Chapter 78

POV: Shada, Captain of the Desert Rangers

Shada watched the dust cloud from a thousand paces, her eyes narrowed. It was a merchant caravan, but not one of theirs. It flew the banner of a neutral southern tribe, but its movements were clumsy, its guards lazy. Her patrol of five Rangers, all mounted on swift desert horses, remained perfectly still, blending into the rocks of the canyon ridge.

Five years. The desert was the same, but her place in it had changed. She was no longer just a rider of her clan; she was a Captain of the Desert Rangers, the elite intelligence and special forces arm of the Wastes Confederacy. Her authority extended across a thousand square leagues of territory. Her mission was to enforce the 'Confederacy Peace'.

This caravan was a test. Her scouts had reported they were trading low-quality weapons for food, a violation of the Confederacy's trade laws, designed to keep military-grade weapons out of the hands of bandits and rogue clans.

Shada gave a silent hand signal. Her Rangers moved, not with the wild yells of a raid, but with the silent, deadly precision of a hunting pack. They descended the ridge and surrounded the caravan before the guards had even drawn their swords. The confrontation was over before it began. There was no violence. Shada's authority, and the reputation of the Rangers, was enough.

She inspected the cargo, confiscated the illegal weapons, and issued the caravan master a formal warning tablet and a heavy fine, payable in salt at the next Confederate trade post. This was the new law of the wastes. It was not arbitrary; it was professional.

Later, as she made camp, she thought of her family. Her younger brother was attending the Lyceum in Oakhaven, studying to be a healer. Her clan, back in the Silent Basin, was preparing for the Great Hunt, their bellies full and their minds free from the fear of raiders. The peace she enforced was not an abstract concept; it was the safety of her own people.

Lord Castian had given them more than tools and treaties. He had given them order. He had taken the chaotic, brutal world of the desert and had forged it into a nation. Shada felt a fierce, unwavering loyalty to that nation, and to the man who had envisioned it. She was a daughter of the Ashen tribe, a nomad of the plains. But she was also a soldier of the Wastes Confederacy. And she would let no one threaten the peace her people had fought so hard to win.

POV: Scribe Fenric, Royal Palace of Aerthos

Fenric's hands shook so badly he spilled a drop of ink on the royal ledger, creating a black, spider-like stain. He frantically tried to blot it away, his heart pounding. In Lord Vaelin's service, even a minor mistake could be interpreted as incompetence, and incompetence was a short path to a damp, forgotten cell.

The kingdom was dying. It was a slow, quiet death, a sickness of the soul. The news from the west was a constant, humiliating drip of poison. The Wastes Confederacy—the 'Bastard's Kingdom', as it was now fearfully whispered in the taverns—was not collapsing. It was thriving.

Fenric was the one who had to collate the intelligence reports for Vaelin, and the picture they painted was terrifying. They had a new, stable currency that was rapidly becoming the standard for all desert trade, pushing the King's own coin into irrelevance. They had built a paved road across the desert, a feat of engineering the kingdom hadn't attempted in a century. They had founded a school that was reportedly teaching peasant-born children the secrets of statecraft and science.

Every report was another testament to Vaelin's failure. The Master of Whispers had grown gaunt, his paranoia legendary. His network of spies was in tatters. The agents he sent west either disappeared without a trace or, even worse, began sending back useless, placating reports that Fenric suspected were dictated by the Confederacy's own spymasters.

The court was a nest of vipers. The northern lords were now openly ignoring royal decrees, effectively ruling their own lands. The treasury was empty, the economic war having cost a fortune with no result. The King had not been seen in public in over a year. The great, powerful Kingdom of Aerthos was a hollow shell, its heart eaten out from within.

That night, a trader, back from the frontier, paid Fenric a small fortune in royal silver for a simple favor: a copy of a map. As the trader left, he pressed a small, heavy coin into Fenric's hand. "A tip," the trader whispered. "For your trouble."

After the trader was gone, Fenric looked at the coin. It was a Confederate Crown. On one side was the calm, intelligent profile of Lord Castian. On the other, the symbols of his vibrant, united nation. It felt heavy in his hand, heavy with the weight of prosperity, of purpose, of a future.

Fenric looked around his cold, grey office in the heart of a dying empire. He clutched the coin tightly. And for the first time, he began to seriously contemplate the logistics of treason.