Information is a Weapon

The Duke's army still hadn't moved. That worried him.

For three days, the city held its breath. Fires burned down to embers. Executions slowed. Barricades were reinforced with stone and bones. The new conscripts trained in the courtyards with rusted spears and stolen broom handles. The stench of the gallows lingered longer than the smoke.

From the western tower, the king studied the enemy's camp. Red and black tents. Organized rows. Supply wagons rolling in from the south. A clean military machine.

He knew the type. The Duke wasn't just posturing. He was preparing something surgical.

He handed the spyglass to Varnhold and spoke without looking at him. "They've stopped testing the wall."

"Yes."

"They're up to something."

"Yes."

"Any word from the merchants?"

"They've gone quiet."

"Of course they have." The king stepped away from the battlements and folded his hands behind his back. "How many of our 'loyal' citizens do you think have made contact with the enemy by now?"

"Too many."

"Then we need a new ministry."

Varnhold raised an eyebrow. "Sire?"

"We need eyes. And we need knives."

He called it the Ministry of Internal Order. The name sounded civilized. Bureaucratic. It wouldn't stay that way.

The first order was simple: create a list. Anyone who had fled the city in the last month. Anyone who had petitioned the Duke. Anyone who had hired extra servants, sent coded letters, purchased large quantities of salt, or suddenly paid off debts. The names poured in. They numbered over five hundred.

"Can we verify any of it?" the king asked.

"No," Varnhold admitted. "Most of it is hearsay. Gossip. Paranoia."

"Good." The king leaned forward. "I don't need certainty. I need fear."

By nightfall, twenty-nine people had been arrested. Four were beheaded in the square. Their heads were nailed to the west gate as a reminder: talk, and you die.

The Ministry set up a station in the old tax hall. Iron bars replaced broken windows. The cells were cold, shallow pits dug into the ground. The interrogators were pulled from the army's most loyal remnants-men too injured for front-line combat, too angry to retire.

They asked questions with hammers, not words.

The king met with the mill overseer again.

"Status?"

"We've opened two underground caches, Your Majesty. Rotten grain, but salvageable. About five hundred sacks."

"How long does that buy us?"

"Ten days. Less if the population grows."

"It will grow."

The overseer swallowed. "And... the prisoners?"

"What about them?"

"They eat, too."

"They're fuel. Not citizens."

The overseer paused, then bowed. "Understood."

Later that night, the king stood on the balcony of the shattered palace. The city looked cleaner in the dark. The smoke hid the cracks in the walls. The silence felt orderly.

A woman stepped onto the balcony beside him. Her name was Yelena. Former royal archivist. One of the few educated officials who hadn't fled.

"You'll kill the city before the Duke even attacks," she said softly.

He didn't look at her. "It's already dead. I'm sterilizing the corpse so it doesn't infect the rest."

She shook her head. "And when the people rise against you?"

"They won't."

"You think loyalty comes from terror?"

"No." His eyes scanned the rooftops. "It comes from food. From safety. From momentum. Terror is just the hook."

The next day, a boy approached the gatehouse. Maybe ten years old. Dirty face. Torn shirt. He carried a sack.

The guards stopped him.

"What's in the bag?"

"Message," the boy said. "From the Duke."

They took the sack and found a letter. Written in flowing noble script. It was short.

"Surrender, cousin. Spare your people. Lay down the crown, and you may live. I will honor your death with dignity."

The king read the message in silence. Then he glanced at the boy.

"Did they promise to feed you?"

The boy nodded. "Said I'd get bread if I came back with an answer."

The king held the letter over a torch and watched it burn.

He handed the boy a different letter, sealed in black wax.

"Take this back."

The boy hesitated. "What's it say?"

"It doesn't matter. They won't be able to read it."

The letter contained nothing.

Just a blank page soaked in vinegar, urine, and ash-ruined on purpose. A statement, not a message. A waste of parchment, just like the Duke's offer.

That same night, the first firebombs hit the outer district.

Three buildings collapsed. Eight civilians burned alive. One guard lost his arm trying to pull a screaming girl from the rubble.

There was no advance. No siege. Just fire and silence.

The king stood at the edge of the destruction, watching the bodies cool. His generals-if they could be called that-waited for orders.

He gave them none.

Instead, he walked to the burned girl's body. Charred bones. No face left. Her clothes fused to flesh.

He turned to Varnhold.

"Find her parents. Pay them double grain allowance."

"They're dead."

"Then find someone to bury her."

"We're short on gravediggers."

The king's face didn't change. "Then draft more."

Two days later, a spy was caught trying to bribe a city watch captain. A traveling monk, carrying holy relics in a stained satchel. He claimed he was just a pilgrim.

They found a map under the false bottom of his staff.

It marked every known water source. Every watch rotation. Every underground tunnel.

The interrogation took two hours. He lasted one.

The king reviewed the map personally.

"Seal the tunnels. Flood them if needed. We don't need an escape route. We need a trap."

Varnhold hesitated. "There may be loyalists still inside."

"If they are loyal, they will find a way to survive. If they are not, I want them buried."

That evening, the Ministry of Internal Order held its first closed tribunal.

Five names were read. No trials. No questions.

Five bodies were hung from iron hooks beneath the Ministry's banner.

Below them, a sign: "Loose lips cost lives. Treason feeds the fire."

The people walked faster that night. They spoke less.

Exactly as intended.

The king didn't sleep.

He sat at the end of the war table, staring at the bloodstained map. He had it updated that morning. Colored pins showed remaining strongholds, suspected enemy positions, grain stores, and known collaborators.

Most of the board was empty.

But the center remained red. His city. His corpse of a capital.

He closed his eyes for a moment and saw the battlefield again. Not this one. The last one.

Afghanistan. Ambush. Dust. Blood on the side of a transport. A boy screaming in a language he didn't speak. His men burned alive in a steel box.

He remembered silence. Gunpowder. And the order he gave after.

No witnesses.

Varnhold entered quietly.

"Sire."

The king opened his eyes.

"The Duke is moving. Scouts report siege towers under construction. No cavalry movements yet."

"Supply wagons?"

"Still arriving. They're preparing for a long haul."

The king stood slowly. His joints ached. This body wasn't his, but it carried the weight of his will.

"Then we don't wait for the storm."

"Sire?"

"We strike first."

Varnhold blinked. "You mean to sally?"

"No." The king moved to the window, where the dawn light cut across the smoke-filled sky. "We send a message."

He turned, eyes sharp. "Send two of the orphans from the conscript batch. Give them barrels of oil. Rotten meat. Rope. Pay them in bread. I want every livestock pen on the Duke's supply line burned by morning."

"They may not return."

"They won't. But he'll notice."

The Ministry marked its fiftieth arrest the next day.

The first child was taken in. A twelve-year-old suspected of smuggling information to a baker who had family across the river.

The king approved the interrogation without hesitation.

Varnhold didn't comment.