Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

issues. Given you gave him conditional status, we put him up in a guest room in what remains of the gatehouse.”

“Awesome. I’ll see Taethawn first, then Mayor Bubek.” I swiped over to the Kingdom Management schedule, and added in the slots. “Vash, you’re the fastest. Can you notify them? I’ll squeeze the ducal booty into the Voivode’s throne and sort out the Orphans Company now.”

“Your Grace, I will send them.” Istvan gave me a brisk nod. “You ought to keep Vash close. After that assassination attempt in the Ducal Chambers, I think all your staff will feel better knowing he is by your side.”

“Yeah. No more dying for you,” Karalti chimed in. “The last time was kind of bad.”

“Sure.” I clapped Vash on the shoulder—the one without the prosthetic. “Guess you’re on bodyguard detail, Vash.”

Vash laughed. “I’ll be gentle.”

“You better be,” I said. “Just remember: small, circular motions.”

Suri crossed her arms. “You aren’t even gonna take an hour to catch up with us?”

“After all this is over and done with, sure,” I replied. “Dinner and a movie, whatever you want. For my own sake, I need to hit the ground running and get all of our admin out of the way first before we relax.”

“Yeah! Do ALL the Voivoding!” Karalti stiffly beat her wings behind us, throwing up a cloud of dust and small stones, but then dropped back down to hug at her stomach. “Urgh. Istvan? Can you hurry up and get that treasure offloaded? If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’m gonna die.”

Chapter 10

Somehow, I—Dragozin Hector, formerly Hector Park, Private First Class—had ended up in charge of a Vlachian province large enough to be its own small country. The fantasy of ruling a nation was pretty common in the gaming world, and if you could put the game down and go eat some Cheetos when you felt like it, being the lord of all you surveyed was a great way to relieve stress. But Archemi didn’t feel like a game anymore. I’d been here nearly six months, and now it was just... life. A life that came with dragons and awesome friends, beautiful women, and delicious food, but also responsibilities. In my case, those responsibilities included twenty-one thousand square miles of territory, 2.2 million people, 10 counties and at least three major ethnic groups. All of it was mine to rule. I was doing my best not to fuck it up.

I returned to my quarters, where my anxious butler helped me get ready to do Important Duke Stuff. The bathtub in the Ducal Suite was basically a giant kitty litter box without the mess, because my half-vampire self needed to sleep buried in sand to gain the Well Rested buff. That meant I had to take my actual baths in the Princess Suite, which had belonged to the old Voivode’s infant daughter. It was done up in shades of pink and pearl and still had the girl’s collection of stuffed toy dinosaurs on the counter. There was also scented bubble bath, which I made liberal use of—because if I had to wash in a Hello Hookwing-themed bathroom, then by god I was going to smell fucking fabulous.

After scrubbing off the filth of the last several days, shaving my face and the sides of my scalp and refreshing my Tuun braids, I started to feel almost demi-human again. I let Rudolph the Butler help me into my one and only [Vlachian Nobleman’s Outfit], poked some food into my face-hole, and then I was off again: jogging deliriously down to the Great Hall.

I arrived to find everyone ready for me, other than Taethawn. The guards were guarding, the throne was throning, and Vash was in his position to the chair’s left—the heart side, where the Voivode’s bodyguard customarily stood. I nodded to the men and women protecting my seat as they saluted, dropping down into the humble chair that served as the ruling seat of Myszno.

“Oh—you smell nice,” Vash remarked. “Is that jasmine?”

“Probably.” I leaned back, opening up my HUD. Archemi’s holographic interface was modular, so I pulled up the Kingdom Management windows I’d need and pushed them to the left, then set my character sheet and Karalti’s to the right. “Okay, let’s get this orgy started. Where’s Taethawn?”

“Who knows?” The monk sighed. “Istvan notified him, but Meewfolk being what they are, he’ll be here somewhere between five minutes and half an hour.”

“Pretty much what I expected.” I had an Ability Point to spend, but decided to save that until I could properly assess my available combat skills. I quickly doled out my skill points, assigning two to Leadership and one to Strategy, bringing both Skills to Beginner 10: the maximum level I could attain before mentoring under a trainer or reading a Journeyman-level Skill Tome. No sooner had I confirmed that than I got a notification.

[Your Steward has added 55,099 gold olbia to the Treasury!]

[You have 65,862 olbia available for projects or withdrawal. You have 120 Build Points.]

“Nice. Istvan just dropped fifty-five K in the bank, and there’s a lot more where that came from,” I said. “Not enough to rebuild the university, but still. It’s better than it was.”

“Indeed. Though out of curiosity, where did you source all this gold?” Vash asked in Tuun.

“Lahati’s Tomb,” I replied, in the same language. It was one of many reasons I was happy to keep him as my bodyguard. No one else in the castle besides Karalti spoke Tuun, so we could discuss Important Duke Stuff in relative secrecy. “And no, we didn’t graverob the last dragon queen of Myszno. She gave her grave goods and those of her clanmates to Karalti as an inheritance.”

Vash grunted. “I’m glad. Or we would be having stern words.”

“Believe me, Karalti has strong opinions on that as well.” I closed my sheet and opened Karalti’s. “I’m going to