Fatima VII

PA 1 – April

Deep in the frozen taiga that covered the northern reaches of the world laid the city of Almawqid. Located between the cities of Kottakawa and Alba, the small city was the capital of Queen Fatima, one of several monarchs who made up the Northern Alliance. It sat on the White River, a small collection of log cabins and tents hidden away behind thick wooden walls. The river—often frozen—was the lifeblood of the city, granting its people access to clean water, easy trade with its neighbors, and, most important to the Queen, a surplus of fish to feed its denizens.

The White River was where the city’s Queen was currently sitting, legs kicking out off the wooden pier which jutted out over the half-frozen river. To her side were several pots, filled with wriggling worms and flailing fish, while the Queen herself cast out another line from her primitive fishing rod, ready to contribute in her own way to the prosperity of her people.

And, for a moment, the Queen was at peace.

Then she heard the footsteps of a particularly exasperated attendant, and she felt in her bones that her peaceful morning was going to vanish with the morning dew.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Not that she’d let it go without a fight.

“Hm?” Fatima hummed, glancing up at the new arrival. “Oh, Nadia! You here to join me?”

“Not today, My Queen,” her tired secretary shook her head with a sigh. “Some of us actually have jobs to do, remember?”

“Eh?” Fatima stared up at the other woman with wide, innocent eyes. “Really? Damn, that’s a shame. Well, come back and join me when you’re done! The fish seem to be really biting today!”

“My Queen. Please. You know that I was including you in that ‘some of us.’ Now get up. We have work to do.”

“But the river only just started thawing!” Fatima wailed melodramatically as Nadia grabbed onto her coat and began dragging her away from the pier. Her citizens, willful traitors all, ignored her utterly. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this!? Just a couple hours, then I’ll get to work, I swear!”

“You are the one who made all this work for us, in case you forgot,” Nadia scoffed, ignoring Fatima’s antics with practiced ease. “Now take responsibility and help me out with tallying up this year’s harvest! I am not doing this alone again!”

“Gah! But that’s so boring!”

“So is fishing!”

“You take that back!”

--

“That’s a seventy-five percent crop failure for Grain Seed One,” Nadia told her, leading her through the greenhouse. “Grain Seed Two did slightly better, with a fifty percent crop failure, while Grain Seed Three was a complete failure with no successful harvests.”

“Noted,” Fatima nodded, letting out a disappointed sigh. Placing down different colored rocks beneath each type of plant—the color corresponding to their success—she moved on to the next batch. “What about the medicinal plants? How did they fair?”

“Well…”

It had been only a few weeks after her first winter in this world that Fatima had realized two things. First, she was completely unprepared to live through such a harsh winter in a world without modern heating. Second, her people were also unable to survive long-term in such a harsh environment either.

That wasn’t to say they didn’t know what they were doing. They knew when and where to fish in the river, when and where to hunt for game, and which wild plants were good for eating and which were good for medicine. However, all that knowledge was built up as a nomadic tribe, and now that they’d settled down, there was significantly less food to go around. Normally, this would mean that her people would just return to their nomadic ways, but that was also impossible thanks to the other settled civilizations along the river blocking them from leaving. Essentially, a nomadic civilization had become a settled one in a place they were unable to survive long-term.

Once she realized that, Fatima (after a brief bout of panic) fell back on what she knew best. Science. More specifically, the scientific method.

Fatima didn’t know how to farm. This was obvious. She didn’t understand the first thing about agriculture, and also had no tools on hand to begin farming in earnest anyway. However, what she did understand was how to solve a problem through repetitive trial and error. As such she’d immediately begun setting up farms on the outskirts of the small city, each one dedicated to different plants to figure out which ones could be grown as a long-term food source.

In the end, the farms only saw middling success. While most of the plants were local, and thus able to grow marginally well, they weren’t truly a domesticated crop, but wild plants that had been replanted by humans instead of nature. By August they had a harvest, but one that was poor and gained them less than normal foraging.

So she’d switched tracks. Winter had fallen, and she had a bunch of seeds she couldn’t plant due to the snow. That led into the question of how to plant crops in the winter, which of course led into the answer of ‘a greenhouse.’

Building the greenhouse had not been easy. Little more than a large wooden frame with a white linen canvas, some might even say it wasn’t a greenhouse at all. But it kept the weather out and some of the plants had managed to grow, so she’d call it a success. Even if it wasn’t very efficient, or had a draft, or was only marginally warmer than the outside…

It worked! And that was what counted! …Though she was going to rebuild a better one once spring came in earnest.

“…And that leaves us with the mint leaves, which all successfully grew,” Nadia smiled proudly, showing off the last batch of plants in the greenhouse. Four simple clay pots tucked in the corner of the greenhouse, some half-dead mint plants growing out of them. “They aren’t as healthy as a wild specimen, but we had some people test them and all of them agreed they tasted fine.”

“Really? That’s good,” Fatima smiled back, before the rest of Nadia said registered. “Wait, Nadia? In the future, don’t just give out experimental products to people. Even if you know there isn’t anything wrong with them. Please.”

