Chapter three Waters of life

  I sat at my study again, elbows on the desk, staring at another report about grain shipments that didn’t arrive and bandit sightings near the southern trade routes. This desk, this room—hell, this whole damned estate—had become my coffin, and I was the undead thing buried in paperwork and civil dysfunction.

  It’s been nine months since I got bullshitted into this body.

  Nine months since I blinked and found myself staring into a polished mirror at a too-pretty face, covered in dried blood and half-faded bruises, belonging to a boy named Mikhail Aurelius Valerius. Sounded like a cheap Roman LARP name at first—Valerius, for God's sake. I thought I’d walked into a Warhammer fanfic. And then I found out the name of the country.

  The Empire of the Eternal Fme.

  Because of course it is.

  Apparently, the empire’s founder was some fming sword-wielding warlord named Caldran Varethar Valerius who conquered half the continent and vanished after a seven-decade reign. Left behind a throne, a cult formed centuries ter, and, naturally, a “consecutive bloodline.” that has endured for 5 thousand years. That's where I come in—lucky number eleven. The Eleventh Prince of the current emperor. Youngest of six half brothers and four half sisters to the current emperor I didn't even ask for the name . And yeah, I could remember their names if I tried, but I told Eldric to stop bothering me with the details after he spent an entire hour trying to expin the imperial birth order like I gave a shit.

  As far as I was concerned, they weren’t relevant at all.

  From what I’ve pieced together over these months—and believe me, it didn’t take long—the previous Mikhail, the original tenant of this body, was a spoiled, sadistic little goblin. They exiled him when he was Nine for being a Goddamn menace, and dumped him here in Velos, a dusty, half-forgotten frontier province held together by prayers and rotten timber.

  In three years, he managed to do what even war couldn’t: he turned this pce into a graveyard with taxes.

  It wasn’t a paradise before, not by any stretch. But it was functioning. Barely. Local trade. Subsistence farming. A few mines. Then this little aristocratic gremlin shows up with an entourage of yes-men, bleeds the nd dry, drives out the merchants, breaks the farmers, and apparently whipped a baker for serving him stale bread.

  People feared him like they feared house fires.

  And me? I gotta work to fix a province and thankfully,nine months ter, Velos is breathing. Barely. But breathing. Is a strong word in all honesty

  I’ve stabilized the main roads—stone-packed and raised. Trade's starting to trickle back in. The first merchants to take a risk on my new policies are being pampered like royalty: zero tariffs(for now), guaranteed safety, priority docking. It's unsustainable in the long-term, but it's a hook. And so far? It’s working.

  But there’s a persistent thorn in my side.

  The vilges. The outlying ones.

  Barely a dozen, scattered like teeth along the spine of the province. They’re isoted, underfed, undersupplied. I’ve gotten reports for months—bandits, raiders, even svers picking off people during night hauls. And beneath it all, the one problem tying everything together: water.

  Which, on its own, shouldn’t be the end of the world. But the problem isn't scarcity. It's access.

  A river runs through the nd. A wide, clean, entirely usable river that conveniently connects every single vilge like someone painted it with a strategic paintbrush. A gift from whatever cruel god dumped me here.

  And no one’s using it.

  Why?

  Because hauling barrels of water across cracked soil on foot in 100-degree heat is the only form of transport these fuckers have.

  I stared at the map again. Inked reports surrounded it, dotted with hand-scrawled notes from local scouts. The topography was favorable. Elevation difference between the river and most of the settlements? Manageable. Gradient? Rough, but nothing I couldn’t work with.

  All it needed was bor. Materials. Logistics. And a vision. An aqueduct, I thought again, fingers tapping against the desk. The word still made Eldric squint whenever I said it aloud.

  They don’t even have the concept for gravity-fed water systems out here. This empire supposed to be thousands of years old yet these fuckers don’t even have the basic tech or knowledge so i can assume two things there is a lot of magic to supplement or it even halts non magical innovations When I tried expining it to Eldric what my pn was, he asked if I meant a floating canal held up by sky spirits. I ended up sketching Roman-style arches in the dirt with a stick while Cassius looked like he was contempting an aneurysm.

