The next morning, I left early through the front entrance, asking one of the Baron’s lackeys to find me a horse. Before I could escape into town by myself, Orleander found out and decided to accompany me. I sighed. It wouldn’t kill me to let him tag along, but the man wasn’t a trained warrior or even a military leader.

On our way out, we passed Kan’on, who had not moved an inch from his original position on the far side of the courtyard. Again, I wanted to walk up to the man and strangle him. There he was, perpetuating the imagine of unflappable weapon master meditating in isolation in a distance place, unconcerned with the world… and to make it worse he had to be so damned pretty while doing it. Wasn’t the image of these guys supposed to be scraggly, half-starved old men sitting in a dirty cave somewhere, chasing enlightenment?

I left him to his business of being a once in a generation martial genius and kicked my horse out the front gates, Orleander following close behind, and the silent-again Ms. Black following closely behind him.

Overnight, the town had undergone a startling change. Those displaced from the outskirts of town did their best to integrate and shack up with those who came into town with the caravan. As a result, the central area had turned into a town within a town. Despite the circumstances, it looked like a cozy place to be and I wish I could strip off the armor and join them, maybe with a drink or two. I told myself that it was the ever-present mud that stopped me.

The actual residents of the town tried their best to lay low, only coming out to conduct necessary business or collect food for their family. Many concerned faces peaked out through windows as we rode by. Shops had opened, but the activity compared to the day before was almost nonexistent.

The nearer to the edge of town we rode, the fewer people we saw, up until we stumbled into an impromptu construction camp. Hundreds of people, presumably volunteers, split and sawed and chopped and shaved at lumber in various states of being broken down into spikes as long as I was tall. I hesitated to call them spears, they were much cruder than that, but what they lacked in refinement they made up for in sturdiness.

Clyde paced up and down the line of construction, supervising the plans I’d ordered him to carry out. The volunteers processed all the excess lumber waiting to be shipped down river into giant caltrops of various sizes. Some only as large as my knees were tall, others as tall as I was. The point was to make it next to impossible for the Carvers to jump the barricade or scurry through it, without the spiky contraptions slowing them down enough for the men at arms to make a real fight of it.

Good thing I’d not asked Clyde to do any of the construction himself. Left to him, the spikes would come out plated in gold, encrusted in powdered diamond, and tipped with deepsteel. The man couldn’t help himself. He still strode around in that deeps damned armor, blinding everybody nearby with reflections from its overly polished surface.

“Your Grace, there are a few things we could do to speed things up.” Orleander edged his horse up next to mine so he didn’t have to raise his voice over the noise.

“Like what? Seems like it’s going ok to me.”

“For starters, everyone is just focusing on doing all of the jobs of creation themselves. It would be more efficient to split them into teams, each focusing on a single job.”

“You think it would make the work go faster, then?”

“Efficiency, in this case, is speed. It would increase their efficiency, their familiarity with their assigned work, and therefore result in an overall faster completion rate.”

I thought about it for a second, but soon gave up. Logistics… efficiency… these weren’t my thing.

“If you think it will help, then do what you think you should,” I said.

Orleander bowed briefly before turning his horse to go speak to Clyde, Ms. Black shadowing him the whole way. After a few minutes of discussion, the two of them starting splitting people off into teams, each team carrying similar tools, and organizing them into stations.

I sat on my horse, not interfering, as the work site descended into organized chaos as everyone adjusted to their new location and function. The lumber was sorted according to what state it was in, then work slowly started up again.

Orleander paced his horse along the lines of workers, observing for a while, before slowing making his way back in my direction.

I had to hand it to him, I could already see a difference. The man was a spendthrift, but he knew what he was talking about and might even be a bit reliable.

“Are you satisfied with the result?” I asked Orleander as he fell in beside me.

“I think it has accomplished as much as it could, given the circumstances. Anything more would complicate matters too much.”

I grunted, observing the work. I turned toward him and gave him a small, firm nod, then turned my horse away and urged it toward the forest. The Baron’s men had already started trickling in and they gathered at the very edge of the north end of town, hopefully to intercept any attempts at scouting or attacks.

