B2: Chapter 4 - Acting Normal

“This isn’t funny…”
“Nobody thinks it is… but the rest of the Council agrees that you should technically have a seat on it.”
“Okay fine, but did you have to put it on the—“
“It’s a building function and the system assigns the nameplates to the seats. Besides… it’s technically the truth. Just, you know… keep acting like you don’t want it to be true.”
“I don’t!”
“See, that’s the spirit, Corbin.”
I was standing inside the town hall after Daniel had sent one of the younger apprentices that had started up in the consortium to grab me.
I’d been overseeing the harvesting of the first barley fields when I’d been interrupted. Thankfully—and annoyingly—Quiet continued to listen to pretty much everyone better than me, and Willow found it oddly fun to guide the horse along the rows. With how short she was, it was actually a bit amusing to see.
Yurick had organized a handful of the crew to bundle the cut stalks as they fell… and only looked at me with mild annoyance when I only just decided to get a windmill built on one of the lone remaining hills on the north side of my land. The project surprisingly said it would only take two-and-a-half days to complete, only jumping up to four when I decided to add a second one just because I did still have the resources for it.
Honestly, I would have been okay with them taking a few days longer since I’d still need to get things malted and dried before I ever really processed the grain in the first place. But even with the new project, Yurick insisted we’d have the workforce to distribute without anything having to get delayed.
All things considered, looking at the Council table, I could at least be grateful that they weren’t so stupid as to put me in the center but still…
“You have to realize how this looks,” I groaned, staring at the nameplate that, in addition to my Lord of Dusk title, included “Owner of Neverdusk” for all to see.
Sure… I understood the logic, everyone’s nameplate included the reason they were on the Council in the first place, but there was being hardheadedly optimistic and there was being outright naive about the optics of these sorts of choices…
“Look, Corbin, as strange as it sounds, I actually think I understand why you’re… well… like you,” Daniel said, a hand falling onto my shoulder. “But Garth pointed out that if this delegation for the Church gets here, with Veronica Dawnmere of all people present, and we have a Council that doesn’t include the actual owner of the territory on it, they might try to say our authority is unauthorized.”
“But it’s in the system,” I protested.
“If you want them to see you as harmless, Corbin, then you need to be seen acting normal,” Daniel argued, shaking my shoulder before turning around and smiling at the room around him.
The Town Hall had been down what had used to be a misshapen walking trail now replaced with a straight, paved road, just before where the Voting Ring had once sat with the massive great oaks sitting right behind it. The Council Room itself had been the last thing to get added in after the main building had finally been completed. Up until now, and yes I’m considering the entire two weeks since the thing had been finished as noteworthy, I’d managed to stay out of the entire building and yet I’d allowed myself to get dragged right to the heart of it in one fell swoop…
“Did you guys put me on the Council just to get me to actually come here?”
“What? No, that’s…” He trailed off for just a second when I shot him a look, then let out a laugh. “Okay, maybe that was a part of it too. You avoid this place almost as much as you avoid the Sanctum. But you know, even though you are the Lord of Dusk, you haven’t exactly come to us with bad ideas yet… Unless this is just the longest, most pointlessly complicated plan to seize control ever when you already have the power to do that already, no one really thinks keeping you out of here is the right idea. Stars, I think even Willem misses your input.”
I stared at him a second longer and he let out another laugh.
“Okay… he misses complaining about how much you act like the ridiculous things you think up are obvious.”
“This town is so weird…” I grumbled.
“I think it was pretty normal till you got here,” Daniel laughed yet again.
He was in a far better mood than usual, and that was kinda saying something given I’d only seen the man less than jovial a handful of times. Sure… I was maybe the reason he was less happy those times… but I had seen it.
“So why did you need to show me this today anyway? I was starting to get my crops harvested…”
“Yeah, speaking of that… if you’re able to grow stuff that fast… well, even if we don’t put it on your land, there’s already some discussion about getting some of the more common veggies growing and if the growth cycles can be reduced even a fraction of what you’ve been able to do…”
“It’s just a couple of potions… I…” I started to offer my assistance and then stopped myself. “I did say I wasn’t starting an Alchemy business… remember?”
Daniel’s brow furrowed for just a moment as he thought about it and then shook his head.
“Yeah, but that was when you were still pretending to be the strange guy who just moved into town. Kinda figured that went out the window when you traded free baths for whatever potion you’re making to keep those waters warm.”
“That’s… not the same…” I argued, rather lamely even by my standards. Daniel knew he’d tripped me up and smiled wider, then patted me on the back with a laugh.
“Look, no one’s asking yah to take over and become the Lord of Vegetables or whatnot. But if Dawnmere does decide to fully stifle trade, it’d be nice to know we have some options,” he explained. Though he was still smiling, I could see the responsibility he took as Steward—and now Foreman of the Council of Neverdusk—leaving traces of worry that even he couldn’t erase completely. “A couple of the new folks from Gold’s Lodge have already requested a dozen acres where they want to bring in some Truffling Boars. Maybe some Fieldgoats too since they could milk them. It got Garth talking about breaking off from the Consortium like Bram did, just with some crops in mind.”