  But I'll make it work.

  I have to. Because the moment the aqueduct works in one vilge?

  I’m scaling it province-wide .And after that?

  Who the fuck knows.

  The morning air is cool as I swing myself onto the saddle.

  The Lizard beast called a “SandSpine Strider” beneath me is a fine beast—dark-scaled and surprisingly gentle. She is quite fast,fierce and the like and the one of the few things the original Mikhail didn’t treat like shit. My retainers gnce my way, trying not to show their discomfort. A prince—an imperial prince—does not personally oversee supply runs.

  But I’m not normal. And neither is the situation I am in . The outer vilges are dying.

  For weeks now, reports have flooded in. I’ve already sent provisions, barrels, rations, even some coin. But I know better than to mistake that for a solution. For i brought crude blueprints but first i need to get the y of the nd.

  A bandage doesn't fix a festering wound. So I’m going myself.

  Maps and reports tell one story. Faces tell another. And a ruler who cannot look his people in the eye has no business ruling anything at all.

  Twelve men ride behind me—guards, attendants, and Cassius and eldric, though the two do a poor job hiding their confusion. A wagon follows, groaning beneath the weight of grain sacks, dried meat, and water barrels. The Beast’s feet stir the dust as we ride south, the road winding through fields of cracked earth and dying weeds.

  The closer we get, the harsher the nd becomes.

  The air changes. Becomes thin. Dry. The kind of dry that makes your lips crack and your nose bleed.

  The vilge Of Orthos is small. A few Dozen wooden homes, half-colpsed, patched with cloth and mud. A few squat stone buildings—relics of a more hopeful past—stand like broken teeth in the dust, and based on reports this used to be a retively stable Quarry Vilge which is perfect. I will need stone.

  And everywhere, there are people. Thin men with sunburned skin and hollow eyes. Women cradling children to their ribs like shields. No one runs. No one speaks. They just watch.

  I slow my Strider, sweeping my gaze over them. It’s worse than I expected.

  Far worse.

  A man steps forward—tattered tunic, bones visible under sun-dark skin. But his spine is straight, his eyes focused. A scribe of the vilge, then, or the closest thing they’ve got left.

  “My Lord,” he says, voice hoarse. “We didn’t expect…”

  He hesitates, unsure of the words.

  “You didn’t expect me,” I finish for him, already dismounting. I hand off my reins without breaking stride.

  “I read the reports this been going on for years. I presume?,” I say pinly.

  He blinks. Whatever he thought I was, this wasn’t it.

  Behind me, my men begin unloading the wagon. Vilgers approach slowly, reverently, like the food might vanish if they move too quickly. Some whisper thanks. Most just bow their heads.

  But I’m not watching them.

  I’m staring past them—at the nd.

  Dry fields. Cracked soil. Very few greens anywhere. Just mostly dust .

  “You have no water?” I ask, though I already know.

  The man does not respond

  I hum. My eyes drift toward the horizon.

  The reports had mentioned a river. Too far to be useful. Barely a footnote.

  I should’ve paid more attention.

  “Take me there,” I say.

  His eyes widen. “Now, my Lord?”

  “Yes. Now.”

  It takes nearly an hour on Lizard back (it feels weird that word but eh) .

  When we reach it, I exhale. It's not a creek or some pitiful stream. It’s a river—broad, steady, alive. The current is strong. The water’s clean. Clear.

  This could solve everything.

  I dismount and pat the girl’s neck—calm, deliberate. She shifts beneath my hand, muscles twitching. Her ears flick back, uneasy.

  She senses it.

  Not danger. Not fear.

  Something deeper.

  As if some instinct buried in her brain knows I’m not the boy she remembers. That I’m not really Mikhail. I am not sure if the original Mikhail even gave her a name.

  She flinches—just slightly—but enough.

  I let my hand fall away. No time for that.

  I turn toward the river’s edge, boots crunching over the sun-bleached stones, the sound sharp in the morning silence. My eyes scan the current, already calcuting slope, pressure, elevation—anything to keep my mind on numbers, and not on what I left behind in that saddle.

