Ruthless: Path of Conquest

“James will be back home early tomorrow, then?” Mina confirmed.

“Correct,” the Artificial Spider said.

“He had better be,” she muttered. “James is not going to leave me stuck with all this Fisher Kingdom business. He said he wanted to be a conqueror. That means he runs things, not his poor wife. I already have the baby…”

A knock came at the door.

“The next group is here.” Yulia’s soft voice carried through the wall. She lowered it. “Should I tell them that you need some time to rest—I mean, I can make up an excuse…”

“No, don’t do that,” Mina said firmly. “I have to be able to conduct the business of the Fisher Kingdom in James’s absence. These people have to develop confidence in me. That won’t happen if I’m ineffective the first time he’s gone for a couple of days.”

A pause. “So he won’t be back today, then?” Yulia asked.

Mina smiled. “You miss him too?”

“Things are a lot easier when we’re all together,” Yulia replied. “Abhi’s asking about him too. He likes being told that James will be back soon every hour or so. Preferably by a human rather than a spider monster.”

That made Mina frown. The little boy was in a delicate place, with who-knew-what fate having befallen his family. Probably something horrible. Abhi seemed to have latched onto James, but he wasn’t here.

“Well, send in the next group,” Mina said. “One challenge at a time. We’ll spend some time with Abhi later.”

Thank goodness for Yulia, she thought. Not only had she handled dealing with the Child Rescue Commission on Mina’s behalf, but Yulia was also screening all the other people who wanted to see Mina and sorting them in order of priority.

In her gentle way, she could ask people to wait without them becoming offended or acting self-important—even when the individuals seemed like the self-important type. Mina could hear some of the interactions through the wall. This could have been so much worse without her.

The next party to enter their living room—no, now it was an audience chamber!—was the Salvage Commission. Mina dealt with them as quickly as she could. The Chair of the Commission, Taylor Bunting, explained that the whole crew had spent the day going through ruins, and they had experienced lots of success. Mina tried to mirror her enthusiasm and not show how weary she was of dealing with people today—while also moving the conversation toward what the Salvage Commission needed, as quickly as she could.

They wanted to know what to do with all the usable items and equipment they were finding in the old apartment buildings. Mina gently encouraged them to take items that would be immediately useful and put them to use. As for the other supplies—the furniture, carpeting, clothing, and anything else that had somehow been spared from water damage in the time they had been away—Mina assigned them a space in the community warehouse the Construction Commission was working on. If they had extra time in the day that wasn’t spent collecting additional salvage, they could begin an inventory. She resolved that she herself would pay the storage area a visit later and see if the Robard household needed anything.

Departments of government were proliferating, it seemed. Everyone to whom James had given an assignment was taking it as seriously as if it was the only task on which the whole new country’s survival depended.

Almost all of them had come for some clarification on their instructions, and Mina couldn’t just tell them that there was no greater specificity to be had—that James was operating on intuition and had no larger plan.

The second that idea gained any currency, people would start to doubt this place. As Mina had needed to remind herself several times today alone, she was a part of founding and running a real nation. If it collapsed for any reason, people would probably die.

If I had thought about that, I might not have let you go even for a couple of days, Mina thought. Not so soon after you started this place, at least.

Yulia knocked at the door again.

“Who goes there?” Mina called, smiling.

“It’s a man named Jeremiah Rotter,” Yulia replied, her voice guarded.

“Hrm.” Mina resisted the urge to tell her to send him away. I don’t have the energy for this right now…

She and James had already discussed him, after they spoke about the Wendigo threat and before James went to say goodbye to the children.

“Why do you think that man decided to volunteer an oath of loyalty to you personally?” Mina had asked. “There’s no apparent benefit in it for him, and it changed the nature of the citizenship pledge completely.”

She did not particularly mind the citizenship pledge becoming an oath of loyalty, but she was skeptical of Rotter’s motives. What did he expect to gain from this? Surely he would expect some form of favor from James later on. She did not like the idea of giving a stranger a blank check that he might try to cash in at some future date.

“He saw a slight oddity in the way the oath was formulated, and he made his own judgment as to what he wanted to say.” James shrugged. He wore a mischievous expression. He was clearly still in an elevated mood. “Why would it trouble me if someone decided to advocate for our interests, entirely on his own? With luck, I may acquire more such advocates.”

This, Mina suspected, was the most dangerous part of her husband’s nature. His willingness to embrace convenient solutions to problems, even when they might cause problems down the line. Or when they were wrong.

Since they had been together, she had seen this quality of his recede further and further beneath the surface of his personality. He had worked hard to become a better version of himself. But the tiger could not fully change his stripes.

Her response came more forcefully than she’d intended.

