"Open plan," I decide. "No teller cages. No barriers. I want a long counter of black marble running down that side."
I point to the left.
"That is the Silver Ledger line. For the sailors. The fishermen. The wives."
I point to the right, near the grand fireplace.
"And there, we put plush chairs. Velvet rugs. That is where we service the Captains and the Guild Masters. We serve them brandy while Olin audits their manifests."
"And the ghost?" Olin asks dryly. "Does he get an office?"
I look up at the balcony that runs around the second floor. I sense the cold spot near the railing. The Admiral is still here. He is faint, just a memory of sadness.
"The ghost is security," I say.
I raise my hands. I cannot fix the roof with magic, that is Torvald’s job, but I can fix the atmosphere.
I flick my wrist and push my will into the stone. I banish the smell of rot and urine. I push out the damp. I weave a subtle ward into the threshold, a feeling of unease for anyone who enters with larceny in their heart, and a feeling of calm for anyone who enters to do honest business.
The air in the room shifts. It becomes crisp. Expectant.
"Sander," I say, dropping my hands. "Tomorrow, you commission the sign."
"Gold leaf?" Sander asks, poising his quill.
"No," I say. "Iron. The Royal Fey Bank - Varpua Branch. I will write it for you in Fey script."
I turn to my team.
"You have three days," I tell them. "In three days, the King arrives to cut the ribbon on the pier. When he turns around to look at the city, I want this building to be the first thing he sees. I want him to understand that while he may be the King of the land, I am the Queen of the Coin."
Torvald cracks his knuckles. "I'll need more lumber."
"Buy the barge you were going to burn," I tell him. "Use the pine for the scaffolding. But for the front doors? I want oak. Four inches thick."
I walk out into the night. The sea air fills my lungs.
I have the location. I have the team. And somewhere in Dobile, Oskar is likely losing another hand of cards, completely unaware that I just bought his exit strategy.
The Old Admiralty is large enough to be two buildings.
While Torvald’s men are ripping up the floorboards of the Great Hall to create the Bank, I lead Sander Vane to the East Wing.
"This," I say, pushing open the double doors to a room that smells of dust and old maps, "is the Embassy."
It is the former Chart Room. The walls are lined with mahogany shelves. A massive table, carved from a single slab of oak, dominates the center. The windows look out not at the harbor, but toward the open sea.
"The Bank handles the gold," I explain, walking to the head of the table. "The Embassy handles the power."
Sander looks around. He sets his inkpot down on the table with a decisive clack.
"And what, specifically, does the Varpua Branch of the Fey Embassy do?" he asks. "Besides look intimidating?"
"We sell immunity," I say.
I pull a document from my satchel. It is not a ledger. It is a passport. A small booklet bound in blue leather, stamped with the silver tree of Ellisar.
"Sander," I say. "You are no longer just a secretary. You are the Consul."
Sander raises an eyebrow. "Consul Vane. It has a ring to it."
"Your job is to manage the List of Protected Persons," I explain. "Starting today, every man on Torvald’s crew, every clerk in Silas’s bank, and every key supplier we contract with is offered... dual citizenship."
Kenric stiffens. "Víl?... dual citizenship? That is... Oskar will call it treason."
"Oskar can call it whatever he likes," I dismiss. "But under the trade agreement he signed, employees of Fey foreign diplomatic mission are subject to the laws of that mission, not the laws of the host country."
I tap the blue booklet.
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"If a dockworker is on my List, the City Watch cannot arrest him without your permission. The Tax Assessor cannot audit his home without a warrant signed by me. And if he gets into a brawl... he is tried in a Fey Consular Court, not by a corrupt local magistrate."
Sander picks up the booklet. He runs a thumb over the silver tree. He understands immediately.
"You are building a private army," Sander says. "Legally."
"I am securing my workforce," I correct. "Torvald’s men are loyal to the coin, yes. But if the King’s Sheriff tries to shake them down for 'protection money', which happens every payday, they will be angry. If I give them a piece of paper that tells the Sheriff to go to hell? They will be devoted."
"And the merchants?" Sander asks. "Do they get blue books?"
