, where he had papers laid out on the table. I noticed the butler frowning at the use of the room as a meeting room, but he would just have to suffer in silence for the rest of the day.

“What’s the situation?” I asked once we were seated.

“Activity from the cult,” he said calmly, though there was a tenseness in his jaw that belied his even tone. “The twins dug up some dirt when they were…investigating a certain merchant. It looks similar to what we encountered a few years ago, with them using several merchants as a front to smuggle goods that include death and necromancy related items.”

“New year, same trick?” I asked with a frown, quirking a brow at the man as I examined the papers on the table. Unlike what many were still using, the Count only stocked the finest of writing paper, like writing on silk compared to rawhide when considering other paper that was currently available.

“They’re being more careful about it, My Lady,” Lester explained, showing me a particular page. “See here; there’s a flow of goods out of the northern gate that is small but noticeable, given that one has access to certain logbooks. It looks like they’re moving the goods through the city and on to some destination in the farm land to the northeast.”

“What’s up there?” I asked mildly, still reading through the papers.

“Wheat and emmer farms tended by simply farmers, mostly,” Lester replied. “There’s a large city a day’s ride on a standard horse northeast, Cambria, and then there’s a lot of nothing for close to a hundred miles. That’s if one kept going northeast or north. To the east, the Vyn river flows southeast all the way to the border, surrounded by dense woods, most of which is still considered the main royal hunting ground to this day.”

“No particular structures, ruins, dungeons, etc. of note?” I asked.

“A few small, C- and D-rank dungeons, farmed to within an inch of their life,” he answered with a shrug. “Other than that, it’s mostly farmland. Cambria is a hub for trading wheat, emmer, flax, cotton, potatoes, and alcohol. Goods coming upriver from the southeastern provinces and Salere pass through the city, mainly lumber and fish, while the crops and alcohol products flow downriver. While it’s an important hub, it’s not particularly noteworthy.”

“But a disruption there would cause a serious impact on food supplies,” I stated.

“Yes, that’s true, but it wouldn’t be as severe as one might think,” Lester said, shaking his head. “There’s plenty of preserved stock, plenty of dungeons to farm for meat and edibles, and a lot of easy trade that many cities can do if they’re willing to tighten their belt a bit. Your own province imports practically no food, My Lady, and the west gets almost half its food from trade with the western empire. If this is some play of the cult’s to disrupt the country by disrupting the food supply, it will not be as effective a plan as they might think.”

“Then what else is in the area?” I asked before holding up a hand. “Hold. How sure are we now that Cambria is the target?”

“We’re quite sure,” said one of the twins. “We’ve tracked shipments to the city in the last two weeks and they stay there. We haven’t been able to find anyone smuggling necromantic goods out of Cambria at all, so unless they’re using some kind of portal or other rare affinity or enchantment, its all staying in the city.”

“Troubling,” I replied, finishing reading through the paperwork they had prepared. I turned to the other three, saying, “I know the three of you are interested in the Wilds, and we will be exploring there, but they aren’t going anywhere. We’re going to be spending quite a lot of time, unfortunately, trying to clean up this mess, since even the Royal Guard doesn’t seem capable of stopping whatever is happening here. Rest tonight and be ready to move tomorrow. We’ve got some long days ahead of us.”

Turning back to Lester and the twins, I said, “You three. Keep the tracking going and find every single bolthole and nook and cranny these bastards are occupying in the capital. Get a concise list together and be ready to move; we’re going to go to Cambria, find what they’re up to, then hit them hard. Be ready to move at a moment’s notice going forward; I don’t want to give them a chance to pack everything up if they realize we’re on to them before we can bring the hammer down.”

“Understood,” Lester said, turning to give the twins instructions.

I left him to manage them and went to seek out food first before doing an hour of alchemy. I had some supplies here at the Count’s and wasn’t shy about using them; even though the cult was some kind of death cult being run by liches, it was more than likely I would be getting some fresh supplies soon. After all, I didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about taking everything that wasn’t nailed down, and some of the stuff that was, from these wackos, and I saw loot in the future. Also, having access to the diverse markets and suppliers of the capital city really helped a great deal.

After a night of deep sleep, I was up before much of the household the next morning. Lester was up, but the bloodshot eyes and shaky demeanor told me he hadn’t been down yet, so I let him be. He knew what he was about, and if he needed a night without sleep to coordinate, so be it. He was better off than a lot of people, only displaying a few signs of tiredness, rather than many symptoms of total exhaustion.

I met the other three for breakfast half an hour later, eating quickly before we made ready to travel again. Given the distance involved, I was tempted to take the train, but it wasn’t far enough to Cambria to warrant that, in my opinion, and it was much easier for four people without carts, pack animals, or even mounts, to get lost in the terrain and disappear from notice. I did not want to announce our movements or what we were up to, at all, and the four of us left the house at different times, right as the sun was cracking the horizon, all with our hoods up and moving with a purpose.

We reconvened only after making it through the city gates, meeting at a spot a quarter mile down the road, which we then followed for another five miles before veering off. Fortunately, the way to Cambria wasn’t all that complicated, and we didn’t need to follow the set routes to get there. I would lose a little more time going over some rough terrain than make our movements obvious. Of course, that only worked at first; we couldn’t just plow across farmers’ fields after we were out of the woods without leaving a great big trail. Besides, running through the middle of farms was a pretty obvious thing, and it would get a lot of people irate and cause a huge fuss. Better to spend some time on the roads and blend in. There were plenty of other groups of travelers our size or larger, all of them making their way along the route between the two cities. Some of them were adventurers, some where merchants, and some were just people who needed to run an errand or some such. In such a setting, we hardly stood out at all.

There were only two towns along the road that were worthy of the title, though there were plenty of farmers homes and a few small villages. Despite the rising industrial revolution, life was little changed for much of the country at the moment, but that was how these things went. I remembered the stories of the electrification of my home world, something that was considered so important, the governments had spent significant sums to get it done quickly. Even the most remote areas had had power lines run to them, no matter the cost, just to get the world fully running off electricity. I didn’t necessarily see the same pattern going the exact same way here, but that was largely due to the influence of affinities and magic in the mix, something that hadn’t been there to impact my world the same way.

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