Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 66

The Amazonians feasted that entire night and would probably continue well into the morning. Sakura and Bridget joined in, but I had learned my lesson already and had no plans of repeating what happened last time I let the Amazonians get me drunk.

I waited for the right opportunity and pulled Cyra aside. Normally, she enjoyed this sort of thing, but I'd noticed ever since being granted ownership of the city she'd been tense. When I offered to help her get started, she leaped on the offer with far more speed than I expected. I'd thought I'd at least need to convince her she needed my help.

"That's right, you own a city!" Cyra said with a smile. "I need every tip I can get, Carter. Please."

I chuckled as she looked down at me with wide eyes. "No need to beg, Cyra. After all you've done to help me, I'd be a poor friend not to do the same for you."

Cyra wiped sweat from her brow. "A-alright. So... uh... where do I start?"

I led her to some seats nearby. There were plenty available. Most people had gotten up to watch the show nearby. The other Oni woman was running Sakura through some of her people's sacred rights. To me it looked a lot like headbutting a wall, but the Amazonian warriors really enjoyed it.

"First, tell me what you know about leadership," I began. "Whatever you know about governing a settlement."

Cyra stared at me blankly.

"Your mother runs Valkyrie's Watch. Surely she taught you a thing or two about ruling over a city?"

Cyra shuffled her shoulders awkwardly. "She... uh... might have mentioned a thing or two`. To be honest, it wasn't my favorite subject."

I frowned, getting a bad feeling. "It's okay if you don't remember much. What were these one or two things?"

"Chop the heads off of criminals and don't abuse your citizens too much?" Cyra blushed. It was the first time I'd ever seen her embarrassed.

I tried to bite my tongue, but I was too surprised. The question was out before I could stop myself. "That's it? Really? Your mother rules a city and that's all she saw fit to teach you?"

Cyra shrugged sheepishly. "Well... she mostly just intimidates everyone if they step out of line. She's a C-Rank, so it works for her."

"What are the laws of the city? How do the guards know when they have a criminal on their hands?" I pressed.

Cyra shrugged again. "They just do what she would do. Valkyrie's Watch is fairly easy to manage because grandmother passed it down to mother. Mother just makes sure not to do anything that grandmother wouldn't do. The guards just do what they were taught by their predecessors. There aren't any real hard and firm laws. It's just... a general vibe of what gets you beheaded and what the guards will just slap you around a bit for."

I let out a loud sigh as I buried my head in my hand. One palm wasn't enough, and I soon realized this was a two-hand job. I buried my head in both hands.

Valkyrie's Watch ran off vibes and tradition. There were no rules at all. No firm schedules, rotations, offices or bureaucracy. Come to think of it, I hadn't heard anyone talk about taxes. Or about getting licenses for anything or registering ownership with the city.

I'd been critical of the Samhain's governance before, but only now did I realize why I'd been so unimpressed. Their governance barely existed at all!

I liked to think of myself as a pretty hands-off ruler. After making the city safe, establishing the militia, setting down some basic laws and establishing the council to create more if needed, and then giving everyone opportunity for work through the Obelisk, I'd called it a day and returned to my farmhouse. I had no intention of lording it over Crownhill from a palace like the one these Amazonians were partying in.

That was what I considered the barest minimum amount of effort a ruler needed to go to if they wanted to fulfill their responsibilities. But when the Amazonians talked about being a hands-off ruler, they really meant hands off. From the sound of things, the city was lucky Kyrina did anything at all.

The way Cyra put it, most rulers only bothered to intimidate the criminals of the city into submission with their presence before doing whatever they pleased. Most settlements were lucky if their ruler turned part of their army into some sort of formal guard force.

"Carter? A-are you okay?" Cyra asked worriedly.

"I'm alright... I-I'm fine." I rubbed my eyes with my palms. "Okay, so it looks like we're going to have to start with the very basics." I reached into my bag of holding for a pen and a piece of paper. I laid them out between the two of us.

At the top of the page, I wrote the word 'laws'.

"Uh..." Cyra accepted the sheet of paper with a nervous air.

"Here's your first task as ruler of Shadefall, Cyra. It's time to make the laws you will enforce. Start with the basics. The obvious things..."

Coming up with a list of laws for Shadefall took some time. I ended up writing out most of the list myself based on my observations of Valkyrie's Watch. I came up with things Cyra would be comfortable with. The easiest was the basics, like no killing people in the streets. I scratched through that one and instead wrote, no murder unless it is in self-defense. Cyra got on board with that fairly easily. The tougher thing was putting in protections for property rights."

