Chapter 406 — Upheaval
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
Hetty blinked. "You have another arrangement, Ancestor?"
Gao Yang could not help laughing. "In the several regions I've chosen, the arcane nets are already there; we don't need to build them. Send a few arcane technicians to check the state of the interfaces, and then install the equipment directly."
Hetty had probably worn her mind out in today's meeting, so that for a moment she did not follow — but at Gao Yang's reminder she grasped it at once. "Ah — you mean the arcane nets..."
"With thanks to our neighbors for the promotion, the South is covered in arcane nets," Gao Yang said, shaking his head with feeling. "They only knew to use the nets for lighting, for powering mage towers, for powering mining machinery — how could they know the value of a general-purpose energy source... Ah, speaking of mining equipment, we can even use the local mining equipment for the time being. They're old models sold over from the Cecil domain, but for the early stages of construction they're more than enough."
He paused there, then added: "Of course, when those old nobles built their arcane nets they thought only of their own manor houses and castles, so the nets they laid cover no great area. In future, when we use them, we shall certainly have to extend them — but fortunately we now have arcane obelisk technology, which can transmit mana over distance, so the limits of net coverage are not so serious. When you get back, place an order with the machinery works; a batch of arcane obelisks is to be given production priority."
Hearing Gao Yang's arrangement, Hetty's heart eased completely; and at the thought of the arcane nets turning all over the South, an odd smile could not help but surface on her face.
Seeing Hetty's smile, Gao Yang could not help smiling too.
Every civil official in the conference room saw the lord's smile; they thought of the past half year, of the great and small nobles of the South selling off pots and iron, scraping together every last copper to build arcane nets and buy mining equipment, and one by one they smiled as well.
Knowing, and of one mind.
The conference room was filled with a cheerful air.
Yet a thousand miles away, in the royal capital, within the ancient and splendid Silver Castle of Saint Sunil, the air was heavy and stifling.
A white gown swept through the long corridors of the Silver Castle like a gust of snow; Victoria Wilde, Duchess of the Northland, passed swiftly down the corridor with several attendants. The duchess, always cold in bearing and spare of expression, seemed colder today even than usual — yet the fine snowflakes that kept swirling up about her hurrying steps betrayed the unrest in her heart. Such haste was not often seen in her.
She entered the "Golden Rose Hall" at the top of the castle; in that small chamber, meant only for the kingdom's very highest holders of power to take counsel, she found Duke Boyu Franklin, a refined, scholarly man in a dark coat.
This middle-aged gentleman, the Duke of the West, stood by the window, looking down at the courtyard within the castle. Only when he heard Victoria enter did he turn his head for a glance, and soon turned back again.
At the end of his gaze, in the courtyard inside the Silver Castle, the marks of fire and of trampling were clearly visible — fresh marks, as though left only days ago.
And so they had been — left days ago, when the rebels in the castle were killed.
Some days before, a riot had erupted in the Silver Castle. Assassins had set fire to the study of Francis II and the bedchamber of Prince Edmund; the chaos was quickly put down by the castle's Transcendents acting together, but the assassins' final charge had left those glaring marks in the courtyard.