"Relocate?" Clio uttered that word as if it were a phrase from some dead, foreign tongue. He took a heavy bite of a ripe plum-pear, the thick silver juice bursting from the skin and running down his blond beard to join the sticky remnants of the oranges.

The King nodded "Namely in a few months’ time, we will begin the effort to move our manufacturing production center. All of it, Clio. Ranging from the machines to the very operators who run them."

The reality of their success had become a logistical nightmare. Their current stronghold within the capital’s close proximity had simply proved too small to meet the roaring demands that kept growing for their secret products. The problem in Yarzat had never been to find a buyer; it was filling the warehouses as soon as they could before they were emptied, a desperate production effort that appeared more grueling and ill-ended than any bloody war that had ever been waged against their borders.

"We need a far bigger space," Alpheo declared, leaning forward and grounding his forearms against the edge of the mahogany.

Clio remained deeply unsure, chewing slowly as he weighed the sheer madness of the task. He swallowed, looking at the fruit in his hand before offering a counter.

"Can we not just expand the existing grounds?" he offered, gesturing vaguely toward the windows. "I would gladly just build another set of four-meter walls, claim the adjacent fields, and put as many new men to work there as your treasury can wish for. Moving all of them, the vats, the presses, the families, is a long, dangerous work. Our production will drop to severely in the months required for such a flitting. Why would you wish to throw them all out?"

"Because I have found a better place to harbor it," Alpheo answered to his friend’s queries "A place far more secure, with a great deal of space for whatever and however many numbers of machinery I wish to construct in the future. Space and absolute safety are what we will desperately need going forward."

"Don’t we already have the latter?" Clio asked, his brow furrowing beneath his hay-colored hair. "And the former, as I said, I can provide with stone and timber."

"Not enough for what I plan to put there."

Clio paused, the half-eaten pear hovering near his mouth. He looked closely at Alpheo, suddenly growing deeply curious about what manner of creation would require such a monumental, secretive endeavor. "Something new? Something that will bring us much more gold than our soap, our paper, and our sweet cider?"

"It shall bring us coin enough," Alpheo murmured, a faint, dark glint illuminating his eyes. "But that is not the primary reason why I wish for it."

"Really?" Clio let out a dry, breathy laugh, thoroughly bewildered. "And what is it for, then?"

"Power," Alpheo replied simply. "It shall bring us immeasurable power."

"Coin brings power, Alph. And whenever your vanguard legions trod the earth, that gives you power as well," Clio countered, leaning back until his plush green doublet strained against his round gut. "And yet you claim this singular hidden thing would bring you more?"

"Without a doubt."

"Is it a weapon?" Clio asked, his voice dropping to a sharp whisper.

"It is also that."

"Is it something precious?"

"It will be the most precious thing in the realm."

Clio let out a long, defeated sigh, tossing the core of his fruit onto the silver plate. He wiped his sticky fingers on a cloth, looking at the man who had once shared a slave pen with him. "Will you tell me what it actually is?"

The King shrugged ’’In time, my friend. I have had the blueprints and the means ready for years, but I have been waiting for the exact right moment to wield it."

For a long time, Clio just stared at his friend, his jaw slightly slack as he tried to process the sheer scale of the disruption was caused by that secret weapon, that the king seemed against giving it voice. Finally, he let out a long, theatrical sigh and aggressively scratched the back of his head with his nails, sending a few stray flakes of skin into his hay-colored hair.

"Damnation, Alph," he grumbled. "You are going to set our production back for months. My workers are going to lose their minds, not to talk about the logistics setback of moving so many people and their families. Where in the five hells would you even have us set up shop?"

As if he had been waiting for that exact question all morning, the King reached into the leather pouch at his belt. With a swift, fluid motion, he pulled out a tightly rolled parchment and spread it open across the mahogany table, carelessly shoving the plates of orange peels and sticky fruit cups out of the way.

It was a map.

Clio leaned his heavy gut against the table, observing the ink lines for quite some time. It wasn’t a map of the whole of Yarzat, that much he could understand without help, but as his eyes scanned the jagged coastlines, he recognized a few of the names written in sharp, elegant script. He saw Helvia , Asag’s lordship, and further up, he spotted Aracina.

"This is our eastern coast," Clio stated, lifting a thick finger to trace the shoreline.