"But if someone gets robbed, it's their own fault for not being strong enough to defend what's theirs. Or at least for not having friends strong enough to protect them. Right?" Cyra asked.

I shook my head. "That will lead to a truly ruthless city, Cyra. A place full of warriors all hard as nails can live like that, basing that life on the law of strength… but not here. Shadefall is full of soft-hearted crafters. Most of these people are hardly over level 10.”

Cyra blinked, knowing I was right.

“But that is why this place is needed by your Clan. It's these people’s job levels that make them valuable. And from what I’ve read, heard, and seen… the Samhain have difficulty understanding how difficult it is to level up both a class and a job. You need to have protections in place that ensure they can keep what they make or earn. Otherwise, why should they put in the work to get those things in the first place?"

Cyra closed her eyes and sighed. "Alright, I trust your judgement. So… no stealing or challenging people far weaker to you to a duel for their possessions. Stealing something especially valuable will come with bigger penalties.”

Cyra dragged a hand down her face, then froze as her eyes widened. “How will we know if someone owns a building or not? Couldn't someone just say they own when they don't, effectively stealing it?"

"We'll need to establish a department of property management to register who owns what," I replied. "They'll answer to you and keep a careful, official record of who owns what. They will have the final say on matters of ownership."

Our planning took us straight through the evening and into the following morning. A few Amazonians chided Cyra about not having enough fun, but she waved them off. I was flattered that she was so intently focused on what I had to say about leading and managing a city.

I would be the first to admit that I hadn't ruled Crownhill for long. And, truth be told, I didn't feel like I was very good at it. But I knew I was better than what normally passed for Amazonian leadership outside of battle and Cyra trusted me.

After all the partying, warriors retired for the evening or simply passed out on the floor where they'd been giving the night their all. Meanwhile, Cyra and I put our plan into motion.

"Do you really think we should recruit people so soon?" Cyra asked. "They're probably terrified of us. We already executed most of the city's nobility."

I shook my head. "The sooner we get this over with, the better. It's important to reestablish law and order. If people get used to the free for all of looting and murdering, it will be much harder to stop later."

Dawn found us scouring the noble district for survivors. I wasn't especially fond of the idea of reinstalling a noble class in the city, but we needed people with education and familiarity with local traditions who could help Cyra govern. We found a few people in some of the smaller houses outside the palace.

Most of these people had gone into hiding, but after visiting the various shelters back on Earth, I knew the signs to look for when someone was in hiding. Curtains were drawn tight, the doors were barricaded from the inside… that kind of thing.

"We just want to talk!" Cyra yelled as she rapped on the door. "We know you're in there, come on out!"

"I think you're scaring them off." I waved Cyra to the side and gave it an attempt myself. "Look, we're here looking for city administrators! We need help putting the city together. I heard from one of the other survivors that you used to manage property rights in the city. It seems that your old boss is dead, which means you can be the new boss if you open this door and come with us!"

Silence.

Cyra shrugged. "It was worth a shot. Let's move onto the next house..."

"Pity. I had a ten thousand gold signing bonus prepared for them if they opened up the..." I said this as I turned to leave, but a moment later the door swung open.

"Sorry. Sorry... um... you must be the new city lord?" A small, bespectacled woman with graying hair opened the door, staring up at Cyra with wide eyes. After Cyra nodded, she averted her gaze and turned to me. "And what was that I heard about a ten thousand gold signing bonus?"

The former nobles of Shadefall were a nervous and skittish lot—not at all like the brave warriors who ruled the various Amazonian clans under the Samhain’s banner. They were, however, quite interested in getting paid. Those who'd once been part of major noble families were harder to convince, but the ambitious minor houses were more than happy to accept a job from the city's conquerors for a modest amount of coin.

We set up a governance meeting that very afternoon and went through who had experience and what they had experience in. I eventually helped Cyra assemble a series of five teams meant to manage civil affairs that we expected to crop up in the transition to Cyra’s rule instead of the Shadefall family.

"A good rule of thumb is to maintain the status quo," I instructed everyone we'd gathered. "Unless it would contradict Cyra's interests, just stick with whatever would have been done before. We'll sort out the exact laws of the land later. For now, we just want people to feel safe enough to return to work."

"A-and what about bandits and looters?" a nervous looking woman asked.