“Be careful about that! Before the System, people like that ran things in many countries. People who lived on trading favors and accumulating power. This man is undoubtedly cut from the same cloth. He will think you owe him something.”

James scowled. “Then he’ll be wrong. I saved the man’s life. I think he’s still repaying that.”

“You’ve saved a lot of people’s lives, skapi. But this man leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”

“That’s all the better. He leaves a bad impression on more than just you, I’m sure. But his character is so obviously different from mine that it can’t stick to me. People like that have their uses. And I’ll keep him carefully insulated from any real power.”

That was the unsatisfactory ending of the conversation.

Now Jeremiah Rotter slid into the chair opposite Mina, and she tried to forget her previous judgment of him.

She looked into his narrow eyes. No, I can’t forget who—what—he is. She saw a snake sitting across from her, trying to look like it was smiling.

“You wanted to meet with me to get further direction on what my husband asked you to do?” she asked. For the life of her, she could not now remember what responsibility James had entrusted to this man.

“No, it’s more that I wanted to give you a progress report, Mrs. Robard. Ah, Your Majesty.”

You can’t win me over with cheap words, she thought.

“The King asked me to take a census,” Rotter added.

That was it! I remember now. I thought it was a meaningless little task to keep Rotter busy. He really thinks we need a progress report?

“I see,” she said in her most carefully neutral tone. “How is that going?”

“Naturally, it’s an expansive task, with more people coming every day. There were already plenty yesterday, but it feels like today we opened the floodgates.”

Mina nodded. She had been dealing with those issues all day. Planning additional housing, meeting and greeting new people, and figuring out food for an extra hundred occupants. The fun part was that some of these people were very nice. The Rodriguezes were going to be fast friends of hers, she could tell. They brought a warm family atmosphere with them.

Camila Rodriguez had said some very flattering things about James. The older woman had somehow persuaded Mina to invite her over for dinner without ever asking, despite the fact that it had already been a long day by that point. She was just too nice. A part of Mina wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear until James came back.

The other part was ready to enjoy Camila’s tamales as soon as the day was over. It would save Mina from cooking for the family tonight. If things turned out well, maybe this would become a regular tradition.

But she had to get through this conversation and whoever else was left before she could relax at all.

“Do you need me to ask people to help you or something?” she asked. She was prepared to refuse if he was going to request support. This was the least urgent task she could imagine anyone doing right now.

“Oh, no. I’m making great progress. Unless there’s a daily wave of immigration that’s bigger than today going forward, I should have some pretty good data for you and your husband very soon. The task was almost too easy, in fact. I thought that, in order to add value, I should do more than just find out who's here. So, in addition to taking down people’s names, I also got the new arrivals to agree to take the loyalty oath a couple of days from now, in the morning. A minor scheduling matter, but I wanted to save you and your husband the trouble.”

Mina wanted to find some fault with what Rotter was saying—that he had overstepped his bounds or something. But considering how annoying she had found it to interact with so many people today, it genuinely felt as if he was doing them a favor.

“They’re happy to sign up just like that?” she said a little suspiciously.

“Well, most of these people are here because they interacted with the Fisher King in the past. They know how he operates, so they’re happy to sign on.” He smiled with what seemed genuine pleasure. “Your husband really inspires loyalty.”

“Indeed. You were in the same Orientation, so you must know some of these people as well.” She continued trying to deduce Rotter’s motivations.

“I do,” he acknowledged. “It was an easy enough matter to try to mention the loyalty oath when I was around other people who had already taken it. That makes people much more willing to consider it. And the residents here don’t want to be the only ones who signed on. They’re also happy to proselytize.” He stopped and looked her steadily in the eyes for a few seconds. It seemed abrupt to Mina.

“Were you going to report further on your progress?” she asked finally.

“I don’t have much more to say,” he said. “Only—you don’t seem to like me much, Your Majesty. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I feel a wave of distrust coming off of you. If you’d like, I can try to keep my distance in future.”

Mina thought for a few seconds before she responded carefully.

“I think you are an ambitious man who has attached himself to my husband. I have no way of knowing your motives or loyalties other than that you are trying to make yourself useful. But I have to be careful. I have to protect his interests, because there aren’t many people whose goals are exactly aligned with his.”

Rotter nodded. “You’re a wise woman. It’s true that I’ve attached myself to your husband. I admit it. I’m pretty shameless, honestly. But there’s one point you’re wrong about. I’m not particularly ambitious for myself. I can see the way this world is moving. I was ready to follow anyone strong in Orientation. Your husband could probably verify that. Back then, I just wanted to survive.” He smiled. “Like I said, shameless! You can’t have any values when you’re dead. Now, though—now, I see your husband is building his own kingdom, his own country. I see that he wants to be a great man who changes the world. And I just want to help. I have a selfish motive. But it’s not as bad as you might imagine. First and foremost, I desperately—I can’t stress this enough—I desperately want to survive. I want to live a long life and die in comfort, of old age. Second thing, I want to be close to greatness.

