Blood Shaper

After introductions were made in depth and Miri demonstrated her loyalty to Amanda’s tentative approval they dived back into the meeting, going over some of the subjects Amanda considered sensitive. They ranged from the plans and desires of various factions and leaders they’d discovered through espionage of one form or another to more specific information about the movement of their troops.

Hearing Amanda’s take on reports Kay knew came from Isla was amusing but he did his best to keep a straight face. The obvious changes to certain words combined with a shift from Isla’s normal mischievous tone into Amanda’s no nonsense tone was made it a stilted recitation but all of the key information was there. Kay thought Ilsa was probably getting a laugh or two out of it as well and wished he could see where she was at the moment.

His spymaster was a pixie, a race of tiny people with wings not unlike Earth’s myths of similar creatures, and a skilled illusionist as well. She was probably tier six, she’d never said it outright that he remembered but had made several allusions to it, and liked to hide herself both physically and under layers of illusions making it next to impossible to find her when she didn’t want to be found. She could be sitting right on Kay’s nose and he’d have no idea. She could make auditory illusions as well as was most likely pumping her report right into Amanda’s ear to recite, along with some teasing to go with Amanda’s deliberate changes.

Eventually his new seneschal would need to meet his spymaster, and not just the illusion of a bland human man she used in meetings to help throw off any trace of her real existence. Miri was going to be his right hand in everything to do with his day to day existence and making sure everyone in his inner circle knew when to go to her instead of heading directly to Kay was going to be important. Avalon was a growing nation, and Kay was going to keep getting busier as his country grew. There was a time coming where Kay would not have time for a direct report from Isla or Isla wouldn’t have time to give him a report and either way they would need Miri to bridge those gaps. Additionally, Miri had some experience that would meld well with Isla’s expertise.

Miri had spent a large portion of her early life training to be a spy for the Seramist Isles until she’d decided she didn’t want to spend her life working in the shadows and had moved to working as a maid in Queen Alahna’s palace. Now she was Kay’s seneschal and though she didn’t want to be a spy, what she’d learned in that vein would serve Kay well. Just imagining the person in control of his schedule, who everyone who wanted a piece of him would have to go through, working hand in hand with his spymaster was both exhilarating and terrifying. The amount of information they could gain, and the havoc they could wreak…

The amount of bullshit that anyone was going to be able to pull with his schedule was going to become extremely diminished before it ever became a problem, and it was glorious. But it wasn’t time for that yet. It would take some time for Isla to reveal herself in all her tiny glory to Miri, and Miri needed time to get her feet under her. Until then they’d have to keep having invisible pixies whisper the secrets of others into their ears.

Moving past the confidential portions of the update Amanda started going over what they’d done to work with and around the heavy number of people that Avalon now had to take care of. Even in the details things were going pretty well there. As she’d already said they’d been expecting people to start moving into Avalon in the future so they’d been preparing, the only real problem was that all these people were coming at once instead of the steady flow they’d planned for.

Still, the infrastructure they had already built or had been in construction had softened the initial blow and resources had been diverted to speed things up. Only a few villages worth of people were still in temporary camps and those camps weren’t a terrible place to be either. Kay remembered news videos about refugee camps back on Earth that were little better than slums, with people having to constantly struggle to get enough to eat or drink. That wasn’t a problem here, thanks to his excellent subordinates. Order was maintained, careful control of resources kept people form hoarding or trying to steal from others, and the regular flow of people out of the camps into better living conditions helped keep people calm. The projections Amanda showed him indicated that they could have everyone living in an actual home within the next few months at the earliest, once again showing the power of magic, Skills, and Classes. Hundreds of homes and the infrastructure to support them built in a few months would never happen back on Earth.

The people still in the camps were the ones who didn’t want to become citizens of Avalon but also weren’t causing problems. The troublemakers had been relocated first, ending up in what were basically open air prisons. Kay wasn’t comfortable with what sounded quite close to concentration camps, but no one was being abused thankfully, and people were free to leave as they pleased. That being said, if they did leave they were subjecting themselves to Avalon’s laws as long as they remained in Avalon and had to support themselves. If they remained in their prison camps they’d get food and drink provided to them and could basically do as they liked outside of any criminal activities. Leaving the camps opened them up to the rest of society and made them have to figure out their own housing and how they would get food to eat.

