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announced. ‘For your participation in our plans, I will see that you each hold valuable positions in the new society we are
seeking to forge. I’ll need weapons made, a food supply chain established – you can use cultist technology freely for rapid yields if need be – and I’ll need the money to
build this army. We’ll need our biggest ever enlistment programme, rolling it out across this and neighbouring islands.’
    ‘You’re asking us to bankroll some kind of revolution!’ someone shouted.
    ‘That is not untrue ,’ Brynd replied. ‘It’s been the way of things in Villjamur. Given that a new landscape is the inevitable outcome from war, I am seeking your
backing. As I said, each of you will find the returns from your investments and your participations to be attractive and we can have a look about forming our own regulation for you – a
different kind from former Imperial policy.’
    ‘What form will our returns take?’
    ‘New estates,’ Brynd replied. ‘New markets to control, new constructions to build across the Empire, and new statutes that need to be written. This will be a long-term plan,
but in the first instance I will see land taken from the Empire, and handed over.’
    ‘I imagine these new statutes will be complex, eh?’ someone asked.
    Probably a lawyer.
    ‘Because we’ll be sharing our world with aliens,’ a merchant blurted out. ‘Ain’t that so, commander? There’ll be foreigners here, sharing our towns.
There’ll be monsters walking up and down our roads and people’ll be expected to just get on with it. Ghettos will form, mark my word. Things won’t be the same.’
    ‘It’s the people who leave who create the ghettos,’ Brynd said. In another time, in another setting, Brynd would have had that man roughed up for his tone. Instead he simply
continued, ‘Though much of what you describe may well be an inevitable consequence of them helping us, but don’t forget they will be bringing with them their own industries, their own
wealth . . .’
    ‘They should be segregated – given their own land well away from the rest of us.’
    ‘Aye,’ another said. ‘I ain’t living with things like that walking the streets.’
    ‘Please,’ Brynd said, ‘if we’re lucky enough to be alive in the future, and to have a society, then we can discuss such matters; though I ask you to concentrate on
what’s happening right now, in the immediate future.’
    Once they had accepted that statement, the questions followed from those around the table for another hour at least. Each of them demanded to know some fine detail relevant to only them,
creating a disparate set of conversations. There were questions concerning payments, land divisions, how much ore would be needed and by when, and whether common land would be privatized – a
firm no from Brynd. What surprised him the most was that few of the questions concerned Artemisia or indeed the inevitable war and races that would be crossing into their own world.
    ‘I’m in,’ said a balding, fat man in the corner smoking arum weed, wearing purple robes that almost matched the colour of his cheeks. It was Coumby, someone who once owned many
of the buildings in Villiren, before they were destroyed. ‘I got dealings in ores, and smiths, and the fishing industry.’ He paused to take another drag. ‘I’ve heard enough
talk to last the day. I think I could be of use to you, commander.’
    ‘Good,’ Brynd replied loudly, optimistically. ‘Thank you, sir. So who else can we add to the list?’
    ‘Fuck else is there to do in this city?’ the thin-faced lawyer chimed in eventually. ‘I’m intrigued at the prospects of designing laws from scratch.’
    ‘One thing,’ Coumby muttered, then inhaled again. His face was becoming obscured by smoke. ‘This young lady here,’ he nodded his head towards Rika. ‘She’s in
charge, you say? You’re the one doing an awful lot of talkin’, is all I can see . . . What’s her