“Throughout history, whenever there’s a person like this, there are other people he carries with him. People who go around supervising the construction of the imperial monuments or enforcing the draft or teaching imperial propaganda. Just doing the nitty gritty work of the empire. The important quality that I bring is that I have no ambitions at all. I know I’m not a guy anyone would follow, not even if I was an usher in a theater! Maybe I don’t have the chin for it. Maybe it’s my personality.” That was the first and only time his smile faltered in the exchange. And the best indicator for Mina that Rotter was admitting something real. Something a little uncomfortable for him.

“Anyway, being up front leading a movement can be dangerous,” he continued. “If I’m being honest, I wouldn’t want power of any kind if it meant being in danger. I’m a complete coward. So, all I’m saying is, I want your husband to feel free to use me. Send me anywhere you want, ask me to do anything, just please don’t put my life in danger—and I’ll always strive to exceed expectations. Because I want to be one of those guys the two of you carry along with you on your way up.”

Mina wished James was in the room with them right now. His ability to detect lies would have come in handy. But she thought that Rotter actually was telling the truth. Probably.

If so, he was someone they would actually be able to make good use of—until and unless he found a more promising “great man” to follow. She would watch him carefully.

They exchanged some further pleasantries, but the conversation was essentially over. Mina promised to pass on his good wishes to James, and Rotter left.

Yulia stepped into the room after he was gone.

“Last guest for the day,” she said. The air about her was obviously different, Mina observed. “Then we can have dinner with the Rodriguezes!”

“Sounds great, sweet. You may have to do most of the talking at dinner, though.” Mina felt like taking a nap on the spot. And baby James was beginning to stir beside her. Mina picked him up and began preparing to breastfeed. Removing her bra, unbuttoning her blouse, and covering her left side and the baby with a blanket.

“Has he been asleep through these last couple of meetings?” Yulia asked.

“Asleep? This boy? Never! He’s just absorbing Mama’s political skills,” Mina replied. “If you look carefully, you can see how closely he’s observing. He’s a little prince, after all. They have to learn these things early.”

Baby James’s eyes looked back and forth between his mother and aunt, and though Mina doubted he understood any of what was happening, there was an obvious intelligence in that gaze.

“Uh huh. Well, there’s someone from the Hunters who wants to see you,” Yulia said quietly. “He seems nice. Was the last guy okay?”

“I think James can make good use of him,” Mina said ambivalently. She wasn’t sure what to make of Rotter just now. “Please send in the next person. But tell him I’m breastfeeding. If that bothers him, he should come back tomorrow.” Then he can deal with James instead.

Yulia went back out, and a minute passed. Then a familiar figure stepped in.

He gave one of the most convincing endorsements of James as leader, Mina thought.

Dave Matsumoto smiled but looked slightly uncomfortable. “May I sit?” he asked.

“Oh, of course,” Mina said. I suppose since we’re technically a monarchy, people expect some ceremony or something. Not something we have time for right now, even if we were so inclined. And she suspected that people who founded monarchies were probably a lot less ceremonial than the royals whose weddings people watched on television pre-System.

Matsumoto folded himself into the chair opposite Mina and looked her carefully in the eyes.

“How is the hunting going?” she asked after a moment.

“Ah. Well, it’s going fine, I suppose,” Matsumoto said. “I wanted to discuss the Hunters’ other duty.”

Mina’s expression tensed. “There’s something dangerous out there, then?”

Matsumoto reached into his Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions and produced a large, rolled up sheet of paper.

He unfurled it on the table between them. Mina saw that it was a map.

“Someone made a map of the Fisher Kingdom already?” she asked. That was impressive, although she knew it would be out of date soon with James expanding the territory.

Matsumoto nodded. “A member of the team. Amalia. It seems we are well balanced for both killing and scouting.” He spoke without noticeable pride. Very matter of fact. “Here and here.” He pointed to two ‘X’ marks on two different edges of the map.

Mina looked to the corner and found the compass rose.

“I see,” she said. “Threats to the South and the Northeast.”

Dave nodded. “We stumbled on one of them when we were hunting with your husband, actually, but given that one of my friends was injured, we didn’t stop to investigate. Now we’ve gathered more information. It’s not good news. And the other one—” He sighed. “The other one is even worse. At least if my read of the situation is correct.”

“Tell me all about it.”

Dinner would have to wait.