“Really? I thought he was confused about why I left him in charge of my place?”
Daniel gave me a curious look before I realized what I’d said. That had been something Garth had told Daniel in private shortly after I’d run away to Hedgely and while I had told Willow that I’d been using Eavesdrop to listen in she apparently hadn’t told that to her brother.
“I uh… sorry, I figured you knew I’d been listening in back when I left. Y’know, since I kinda appeared right when things were getting crazy and all that…”
“Listening in? With… magic?” he asked with a bit of caution. “Are you… uh, still doing that?”
I immediately started to shake my head. It was an obvious and immediately understandable question to ask, and had I actually been using my brain, maybe I would have seen this coming and phrased it better in the first place. “Dusk take me… no I promise. The spell itself is expensive to cast since there’s only a few reagents that make it possible and you can only target a specific—“
“The no was fine by itself,” Daniel cut me off. “All the rest of it is way more than I need. I’m gonna assume you know it’s wrong to spy on people?”
“Well… I think it depends on—“
“And that you shouldn’t just be doing it now that you’re back and living among all of us? Everyone deserves privacy and to feel secure in their homes. Because you wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you… right?”
“Right…” I said, staring over at him. “But I also wasn’t just randomly listening in to people’s homes… and wouldn’t do that anyway… People are disgusting when they think no one is listening.”
“How about we just change the subject and I assume you’re agreeing with me,” Daniel said, shaking his head with a sigh.
“I am…” I muttered, then resisted the urge to rub my temples. “So… Garth actually wants to farm now?”
“The original idea was nothing at all like the scale of what you’ve got going on, but he did say the little bit of time he worked on your land wasn’t as backbreaking as cutting and preparing the Great Oaks. Throw in the fact that he knows a few of the new fellas from Gold’s Lodge who are into the idea too, plus Bernice actually being interested in all of it enough to help him out, and we’ve got the… heh… seeds of a new industry popping up,” Daniel said, happily following my lead. I groaned at the clearly intended joke. “Which, while it actually wasn’t why I had Leo fetch you, is why I’m asking about whatever you’re using to speed things up. Like I said, it’d be nice to have some redundancy in place.”
“I… might be able to help,” I said reluctantly and actually tried to consider it. “The reagents are the bottleneck. I had enough to get things going on my farm and I do have my reagent field planted, but Lion’s Dawn is the most effective choice and…”
I trailed off for a second, then looked toward one of the windows facing the Grand Oak Forest. The wall of trees was still massive, intimidating, and I still kind of thought Daniel and his crew were crazy for cutting the things down. Though… I was oddly getting used to hearing the sound of them falling from a distance without thinking someone was firing siege weapons at me.
I stared at it for a minute, considering my options again when Daniel waved a hand in front of my face.
“Wanna tell me what’s going through that head of yours? You’re not about to go mess things up in the forest again, are you?”
“No…” I shook my head without looking back over at him. “A few weeks after I got here, I found a single Lion’s Dawn on the edge of the forest… That was back when the Mana Nymphs were still sucking the life out of everything but I hadn’t known about them yet. Has anyone gone deeper in recently? How far out does it say the Manaward I’m paying for covers?”
“The settlement interface places the edge about fifty meters in or so. But no one’s really gone exploring, especially since spawning into the area and walking in are two different things. We’ve been trying to avoid giving any of the spawns a reason to think they needed to come looking this way,” Daniel explained, crossing his arms as he faced me. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking… that maybe I’ll take Garth and one or two of the Eds for a little hike out into the forest. Not too far in, but far enough…” I said, trying to put together the most reasonable sounding idea I could. “I can explain the basics of the potion to them and given that the Ed triplets have some unactivated Alchemy experience, I bet one of them could make a halfway decent version of the potion.”
“Or one of them could Activate…” Daniel said, his brow furrowing when I looked over at him curiously.
Though I might have said that with annoyance, he made it sound like it was a good thing. Maybe it was now that I knew I wasn’t actually the reason for it… Actually… yeah, then they’d have an actual Alchemist to bug and I could just make them buy the reagents from me…
That was how normal communities worked, right? By creating systems that fed into each other without having everyone constantly having to bother one person to get anything done and all that. That was clearly the better plan, right?
“Okay, Corbin… I like it. Take Wulfric with you too. Garth’s been teaching him how to use a bow recently and who knows, maybe he can shoot a few of the Underbrush Hares we’ve been seeing. Apparently Lana’s family makes a really good stew out of them.”
I stood up a bit straighter and reacted far stronger than I probably should have.
“She had a recipe to make Underpfeffer before she got the Chef class?”
“If that’s what you call hare stew, then yeah. Apparently she mentioned it to Willow after I’d told her about seeing a few of them on the forest edge.”
“Well then…” I said, rubbing my hands together. “You okay if I collect the guys and head out now? She’s gonna need to marinate the meat overnight to make it really good…”
“I feel like I made a mistake suggesting this…” Daniel said tentatively. “Just don’t expect too much from Wulfric… he is still learning, okay?”