  This isn’t some cursed wastend miracle. It’s just untapped. Mismanaged. Forgotten. The vilgers suffer not because the water is gone—but because they’re cut off from it. And the fact a little twat was given control over their lives made things worse.

  It’s right here.

  I stare at the river—wide, clean, consistent flow rate even at mid-dry season. And yet, for the past two decades, vilgers have been hauling water barrel by barrel, across miles of broken terrain. On foot. Under a sun that bakes the skin off your bones.

  It’s not just inefficient. It’s insane.

  I sigh, rubbing the back of my neck as I start pacing along the river’s edge, scanning the terrain with practiced eyes. Gravel slope, minor erosion, decent anchoring. The gradient to the vilge is shallow, but consistent. No major dips or valleys.

  Perfect conditions for a gravity-fed system.

  I turn to Eldric, who is already clutching a quill like he expects a thunderbolt of knowledge to strike him at any moment.

  “Eldric,” I say, already gesturing, “remember what I told you about my pns for this pce?”

  He nods vigorously, eyes wide. “Yes, my Lord. Water infrastructure.

  I nod and I say. “Just listen for now. I need to think out loud.”

  And by “think,” I mean rant internally of just how shit the situation is. I crough and run my hand through the water.

  Clean. Strong flow. Based on visual observation and sound resonance—about 1.2 to 1.5 meters per second. Enough to move volume. Enough to transport.

  We’re upstream here. The vilge is about four kilometers southwest or 2.6 leagues in this world's measurements, with an elevation drop of roughly… what? Fifteen meters? Maybe less? Which gives us a slope of 0.375%. Bare minimum needed for a Roman-style gravity-fed aqueduct is around 0.1%. So we’re in the clear. Barely.

  I look up at the sky.

  No major wind erosion on the riverbank. Good. The surrounding hills give solid topsoil compression—firm underfoot, barely any subsidence. Bedrock’s close to the surface; I can feel it in how the earth responds under heel. That means excellent foundational support. No need for deep pilings. That alone cuts down bor time and cost by at least twenty percent.

  I exhale slowly, trying to quiet the hundred voices arguing in my head.

  Okay. So I’ve got water. I’ve got terrain. I’ve got access.

  Now comes the real nightmare.

  Manpower, materials, and logistics.

  Labor? Right in front of me. These people are underfed, half-broken, but they want to work. Give them food, give them pay, and they’ll move mountains. Materials? Local stone is decent, wood is abundant if I ration it carefully. I’ll need to import masonry tools eventually, but I can make do for the first phase.

  Specialists, though… That’s tricky. No trained masons, no surveyors, no one who even knows what a flow regutor is. I can’t draft a team if I’m the only one who knows what the damn blueprint means.

  And then there's storage.

  Where the hell do I store the water?

  I need elevated cisterns for pressure, lownd reservoirs for emergencies, sediment traps to avoid clogging, and distribution tanks for reguting flow. Then I have to think wastewater, because God forbid the vilgers dump their undry runoff into the same channel as the livestock troughs.

  Contamination management. Overflow pnning. Emergency shutoff channels in case something upstream gets into the flow. What if someone drops a dead animal into the intake channel? What if there's a disease outbreak? I need controlled release valves—gravity-fed ideally—but adjustable flow rates would need pressure cap design.

  So many questions. So many interlocking systems.

  And this is just one vilge.

  I breathe in. Hold it. Let it out slowly.

  Thankfully, it's small. Popution’s low. Water demand is manageable. The smaller the model, the easier the testing. I can stress test the system here before scaling it up. Use them as a live demo. A working prototype.

  If I can get this working?

  The rest of the province becomes a domino line.

  But I’m not there yet.

  And until I start educating the locals on resource management, scheduling, and basic maintenance routines, I can’t hand anything off. Not without watching the entire thing fall apart the moment I blink or turn away back to the river as I crouch by the riverbank, eyes scanning the curve of the terrain, fingers absently digging into the dry soil. It crumbles easily—too loose on top, but the yer underneath is firmer. That’s good. Easier to dig, stable enough for channel footing.