"Only the useful ones," I say. "The ones who bring us the best contracts. We make it a status symbol. If you are a 'Friend of the Embassy,' your cargo clears customs in an hour. If not... well, Olin is very slow with his inspections."
I gesture to the shelves.
"Fill these walls with books, Sander. Law books. Treaties. Precedents. I want this room to look like a fortress of bureaucracy. When a Captain comes in here to complain, I want him to feel like he is drowning in paperwork before he even opens his mouth."
"I can do that," Sander grins. It is a sharp, jagged expression. "I know a calligrapher who creates forms so complex they make grown men weep."
"Hire him," I say.
I walk to the window. I place my hand on the glass.
I flick my wrist again and push the magic into the East Wing. Unlike the welcoming, crisp air of the Bank, I make the Embassy feel... heavy.
The air here becomes still. The shadows lengthen. It feels like standing in a deep forest at twilight, where eyes are watching you from the brush. It is a place of secrets.
"Kenric," I say, turning back. "Have the flag raised."
"The Centis flag?" he asks
"No," I say softly. "The Golden Tree with Wild Roses. Fly it above the East Wing. Let the King see it when he arrives."
"He will claim you are conquering his city," Kenric warns.
"I am not conquering it," I say, looking at Sander, who is already organizing his quills with military precision. "I am simply... civilized. And civilization requires an Embassy."
"Consul Vane," I address him.
"Your Highness?" Sander stands straighter.
"Your first task. Draft a letter to the Sheriff of Varpua. Inform him that the Admiralty grounds are now sovereign soil, and any officer found trespassing will be... detained... for diplomatic questioning."
"Detained?" Sander asks. "By whom?"
"By the badgers," I say straight-faced. "Or Torvald. Whichever is closest."
Sander dips his quill. "I'll make it sound terrifying."
"I know you will," I say.
I walk out, leaving the Consul to his new kingdom.
The Bank eats the money. The Embassy eats the laws. And between the two of them, I intend to swallow this city whole before Oskar even realizes he’s been served.
The chaos of construction is loud, but the arrival of Duchess Ina is louder. Not in volume, she speaks in a cultured murmur, but in sheer, displacing presence.
She arrives in a carriage that is cleaner than anything else in Varpua. She steps out into the muddy courtyard of Jellema’s estate, lifts a scented handkerchief to her nose, and surveys the scene with the eye of a general inspecting a particularly messy battlefield.
I am standing on the balcony with Jellema.
"Thank the Gods," Jellema exhales. "I was terrified I would have to do the seating chart."
"She looks formidable," I note. "Is that a new hat?"
"That is her 'War Hat'," Jellema whispers. "It means she intends to reorganize the province."
We meet her in the drawing room. Ina has already commandeered a footman to hold her gloves and has sent another to find "drinkable tea."
"Víl?," she greets me, offering a cheek that smells of rosewater and steel. "Kenric. Jellema. You look exhausted. And Jellema, your doublet is tragic."
"We have been busy building a harbor, Ina," I say.
"You have been moving rocks," Ina corrects, pulling a sheaf of papers from her bag. "Now comes the difficult part. Moving people."
She spreads a guest list on the table. It is covered in red ink.
"I received your draft for the ceremony invitations," she says, looking at me with pity. "It was... quaint."
"It was efficient," I defend. "I invited the Mayor, the Guild Masters, and the King."
"You invited the Master of the Bakers' Guild before the Master of the Millers' Guild," Ina points out, tapping a name. "If you had sent that, the Millers would have gone on strike, and there would be no bread in Varpua for a month."
I blink. "They are that petty?"
"Men with small titles are infinite in their pettiness," Ina says. "And you put Duke Doerr at the same table as Duke De Boer. They are currently suing each other over a drainage ditch. If they sit together, one of them will stab the other with a fork. While entertaining, it ruins the tablecloth."
She sighs and dips a quill.
"I am taking over. The King arrives in forty-eight hours. We need to orchestrate the social lattice so that by the time Oskar arrives, the city is already strangling him with politeness."
"What do you need?" I ask.