The Baron’s man in charge, I never caught his name or rank, had started organizing the men into squads, integrating the Count’s guard force among them, and as more men trickled in from the surrounding lands, adding them to the existing structure. Scouts entered and left the area, scouring the forest for any clues for what was to come.

Satisfied that the fighting force had been taken well in hand, and not seeing anything wrong with the disposition of their disposition, I continued until we arrived at the edge of the forest and closed my eyes. Orleander and Ms. Black stopped next to me, wordless.

I let my senses touch the nearby currents, trying to let the Flow tell me of anything unusual. The usual things fought for my attention; the activity from the men at arms behind me and beside me, the movement of the land and the trees, even some animals still darted through the forest, out of sight maybe, but not escaping my observation.

After a few minutes, a deep thrum slowly came into my awareness, softly underlying all the currents I could sense. It’s presence subtlety pressured my awareness, barely within my ability to sense, and it came from the north. So, they were out there, the Inculids, doing something, but I couldn’t tell what.

Even deeper than the thrum I felt almost imperceptible little strands of intent snaking their way along the currents, too faint to tell where they went, but I had my suspicions. It seemed likely they could read the currents the same as me. Was this what my own attempts at reaching out felt like when I did it?

One thing I knew for certain though, I couldn’t control anyone’s actions, at least not directly. I could pull a few tricks out, like I did on Clyde, but that wasn’t the same as puppeteering the Carvers, like the Inculids seemed to do. Not that I’d tried anyway.

I left the Flow, unnerved. Some people out there could affect the Flow with just their sheer willpower, as Kan’on learned to do, but it wasn’t the same as using the Flow. I’d only met one other being who could, and that meeting wasn’t a friendly one. Being close to others that could use the Flow as I could, better even, placed me at an uncomfortable disadvantage.

I turned my horse back toward town. Without knowing what the damn Inculids did out there, there wasn’t anything I could do by standing around moping.

“They’re out there Orleander, I can feel them. I hate having to wait, having to hold back to protect the town, allowing them to prepare however they wish.”

“What does it feel like, their presence out there?”

“Like a deep thrumming in my chest that I can barely perceive. Like the Deep Ones they are. They use my tricks against me. Maybe they’re their tricks, since they are Deep Ones. Either way, none of it bodes well for us.”

“Should we attack before they do?”

“I want to, very badly, but the entrance is a natural choke point, which favors the defenders too heavily. We would take massive losses and gain little.”

I reined my horse around abruptly, and urge it toward town, not wanting to stick around and dwell on the things I couldn’t do. Orleander and Ms. Black hurried to catch up.

As I approached town, I slowed and allowed the horse to walk at an even, slow pace through the middle of road. I’d learned an important lesson in my youth, from my father, that in times of trouble it was important for the leaders to be seen, and to see. Even if it wasn’t all that bad in the moment and nobody yet suffered, being seen early and often did much to reassure those without power. It gave them a sense that somebody in charge was doing something.

I’d thought it a bunch of bullshit, but at the time I had been making assumptions from a position that had never had to worry about anything, let alone being powerless. Later though, after everyone had died and I was being dragged through the world by my curse, I had learned much about being powerless.

So, I rode through town slowly, making eye contact where I could, giving out reassuring nods, and generally appearing to be and imposing and confident leader. Appearances mattered. If it wasn’t for the people around me, Orleander, Ms. Black, the Baron, even Kan’on, I would be a nail-biting mess holed up somewhere dwelling on all of the things changing too rapidly.

Irony there, that I would be change averse when my life was comprised of nothing but changing scenery, people coming in and out of my life at the drop of a hat. Life was change, to me. Yet here I was, dreading the specific change in the curse that had allowed me to be here at all. Yes… it had allowed it. That thought terrified me more than anything else.

We arrived back at the estate, Kan’on in his now-customary position as wise martial sage in the corner of the courtyard. I let the help take the horses. The Baron had some good people working for him. He might be spineless, but he knew how to pick good people.

I sequestered myself in that same cozy room with the fireplace, alone with my thoughts, waiting for the hammer to drop.