Nadia blinked, but shrugged. “As you say, My Queen. Anyway, that’s the last of them. Do you have any other questions?”

Fatima hummed, glancing over the greenhouse with a critical eye. “Why did so many of them only bloom now? Do you think it’s from the warmer weather?”

“Perhaps, that was a theory several others put forth as well. But from what we’ve observed, I believe it’s because they all only started growing after we fixed the early issues with the greenhouse. I theorize they were dormant before that, allowing them to all begin their lifecycles at the same time.”

“As good a theory as any other,” Fatima nodded, leaning down to get a closer look at the wild grains. “But one we won’t be able to prove until next year. What about the grain seeds? I noticed that only the imported ones grew with any kind of success, even if half of them did fail.”

“I’m unsure what exactly the difference is between the imported grains and the local ones. However, I did notice that they looked much healthier when they were growing compared to the local grains.”

Fatima frowned. “We got these seeds through Xian, who in turn got them from trade with the Sea King, who Xian believes got them—legally or otherwise—from someone further south. And yet, they somehow survived in a colder climate better than the local seeds did. Not only that, but their stalks are thicker, and their husks have more seeds. By all accounts, there’s no reason for a southern plant to have survived—nay, thrived—in such a harsh environment.”

“What are you getting at, My Queen?”

“…I don’t believe these grains are natural. No, rather, I believe they’ve been domesticated.”

“…Domesticated? Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do here?”

“Yes, it is,” Fatima frowned, rising back to her feet. “Which means that, either someone successfully figured out how to selectively breed plants quickly enough to produce at least semi-modern domesticated grains… or agriculture is something that already existed before we got here, and we’re just the ones unlucky enough to not get to start with it.”

“Is that really such a bad thing?” Nadia asked, frowning. “Doesn’t that mean we can just import more seeds like these? If we can skip the domestication step and move straight onto growing crops, then isn’t that a good thing?”

“It is a bad thing, not just for what it is, but for what it represents,” Fatima scowled, clenching her fists. “I’d thought that, since everyone else around us had a similar start, that everyone in the world also had at least similar starts. Even powerful states like the Sea Kingdom started from a similar, small village. However, agriculture, in any form, cannot be considered ‘equal’ to a barely-settled nomadic tribe. And if these people have agriculture… well, what else could they have? Do they have metallurgy? Medicine? Stoneworks? How much technology do our rivals have that we don’t have? …Just how far behind are we, really?”

“My Queen…” Nadia sighed, laying her hand lightly on her shoulder. Then, without warning, she reached forward and snapped her fingers in front of her Queen’s face, causing her to yelp in shock. “Stop moping!”

“Wha—!? I am not moping!”

“Sure you aren’t,” Nadia rolled her eyes. “You were all ‘boo-hoo, some people on the other side of the world have better plants than me! My life is over! We’re so doomed! Waah!’”

“If you’re trying to piss me off, it’s working.”

“Good, because I am.”

Fatima scoffed, turning away from her secretary to hide the small smile that had grown on her face. “It’s not just the crops I’m worried about. There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about, technologies that could destroy us easily if we let them. This may not be as big of an issue now, but a competent ruler could easily snowball into an unstoppable threat with an advantage that big.”

“So? What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know! We could… call a meeting, maybe?” She blinked, realizing that might actually be a good idea. “We can set one up between everyone else in the Alliance, gather us all into one place. Bounce some ideas between us, share what we know. I’ll need to tell them about this anyway, so…”

“So, you’re just going to dump this problem on the others and ask them to fix it for you?” Nadia asked dryly.

“I’m not dumping it on them! I’ll help too!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why do you doubt everything I say? Is it my face? Do I have an untrustworthy smile?”

“Yes.”

“Wow, you’re really not pulling your punches today, huh?”

“It’s hard not to, when you make it so easy.”

Fatima rolled her eyes with a huff, yet feeling much less tense than earlier. Mentally, she tallied another point in the ‘Nadia’ column. Her own was starting to feel depressingly empty “Let’s just… Let’s just get to work. Nadia, send word to the other monarchs. I’m calling a meeting.”

Nadia nodded solemnly, wearing the faintest of smug grins. “Very well, My Queen. I’ll send out the scouts immediately. Is there anything in particular that you want them to say?”

“Hm,” she hummed, thinking to herself. “The winter snows have melted… but it would be much easier for everyone to travel by boat. Tell them that we’re meeting here, in Almawqid, and that the meeting is non-negotiable. Make sure the scouts going to Kottakawa and Vila Rosa emphasize that, please. I don’t want a repeat of the last solstice meeting.”

“Understood. Is there anything else?”

“Indeed,” Fatima nodded solemnly, turning to look at Nadia with a stern expression. “There is one more thing. Tell them to bring their own fishing rods—I refuse to share.”

Nadia closed her eyes and, taking a deep breath, nodded. “Hide your rods until after the meeting, understood.”

“Wait no!”

9,875 God-Kings Remain