  I rise, gnce around, and spot a cluster of fallen branches half-buried near a tree. Long, mostly straight. Splintered, but usable.

  That’ll do.

  I walk over, grab one, and snap off the worst of the ends. Then another. And another. Crude stakes—but they’ll serve, for their purpose

  I return to the river’s edge and drive the first one into the ground with the heel of my boot. Not perfect, but it marks the intended starting point—the intake.

  I step forward five paces. Not exact, but close enough for now. I jab another stick into the soil. Then again. And again.

  “Flow line,” I mutter to myself. “South-southwest. Parallel to the ridge. Maintain gradient—minimal deviation. No sharp bends.”

  Every five or six paces, I pnt another marker. Each one staking a cim against ignorance. Against rot. Against failure.

  I feel eyes on me—vilgers, guards, even Eldric, watching like I’ve lost my damn mind, wandering up and down the river and jamming sticks into dirt like I’m fencing off a ghost.

  “Alright. First markers are in pce—good enough for now.” I brush the dirt from my palms and straighten, eyes still on the path I’d just outlined.

  I turn to the others—retainers, vilgers, guards—all standing there like they’re waiting for divine inspiration.

  “No sense wasting the trip,” I say, waving a hand toward the river. “Gather as much water as you can carry. Fill every barrel, every skin. Bring it back to the vilge.”

  They blink at me for a second before scrambling to obey.

  “I’ll need a little time,” I add, mostly to Eldric, who’s hovering nearby with ink-stained fingers and an expectant expression. “I need to get the y of the nd. Walk the elevation. Get a better sense of where we’re cutting, where we’re bridging.”

  I start walking again, boots crunching lightly over the uneven ground, eyes following the curves and dips of the terrain. My gaze jumps from one point to the next—trees, stone outcrops, erosion lines—already measuring slope angles and imagining the path of carved stone and channeled water that will eventually cut across all this like a scar of civilization.

  This could work.

  It’s rough. It’ll need correcting. But the bones are there.

  Eventually, I circle back to the others. The men have finished filling barrels and skins with river water. A few of them are sitting, catching their breath. I help them load the st of it onto the carts—not out of charity, but because every minute we save here is another stone I can pce tomorrow.

  “Mount up,” I say, slinging my satchel back over my shoulder. “We’re heading back to the vilge.”

  They expect a brisk return, but I slow the pace deliberately. My orders. We move at a walking pace now, not a gallop. I ride near the front, eyes still scanning everything around me. Elevation shifts. Soil consistency. Tree lines. Erosion signs. I scribble rough notes onto parchment as we go—my handwriting rushed and crude, but legible enough. I jot angles. Depth estimates. Rough grade changes. Points of possible diversion or support anchoring.

  I’m going to need to look at this with fresher eyes tomorrow. Walk it again. Maybe twice.

  Because I’m not leaving.

  Not yet.

  When we arrive back in the vilge, the sun’s low in the sky, turning the broken fields a dull orange. My servants dismount and begin assembling my field tent—thick canvas, reinforced posts. Nothing royal, nothing ornate. Just durable.

  Just practical.

  This will be my base of operations for now. I pnned for it—brought tools, surveying rods, extra parchment, even an extra set of boots. I knew I’d be staying. Because I can’t just sketch some lines and vanish back to Velos hoping they get it right. If I want this aqueduct built properly, I have to be here. Eyes on everything. Hands on every step.

  As my tent is pitched and the camp settles, I summon two of my riders.

  “You’re heading back to Velos at first light,” I tell them. “I want word spread through the city—quietly, but quickly. I need trained hands. Any stone masons, brickyers, carpenters, or builders who’ve worked on bridges or heavy construction before. Anyone competent. Willing to travel. They’ll be paid fairly and fed well. Find them.”

  The sun’s already dipping low, staining the sky with streaks of red and amber. No point returning to the estate. Not tonight. I stay in the vilge—just as pnned.

  They clear a corner of one of the storage huts for me. No tent. No feather bed. Just a hay cot, coarse wool bnket, and a bucket of water nearby. Good enough I eat cold bread and dried meat under a flickering oil mp, sketching aqueduct channels onto the back of an old parchment until sleep finally drags me under.

