CHAPTER 825: THE VALE THROUGH AN ENGINEER’S EYES

Isabell sat quietly in the sitting room of her chambers, staring out the window and listening to the sound of gentle rain whispering across the roof tiles of the ancient fortress. There was nothing to see outside other than the occasional flicker of lightning in the clouds and the tiny lights of the fortress town beyond the walls, but somehow, she found the view of the dark night to be more calming and soothing than anything else in the room.

She’d been in the Vale of Mists for a week now or close enough to it, and she was beginning to feel comfortable with the unique rhythms of the place.

The night outside was darker than Blackwell City without the harbor to reflect the light of the sky or the city around it. More than that, the tall trees of the old forest around the fortress and its town, combined with the massive, looming cliff above, conspired to make the place feel like it had been draped in shadow even hours before the sun set.

But the lights that she could see from the fortress were very different from the lights she was accustomed to in Blackwell. They burned bright and clean in neat, orderly rows that lined the streets of Vale City. If she hadn’t seen them up close when Lady Heila or Sir Ollie led her through the city, she might have mistaken the distant lights for the campfires of a military camp because they were so orderly. Every fifty paces, along every major street, a pole had been placed, crowned with a glass-sided lantern that was lit as the sun set and burned all through the night.

It was an idea that should have been ordinary and logical, and yet she hadn’t seen such a practice anywhere in the Kingdom of Gaal or in the old countries across the sea. Doing things the Eldritch way would have required noblemen to empty their own coffers in order to light the streets or to collect a tax just to maintain the lights. It was far easier to simply require the people to place a lamp in a window at night to light the streets, even if most people only used enough oil to give a few hours of light.

The lamps weren’t the only thing that struck Isabell about Vale City, but here, at night, looking down on the faintly glowing lamps from high above, they were one of the most obvious signs of what this place had that most human cities lacked.

Intention.

Nothing that Isabell had seen in the Vale of Mists felt haphazard. From the orderly streets with their lights, to the villages spaced far enough from each other across the vale to let each one stand uniquely in a place that was suited to what the village did best, it was clear that there was a grand plan at work in the Vale and to an engineer like her, it was impossible to miss it once she started seeing the signs.

"It isn’t just a plan, though," she muttered as she sipped a mug of steaming, mulled wine. "It’s the discipline to adhere to the plan for longer than a single man’s life."

Lady Nyrielle had ruled the Vale of Mists for a century, longer than any human monarch could dream of, but she was even older than that, and her patience and discipline had helped the Vale of Mists recover from near destruction when most human nobles would have abandoned the land entirely. And even among those who were stubborn enough to rebuild, at least half would have failed outright.

But the Vale, even in its vastly diminished state, still built and maintained roads between villages, still kept up its bridges across the streams that fed the River Luath, and still did many more of the things that no one needed to do for the small population of the Vale today, but which would help the Vale immensely in the years to come.

"It’s enviable," she said with a heavy sigh. "To see someone so farsighted with so much care for their people."

Heila had explained it to her as an Eldritch Lord’s ’Duty of Care’, a responsibility of the strongest to use that strength on behalf of the people they ruled over. Failure to discharge that duty well, Heila had said, resulted in the rise of strong men who could slay irresponsible tyrants or rebellions that pulled poor rulers from their thrones. But Isabell thought that it went beyond that.

"What exactly does an undying vampire see her people as?" Isabell wondered. "Are they her treasured children? Beloved pets? Something else entirely?"

Isabell had seen communities that existed to serve the ambitions of their lord, but the Vale wasn’t like that at all. In fact, to her and Master Tiernan, it seemed like the Vale re-invested in itself aggressively, even before Ashlynn’s arrival and the transformation of the Vale under her influence.

Of the many things that Isabell had seen in the Vale that left a deep impression on her, there were things that she hadn’t seen which left an even larger impression on her. She hadn’t seen anyone sleeping in the streets or on benches in the city’s parks. She hadn’t seen any pensioners nursing old wounds who had been abandoned without families.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen any old and fallen soldiers. She’d met people of both the Horned Clan and the Clan of the Great Claw who suffered grave wounds during the War of Inches. Only, those people continued to live on in the long-houses of the Clan of Great Claw, or they kept a small hut in the Horned Clan’s villages where half a dozen grown children ensured that their parents or uncles never went unattended.

The entire Eldritch world wasn’t like this. It couldn’t be, and her conversations with the merchants from across the mountains confirmed as much. In general, the people of High Fen City or Crystal Lake City might be better off than most people in the Kingdom of Gaal, but the Vale of Mists was special. The care that Lady Nyrielle gave them was special, and Ashlynn only made that greater.

It was that something special that made Isabell’s hands itch for her drafting table and a chance to be part of what the Vale of Mists would become.

When she left the wars of the old countries behind, she returned to the Kingdom of Gaal to build a life for herself and her family. To make a place that was better than it had been, rather than tearing places apart with her engines of war.

In Blackwell County, she’d done as much of that as she could. She brought new engineering techniques from across the sea, and she could point to many places in Blackwell City that thrived because of what she had done.

The massive cranes that loaded and unloaded ships with sophisticated systems of pulleys and counterweights were just one of the things she’d brought to the city. The reservoirs and aqueducts that helped keep the city and its surrounding farms supplied with fresh water even in years of drought were another, one for which Count Blackwell had greatly rewarded her.

But there were limits to what she could do in a place where she had to compete with so many other interests. Whether it was the constant pressure from the Wayfarers or the Linemen to invest more heavily in the industry of the harbor, or the rising drumbeat of the Holy War that Count Rhys had made himself such an integral part of, there were always things that were ’more important’ than.

Over the years, Isabell had proposed revising the storm drains to prevent flooding, or laying down better roads in the city’s expanding ’New Quarter’, or any of a dozen other projects that felt vital to a growing city. And each year, Lord Rhys Blackwell agreed they were important endeavors, but they were never vital enough for anyone to pay for.

Which was why helping Ashlynn to shape the Vale of Mists was so appealing. Ashlynn, and by extension, Lady Nyrielle, were investing in infrastructure at a furious rate, and Isabell could likely spend the rest of her life here, working on worthy projects, and never find a lack of interest in seeing how she could make the place better for its people.

Yet, much like the Emerald Prince she had once served, Ashlynn’s hands were slick with blood and they would only be growing more so in the years to come. The Kingdom of Gaal and the Church would never stand for what Lady Ashlynn intended to build.

And if Lady Heila was to be believed, then what Ashlynn intended to offer her was far more than just a chance to use her engineering skills to build up the Vale. To become a witch and join Ashlynn’s coven would mean far more than just plying her trade in a different city for a different people. It would require her to completely change herself, and in more ways than one.

Even though Ashlynn claimed that she didn’t want Isabell to involve herself in the wars, the gray-haired engineer didn’t know if she could hold herself back from marching to the battlefield if the place she was helping to build came under attack. Especially not if her family joined her here. She could never sit idly by while...

-knock- -knock-

"Master Isabell?" Ashlynn’s voice called from outside the sitting room. "I hope you’re still free to talk tonight..."

"Of course, my lady," Isabell said as she stood from her seat by the windows and set down the empty mug of mulled wine. It was time, she supposed, to make a decision.