"First," Ina says, writing furiously. "We need the Mayor, Guss, is it?, to host a preliminary reception. Not for the King. For the wives of the Guild Masters."
"Why the wives?" Jellema asks.
"Because the Guild Masters are currently terrified of Víl?’s 'sharks'," Ina explains. "They are defensive. But if their wives are invited to a 'Select Viewing of the New Promenade' hosted by a Duchess and a Princess? They will force their husbands to behave. We buy the peace with canapés."
She looks at me.
"I heard about your artists. The Admiralty?"
"It is being transformed," I say.
"Good. We will hold the main banquet there. In the Bank."
"In the Bank?" Olin, who has just entered the room, looks horrified. "But... the floors? The dust?"
"Holger assures me the glass roof will be finished by tomorrow noon," I say. "And Torvald is scrubbing the stone."
"A banquet in a Bank," Ina muses. "It is bold. It says, 'We are not just eating dinner; we are eating money.' I like it. But we must seat the King carefully."
She draws a circle on the map of the Great Hall.
"Here. With his back to the vault."
"Why?"
"So he cannot see who is going in and out," Ina smiles. "And so that he faces the windows looking out at the new pier. We want him focused on the view, not the ledger."
She turns to Jellema.
"I need our kitchen staff. And our linen. And I need to know which of the local dignitaries has a daughter of marriageable age."
"Why?" Jellema asks, pouring her tea.
"Because Oskar will be bored during the speeches," Ina says pragmatically. "If we seat a pretty girl next to him, someone harmless, perhaps the daughter of the Wool Merchant, he will spend the entire evening flirting and drinking. He will sign anything you put in front of him just to impress her."
"Weaponized flirting," I approve.
"It is the oldest tactic in the book, my dear," Ina says, sipping her tea.
She looks at her list again.
"Now. The entertainment. You hired jugglers?"
"I hired... atmosphere," I say. "Dominico is arranging the lighting. Merovech is carving the ice sculptures."
Ohhh, Chapter 131 was one of those chapters where you can feel Víl? rolling up her metaphorical sleeves and saying, “Ah yes. Time to commit several forms of administrative domination.” And honestly? We love that for her.
Let’s break down the highlights—with all appropriate dramatics and Oskar?mockery.
Only Víl? could walk into a decrepit, ghost?ridden ruin and say, “Yes. This will be my palace of capitalism and diplomacy.”
She’s out here banishing smells, raising spirits (literally and architecturally), and turning a condemned building into a hostile takeover with marble accents.
Meanwhile, Oskar is somewhere losing at cards, blissfully unaware that Víl? just invented financial sovereignty out of spite. He’ll probably complain later that he wasn’t consulted, as if anyone has ever benefitted from consulting Oskar. He is a cautionary tale wrapped in a crown.
Víl? really said, “I am going to give every useful person in this city diplomatic immunity. Try me.”
And the laws? The treaties? The “actually, that’s not illegal if I say it isn’t”? Chef’s kiss.
Do you think Oskar understands even five percent of what she’s doing? Absolutely not.
He’s going to read the report upside?down and still get a headache.
This man went from “secretary with nice handwriting” to “consul who could ruin your life with a form” in under five minutes. He is thriving. Paperwork will never be safe again.
Oskar, on the other hand, can’t even sign his name without smudging it, so naturally he’ll be furious about all of this.
Her War Hat alone has more authority than Oskar’s entire personality.
She took one look at Víl?’s adorable, na?ve guest list and said, “Absolutely not. Move aside. Mother is writing the invitations.”
If Oskar had even one ounce of Ina’s competence, the kingdom wouldn’t be held together with duct tape and Víl?’s self-restraint.
Hosting a banquet… In a bank… To intimidate a king…
This is why we adore Víl?. And seeing Oskar seated with his back to the vault? Priceless. One cannot steal what one cannot see, after all.
Chapter 131 is a stunning demonstration of:
- Soft power
- Hard power
- Administrative power
- Ghost?friendly renovation
- And the art of ruining Oskar’s week without even being in the same room
Víl? builds an empire.
Oskar builds… disappointment.