  By morning, the smell of ash bread and boiled roots wakes me.

  I head back out to the river alone. No retinue. No parade. Just a satchel slung over one shoulder with parchment, a charcoal pencil, a hatchet and a wrapped bundle of ftbread and salted meat the vilgers offered—still surprised I hadn’t left.

  As if my presence here was some kind of joke. Or a miracle.

  I don’t care what they think.

  The old Mikhail wouldn’t have stayed. He wouldn’t have sent supplies. Wouldn’t have remembered their names, let alone their faces. He probably would’ve had half the vilge whipped for not groveling enough when he rode in.

  But I have business. And I don’t need their awe. I need results.

  I make my way to the stables, where the sand strider—my mount—waits with her pale white scales catching the early sun. Her bck eyes blink slowly as I approach. Still wary. Still watching me.

  I realize, yet again, that I don’t know her name.

  So I asked Eldric, the night before. He’d looked up from his scrolls, blinked in that tight, cautious way he always does around me—as if waiting for a wrong word to get his throat slit—and said, carefully, “I… I do not believe she has a name, my Lord. You always called her Beast. Or Lizard, depending on your mood.”

  Of course.

  Even the few things he didn’t treat like shit, he couldn’t be bothered to treat with basic decency.

  But she didn’t flinch when I approached. Didn’t try to bite me when I fed her by hand. That was all the confirmation I needed: he might’ve been cold to her, but he wasn’t cruel to her. Not like he was with everyone else.

  So I gave her a name.

  Albina.

  An old Polish name. Simple. Feminine. Strong. It means "white"—nothing fancy. Just something to anchor me back to a world that’s been fading in my memory with every month I spend here.

  They won’t know what it means. They’ll just think it sounds foreign—noble, maybe. But it fits her. Clean, quiet, and unassuming.

  When I whispered it to her—Albina—she huffed softly and nudged her head against my arm.

  I chuckled. It's been a while since anything made me do that.

  We ride out again, just the two of us, leaving behind the half-repaired vilge and my tent pitched like a general’s command post in the middle of nowhere. Before I left, I scrawled a note on my desk: orders to my retainers to rest.

  They’d earned it. And they’d need it.

  Backbreaking bor is coming.

  By the time Albina and I reach the river again, the sun is cresting high, and the air has gone from brisk to irritating.

  I dismount, give her a quick pat along the neck, then pull the hatchet from my saddlebag.

  There's wood nearby—mostly scrub trees and deadfall, but good enough for what I need. Notching out lengths, I start cutting down usable branches, chopping them into rough stakes about waist-high. The rhythm is mindless, and that’s exactly what I need while my brain keeps calcuting.

  Once I’ve got a decent bundle, I begin the walk.

  Albina follows without needing to be told. Smart girl.

  I spend the next few hours walking the entire proposed aqueduct path, using those rough stakes to mark the line. Every ten paces or so, I drive one into the earth with the butt of the hatchet. They’re crude, but they’ll serve. The important thing is establishing the direction, slope, and curvature. I use string and stones to check elevations—not perfect, but close enough for a preliminary yout.

  By the time I reach the outskirts of the vilge again, I’ve got everything I need to begin.

  Except a pce to put the water.

  That brings me back to an earlier thought: storage.

  There’s no point bringing water to the vilge if I’ve got nowhere to hold it, or no way to control where it goes. Especially during the dry season. So the next phase is simple on paper—hellish in practice:

  A giant open-top basin.

  Wide. Deep. Lined with cy to prevent seepage. Connected to the aqueduct by an intake gate, with channel valves that can be closed or redirected when the basin needs cleaning or draining.

  Simple. Efficient. Maintenance-friendly.

  In the future, once everything's stabilized, I’m even considering turning it into a fish farm—nothing massive, just something to supplement food production. Protein’s a luxury here, and any alternative to sughtering goats is a win in my book.

  I make a mental note to look into local fish species.