The King gave him a firm nod. "There are a few unclaimed islands floating out there in the gray water, most of them pretty small and not even worth spitting on," Alpheo explained, his voice flat and clinical. "Most of them don’t even have simple fishing villages on them, because there isn’t a single reliable source of sweet water to sustain a settlement."

"I see," Clio muttered, though Alpheo could tell by the blank squint in the man’s eyes that he did not, in fact, see at all.

To make it perfectly clear, the King jabbed his thumb down onto the parchment. "I will have you move the entire operation here," he said, pinning the biggest island on the cluster.

Clio squinted at the tiny, ink-drawn rock. "Corna?" His eyes flickered up, staring at the King in utter disbelief. "Why in the name of the Five would you move my people to that godforsaken shit-hole? What’s even out there?"

"Absolutely nothing," Alpheo replied with a chillingly content smile. "It is surrounded by deep water and sheer stone cliffs, except for a solitary, natural sandy harbor on the southern lip. It is also completely empty, save for a few miserable fishermen who won’t know any better. This shall become our new, impenetrable center of production."

Clio looked at him , long and hard, and then hard and long. "Have you gone mad, Alph? What about the food? What about the grain, the timber, the raw materials required to sustain a thousand workers and their families, to say nothing of the actual production supplies? You want to ship all of that across the sea?"

"I will have every single scrap of what you need systematically moved to you," Alpheo assured him, entirely unfazed by the outburst. "I will supply you with everything from building timber to entire herds of sheep and cattle to graze on the cliffs, just in case our maritime logistics ever break down."

Clio groaned, rubbing his temples. "It is madness. Pure madness. Look at the map, Alpheo! That rock is far too close to Harmway. Those waters are crawling with scum. The moment the pirate lords see a steady line of supply ships bringing valuable products back and forth from that island, the sea-wolves will swarm in like rats to a carcass! They’ll burn your transports and enslave my craftsmen."

Alpheo leaned back into his high-backed chair, a low, dangerous chuckle escaping his chest.

"Let the mad rats try," the King murmured, his dark eyes narrowing with a grim, martial satisfaction. "I am already ahead of them, Clio. The royal fleet, under the command of Ser Dandol, will be permanently stationed in those waters. I assure you, the sight of our war-galleys bristling with archers and catapults will discourage any pirate from even attempting a glance at your harbor. You will be safer on that rock than you are inside the capital walls."

"And also more bored," Clio added bitterly, his round face twisting in a look of profound misery. "There isn’t a single shit worth my time on that rock, Alph. I will probably hang myself from the rafters before the year turns."

"Boredom can easily be stalled if one finds a way to distract himself," Alpheo replied, his tone softening with genuine amusement. "I will give you ample rest, I assure you, to visit the capital whenever the isolation grows too heavy, and you can have all the expensive fun you wish here. But for the supreme interest of the state, you will have to set your workshops there."

"The state’s interest," Clio sighed, shaking his head as he stared down at the ink-drawn island. "I do not know how much that grand phrase will avail to make me swallow such a bitter morsel."

"It has to be done," the King repeated,

"And it will be.Gods it will. The King always has his way, it is known," Clio said, a small, resilient smile breaking through his blond beard. "And besides, if I did not obey, I would find myself out of a job. No?"

"That too"

"Very well then," Clio said, letting out one final, theatrical sigh before bringing his heavy palms together with a loud clap. "I am the King’s man, through and through. I will go precisely where he wishes me to rot. But I will organize my own pleasures, friend. If I am doomed to die on a lonely, wind-swept rock, at least let me be caught doing the activities I liked above all others."

The fat former fisherman stood up from the table, his green velvet doublet shifting back over his gut, his blue eyes fixed on the map one last time. "Provided, of course, that I shall occasionally bath myself in the salt water and look out at the horizon of the poor, miserable home you have given me.If I am lucky I shall go sleeping with the weeping of the woods if some wet rats are mad enough to attempt the endevour."

With that Alpheo watched his old friend pack a handful of oranges into his pockets as he left the chamber.

Leaving the king alone with his thought and his peace.

The budget was carved, the court was managed, and the grandest secret of Yarzat was finally moving into the deep, safe shadows of the western sea. The foundations of the kingdom were hardening into iron, and as the heavy oak door clicked shut behind Clio, the King turned back to his window, watching the gray winter wind sweep across a realm that was entirely his own.

Good things were in sight for Yarzat, that he could be sure of. (CORNA’s Position here)