Cyra stood straighter. She'd been letting me lead the discussion on her behalf, but this was where she knew she could pitch in.

"I will personally make sure the streets are safe. My warriors and I will patrol every hour, day or night," Cyra replied. "I will have to sort out the old militia, but the warriors among them will be able to find new work under my banner, should I find them to be loyal."

The military aspects of city management were the one thing Cyra seemed confident about, so I let her do as she pleased on that front. By the evening of the following day, I was pretty sure the city was no longer in danger of falling apart or of turning into a lawless hellscape.

Most importantly, ownership of one entire block of the workshop district had been officially deeded to me, per Kyrina's decree. I had been promised four, but was prepared to start working on one, at first.

Cyra set aside time for her first patrol shortly after her warriors started coming to their senses after last night’s drunken revelry. While she got her troops armored and out on the streets, I saw to my own affairs.

"Alright everybody! It's safe to come out," I told the workers I'd hidden in one of the larger warehouses for safekeeping.

"W-what are you going to do with us?" asked the nervous blue-skinned young woman I had save twice before.

"I’m going to let you go." I gave her a shrug. "I don't plan to keep you prisoner, if that's what you mean. Though if you want my advice, I'd steer clear of any of Elder Thalassa's warriors. In fact, try not to leave the workshop district at all."

"The workshops we all worked in were destroyed..." the young woman still looked worried and uncertain.

I waved her concerns off. "Don't worry. I'll take care of that. But on that topic, if any of you are any good at carpentry, please let me know. Especially if you are familiar with the odds and ends of making a good workshop."

A few people raised their hands and I pulled them from the crowd and had them start to draw up designs for me. Thanks to my Master Artificer Job, I had an intuitive understanding of physics and material sciences—but that didn't mean I knew how to build a well-designed workspace.

I was confident I could put together a weather-tight box, but a good workshop was so much more than that. The rooms needed to be large enough for various tasks, the windows needed to let light into certain rooms, and the architecture had to suit the rest of the city. That didn’t include all the little ergonomic choices that didn't seem like a big deal, but which would matter to the people who had to spend every day inside the building.

After that, I recruited Myrina, Sakura, and Bridget to help me secure some resources. The trebuchets I'd built had been made from a lot of wood, most of them enormous beams. They'd provide more than enough wood to frame a couple of warehouses with, in short order.

With some bags of holding and some strong Amazonian backs to lift what my telekinetic abilities couldn't, we'd soon replaced the warehouse we burned down with a six story structure that would have ten times the capacity of the building we were replacing.

"I'm pretty sure this is much bigger than it needs to be," Sakura tapped the side of the bare wooden frame.

"Yes,” I admitted, then shrugged. “Yes, it is. But I didn't want to waste such lovely pillars. Look at the size of these things!"

The tree trunks we’d built the trebuchets’ arms with were both massive and strong. Hell, it would be perfectly reasonable to build a skyscraper out of them. With wood like this, the people of this world wouldn't need to resort to steel structures if they didn't want to.

After the first warehouse was framed out, I searched high and low until I eventually found Misa. At my request, she sent some of her new assistants off to buy and return to the city with a bunch of food. The city would starve without it, and I was pretty sure the Amazonians who'd conqueror the city had forgotten that the people they'd besieged for the past week were critically low on food.

With my personal business ventures seen to, I reunited with Cyra after her patrols. Armed and in armor as she marched through the city, she seemed much more confident in her new role.

She thanked me for my help so far. "Thank you, Carter. I don't think I would have thought to hire the very nobles we conquered to help me rebuild the city.” Cyra gave me a thoughtful shrug. “Maybe we shouldn't have executed quite so many of them."

"What's done is done. But yes, if you find more nobles who previously helped manage the city in hiding after your mother leaves, try not to go overboard with more executions."

I chuckled, then placed my hand on her shoulder. She was a lot taller than me, so it took a bit of reaching.

"You don’t owe me anything, Cyra. Friends don't keep score, after all. But if we did, I'd say I’m still in debt to you for all the training."

Cyra laughed. "I can see what Myrina sees in you, Carter." She pulled off her helmet and hooked it on her belt.

"I hope you'll have things well in hand by the time the army departs. All the warriors in the city are part of what is suppressing danger or further uprisings against you. You might face more dissent." I waved to Cyra's palace, which even now was bustling with activity.

"That won't be an issue," Cyra replied.

It was my turn to shrug. I suspected Cyra would have far less trouble putting down rebels than she would at managing everything else.