  By the time I return to the vilge, the sun is lower in the sky, and I’ve still got dirt under my nails. My clothes are stained from dust and cy, but I don’t care. I head to the central clearing and send word out: gather everyone.

  It takes maybe half an hour before the square fills with bodies—men, mostly, but a few hardened women too. Laborers, farmers, young boys with sharp eyes and empty hands. They’re curious. Nervous. A little hopeful.

  I step forward, pnt my boots squarely, and speak loud enough for all of them to hear.

  “This project—this aqueduct, the basin, the irrigation—you’re all going to help build it. This is not a request. It’s a direct order.”

  A ripple runs through the crowd. Of course it does. No one expected the prince to say that to their faces.

  I let the silence hang a second before continuing.

  “But,” I add, “you’ll be paid. Fairly.”

  They perk up.

  “Eldric tells me the going rate for a borer is twenty copper talons a day. That’s insultingly low, considering you’ll be working your backs into the ground.”

  I pause. “So I’m offering one silver talon per day.”

  Gasps. Murmurs.

  That’s five times the standard rate. Enough to support a family for weeks after just a few days of work. It's not charity. It’s an incentive.

  "Why would anyone not sign up for this?” I mutter under my breath, loud enough for the front row to hear. “Would be beyond me.”

  That’s when it starts.

  One guy—maybe in his thirties, missing a few teeth and way too eager—shoves the man next to him and yells, “I was here first!”

  The second guy punches him square in the jaw.

  And just like that, all hell breaks loose.

  Men start swinging like it’s a tavern brawl and I just insulted their mother. Within seconds, the entire vilge square is a full-on melee. Not just the adults either—older boys jump in like it’s a rite of passage. Even one scrawny kid, who couldn't be more than nine, starts wailing on a grown man’s shins with a stick like he’s been waiting for this moment.

  I spot two elderly farmers trying to throttle each other while simultaneously slipping on the same sack of onions someone dropped. One guy is using a wooden spoon as a weapon. Another is brandishing a sandal like it’s a war trophy. Someone’s shirt is on fire—how, I have no idea.

  And I just stand there.

  Watching.

  Arms crossed, boots pnted, expression ft.

  I don’t stop immediately.

  Why?

  Because it’s hirious.

  These people have probably never had a financial incentive this good in their lives. They’re fighting like I just announced a limited-time offer on oxygen.

  Eldric and Cassius look horrified, standing off to the side like they are witnessing the fall of civilization. One of my guards takes a half step forward, waiting for my signal to break it up.

  I raise a hand to stop him.

  “Wait,” I mutter, eyes tracking one vilger currently getting suplexed into a barrel of cabbage. And someone screamed “MY CABBAGES” I told them “Give it a minute. I want to see who wins.”

  Another man goes flying into a cartwheel. A boy hits someone with a broom. A group of three is trying to hogtie a fourth guy who bit one of them.

  Ten minutes in, and it’s pure, unfiltered economics meets primal instinct.

  Eventually, once I’ve had my fill of the chaos, I step forward, cp my hands once, and shout loud enough to freeze the air.

  “ALRIGHT—cut the shit!”

  Silence sms down like a hammer.

  One guy is mid-swing, frozen in the air. The stick in his hand is literally snapped in half. A man with a bloody nose blinks at me like he forgot where he was. The kid with the broom quietly sets it down like he just remembered he was supposed to be helping his mom.

  I clear my throat.

  “You’re all hired,” I say dryly. “Every st one of you. You didn’t need to fight to the death for the spot. This isn’t a gdiator ring. It’s a public works project.”

  A few people cough. Someone awkwardly adjusts their ripped tunic. “I need bodies, not bruises,” I continue. “There’s more than enough bor to go around, and trust me—you’ll all be sore enough without punching each other.”

  They shuffle into formation, sheepish but still twitching with leftover adrenaline.

  “You want the silver? Earn it. First shift starts tomorrow. Before sunrise. Bring tools. And if you don't have any—bring your spine.”

  Then I turn on my heel and walk off, smirking. As i gesture for the vilge elder to follow me

  I sit at the table set beneath the vilge’s half-colpsing meeting hall—a warped wooden structure that smells like old bark and desperation. The old man sits across from me, sharp-eyed despite the weathered lines carved deep into his face.