None of it made Kay happy, but there were no perfect solutions. Those people had arrived in his country, used their resources, and then tried to overthrow his government, take over land or towns that belonged to Avalon, or create criminal organizations to prey on his people. Well, they’d made poor attempts or had been caught in the planning stages at least. He wasn’t going to execute them out of hand, the people guilty of real crimes were already in jail or had been tried, but he wasn’t going to give them more than a second chance. Anyone that hadn’t been arrested was guilty of minor crimes at worst, or they’d been planning to do worse but hadn’t gotten around to it and as much as he wanted to Kay wasn’t going to start punishing people for crimes that hadn’t happened yet, and at least some of them had been driven by desperation or the trauma of what had happened to them. A little bit of shouting at people, rabble rousing, or setting up pickpocketing rings wasn’t the worst of what people had tried. Kay was willing to go with what his people had decided, which amounted to a short stay in jail, to punish them, but that was the limit of his generosity. If they left they had to fend for themselves and if they committed more crimes they were getting the full punishment that the law called for.

On the other end of the spectrum were the people who saw Avalon as a potential new home and wanted start new lives in the wake of the devastation they’d suffered. For many of them their old homes were gone, wiped out in the civil war or destroyed by slavering packs of vampyr, they had no other place to go and were happy to be part of a country that could and would keep them safe. They were all polled and their specialties, expertises, and desires were learned to sort them out and then they were resettled in new or existing settlements. Areas of land worth using had been identified and sites for villages or towns had been identified years ago, with the population growing Amanda and Kay’s other ministers had pushed Avalon’s workers hard. Empty sites and settlements that only existed in plans and blueprints sprung up basically overnight, and now people lived in them. Some villages were basically transplants, with the entire population having escaped from the carnage together. Others were comprised of bits and pieces stitched together into a new whole. Families were kept together as best they could be and the needs of both individuals and the groupings were kept in mind as they placed people together and moved them to their new homes.

Work hadn’t started in most of the new villages as the new citizens were encouraged to decompress and learn their new homes, but there were a few that had already started doing what they could, focusing on work to get through the pain of their losses. It would take years for each village to become self-sufficient and a few more to turn a profit but Avalon could afford the investment now to earn the future benefits. Providing all of this for the people that needed it was no only a good thing to do for its own sake but benefited Avalon heavily. More citizens meant more of everything, but especially the good things like production, resources, and potential recruits for the military, Sentinels, and Wardens.

Amanda liked to divide her briefings into categories and sub-categories and they were in the “population” category. The only subcategory left was the former slaves and Amanda’s professional expression was tainted with sadness. The people who had escaped slavery during the civil war were, for the most part, doing alright. They were just as divided into groups that wanted to stay in Avalon, those that didn’t, and those causing trouble, but a majority of them were able to function. Many of those that were freed at the last moment before an oncoming wave of vampyr could kill them weren’t that stable. A huge number of healers and therapists were needed, and thankfully they had access to just enough, with Amanda’s preparedness coming in clutch again. It was taking time, as anything of this nature did, but eventually they would be able to put themselves back together.

Those that needed healing weren’t really an issue though. They were and would continue to provide what they needed without issue. The problem came from those that wanted revenge. Specifically, the former slaves that wanted revenge against everyone. Kay couldn’t allow people to start massacring others so the former slaves who had tried were being kept separately, in camps similar to those holding the other problem people. Counseling was available and Amanda’s reported showed that many were taking the help offered and toning down their demands that anyone from Nelam die in a bloody fashion, but many weren’t. For some, their drive for blood was the only thing keeping them going and they refused to let go of it.

They couldn’t keep those people there forever though, and one of Kay’s problems was to figure out what to do with them. It was an issue he had to set aside for later though. He had never been a slave and was not able to empathize with the people who had. He could sympathize with them, but he would never be able to truly understand what they had been through, and he wasn’t going to start making decrees from a place of ignorance. He planned to gather people who had been through slavery to help him figure out the best path forward, but that would take tie both to figure out who was best suited for that role and to gather them together. All Kay could do was what he could do, and in this case that meant tabling the problem for later.

“Alright, that’s the people covered.” Kay stretched out his arms and flexed his fingers. “What’s next?”

Amanda shuffled her papers to bring the next set of reports to the front while Miri moved to a new set of blank notes, ready to transcribe, and Eleniah and Cindy just waited, ready to put in their own thoughts or observations. Kay knew that out of everything that had happened to him, the luckiest he had ever been was when he’d acquired such good friends and allies.

The Prime Minister of Avalon finished shuffling her papers and looked up at Kay, her serious expression more intense than usual. “We need to discuss what Avalon is going to do about what’s going on to our west, in the ruins of what was once the nation of Nelam.”

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