  He introduces himself simply as Pzta—vilge elder since the Empire expanded this far nearly twenty years ago. That alone earns a small nod of respect from me. Surviving two decades out here means you either made peace with hardship or buried everyone who didn’t.

  To my surprise, he isn’t scared of me.

  At all.

  Maybe he’s just too old to care. Maybe he knows death doesn’t knock twice. But there’s no flinching. No stiff fear. Just curiosity. That, and the faintest look of suspicion behind those weather-beaten eyes.

  “The man you spoke to earlier,” Pzta says, his voice like wind passing through a dry field, “was Mattius. My scribe. And closest friend. He’s sharper than me, but he’s still trying to figure out how you—a boy who once had men flogged for stepping on the wrong side of the road—suddenly know the difference between channel-grade limestone and goddamn loam.”

  I smile faintly.

  “Well, word travels fast.”

  He snorts. “We heard the Eleventh Prince took a nasty fall. Forgot who he was.”

  I chuckle and lean back in the chair. “That’s the rumor.”

  “And that it changed him.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  Pzta narrows his eyes. “You don’t act twelve.”

  I raise a brow. “Good.”

  There’s silence for a beat. Then he chuckles too—dry, low, tired. But not unkind.

  At least we’re both pretending not to be who we are.

  We shift to business.

  I bring up manpower first—how many able-bodied vilgers can be spared, how many already work the fields, how many can be trained for masonry, digging, hauling. Pzta gives me numbers, surprisingly accurate ones. Then he tells me about the quarry.

  It’s not far. Only about an hour’s walk east, near a ridge of broken hills.

  “The stone’s good,” he says. “Gray, veined, heavy. Harder than it looks. We used it to build the shrine. The one still standing.”

  Exactly what I need.

  Dense, low-porosity stone. Ideal for retaining walls and water channel foundations. If I can train them to cut it cleanly, we can start stockpiling within a week.

  The borers? Surprisingly enthusiastic. They heard about the pay. Some of them still have bloody noses from yesterday’s brawl. One’s missing a shoe. Doesn’t matter. They’re eager.

  Now comes the part where I break their brains.

  I start expining.

  “We’re going to extract stones for the aqueduct walls, and build enough of a stock pile when the masons get here the construction can begin in proper. Long sbs for the foundation. Smaller, fitted pieces for the channel lining. We’ll need reinforced cy for sealing. Timber for scaffolding. And constant firewood to keep the workers fed and the site warm at night.”

  They nod, slowly. That part’s still within their world.

  “Then we’ll dig the channels. Primary and secondary. Some shallow, others deep. Then we’ll start on the reservoir basin—open-topped, cy-lined, with adjustable intake flow and overflow release points.”

  Pzta furrows his brow. “Overflow?”

  I tap the table. “If it rains hard, or the channel backs up, you don’t want water flooding the vilge. We need pces for the excess to go. Controlled redirection.”

  He whistles, impressed—or confused. Maybe both.

  I continue, unfazed.

  “Irrigation canals will branch from the main outlet line—gravity-fed. They’ll snake through the crops. Controlled valves let you decide when and how much water flows into each segment. Think of it like a network of veins.”

  Mattius, the scribe, is blinking rapidly. Eldric’s scribbling so fast his ink is starting to smear.

  Cassius just stares at me like I’m conjuring demons.

  I press on anyway.

  “For drinking water, we build separate storage. Covered tanks. Isoted. Constant flow-in, but elevated outlet so sediment settles to the bottom. Clean water on top. Periodic cleaning—every three cycles.”

  Pzta nods

  “We drain the tanks every three cycles, clean out any buildup, reseal, and reflow. Maintenance. Mandatory.”

  More silence.

  Eldric clears his throat, clearly trying not to sound nervous. “My Lord… do you… understand how all this will be built?”

  I gnce at him. “Yes, Eldric. Because I’m going to design it.”

  He returns to writing without another word.

  Cassius mutters something about wood prices.

  But this will work, yes it has too.