Chapter 1098: Chapter 1096-What To Do With All This Land?(2)

The silence didn’t last long. It never does in a room full of people who all think they know better. Collis was the one who broke it, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, fingers laced together like he was about to deliver a sermon nobody asked for.

“Lord, before Seris starts drafting a hundred polite refusals, let me play the part nobody wants to play here.”

“And what part is that?”

“The one who tells you saying no to everyone isn’t free. It feels clean. It feels strong. But strength without thought just looks like stubbornness to the people watching from outside this room.”

I raised an eyebrow at him, letting him continue. Collis wasn’t wrong often, even when his delivery made you want to throw something at him.

“Take the Hollowmere trading house for example. Small, not much military weight, but they control three of the main grain routes leading toward the southern borders of several kingdoms. Their offer wasn’t even about land ownership; they just wanted a formal trade agreement using a corner of the blessed soil as collateral for future deals. That’s not greed, that’s survival for a house their size. Turn them down flat, and what do you think happens? They don’t just walk away quietly.”

“They go find someone else to make deals with.”

“Exactly. And who do you think they’ll run to the moment word spreads that we refused a modest request? The higher factions, or worse, one of the older war council houses who’d love nothing more than to have a grain route house owing them favours right next to our border.”

Brek crossed her arms, clearly not liking where this was heading, but she let him keep talking.

“Second example. The Ashcroft mercenary band. Small outfit, maybe forty blades total, but every one of them battle-tested from the border skirmishes two years back. Their offer was practically charity, free contract for a year in exchange for settlement rights on land barely big enough to build a single outpost. Refuse them, and within a month they’ll be selling those forty blades to whoever pays best. Maybe that’s us in six months when we actually need mercenaries. Maybe it’s someone circling our land right now, waiting for an opening.”

“And the third?”

I asked, already feeling the weight of where this argument was going, even if I didn’t agree with the conclusion yet.

“The Ilvain family. Old blood, not much political power left after their decline a decade back, but plenty of information networks still intact across three different territories. Their offer was the smallest of the bunch, practically a token gesture, just a shared border watch post in exchange for minor land access. Turn that down, and instead of an ally quietly watching our borders and feeding us information, we’ve got a family with wounded pride and a network of eyes and ears that could just as easily start feeding information the other way.”

Collis leaned back, spreading his hands as he’d just laid out the entire case.

“My point isn’t that we should hand out land like party favours. My point is that refusing everyone with the same blanket answer turns soft opportunities into hard enemies. Some of these people would have settled for scraps and been loyal for it. Now they’ll go find someone bigger to be loyal to instead, and that someone bigger is going to be sitting right outside our fence in five years wondering how hard it’ll be to knock it down.”

A few murmurs of agreement rippled through the room. Even Carven looked like he was chewing on that thought a bit longer than he wanted to admit.

It was Daven who answered first, and when he spoke, his voice had that same flat, unbothered tone that always made the room go a little quieter than usual.

“You’re assuming those scraps would have bought loyalty in the first place.”

Collis turned toward him, arms still crossed.

“And you’re assuming they wouldn’t have?”

“I’m not assuming anything. I’m just pointing out that houses like Hollowmere and families like Ilvain don’t stay loyal because of a shared fence post or a border watch agreement. They stay loyal exactly as long as it benefits them, and not one heartbeat longer. Give them what they want today, and in a year they’ll be back asking for more, dressed up in the same soft language about goodwill and cooperation. Refuse them today, delay them today, either way you’re not buying peace. You’re buying time before the knives come out. The only difference is whether you’re the one holding a full hand or an empty one when that happens.”

“That’s a bleak way to look at alliances.”

“It’s an honest way to look at them.”

Daven’s eyes flicked toward me for half a second before going back to studying the table like it held more answers than the actual conversation did.

“Every single offer that came through those doors today wasn’t built on trust. It was built on opportunity. The land is valuable, so suddenly everyone wants to be our friend. Strip away the land, and not a single one of those offers exists. That’s not the foundation you build lasting loyalty on. That’s the foundation you build temporary convenience on, and convenience runs out the moment something better comes along.”

Collis opened his mouth to argue again, but Brek cut in before he could, tapping her knuckles against the table to pull the conversation back toward something more grounded.

“Both of you are dancing around the real problem here, which is defence. Contract or not, five years of legal protection means nothing if we can’t actually hold this land when someone decides the rules don’t matter anymore. Legal protection stops honest players. It’s never stopped anyone determined enough to just take what they want.”

“And you think giving away scraps changes that?”

Carven asked, finally speaking up, his usual calm slightly sharpened by the direction the debate had taken.

“I think pretending we can defend the entire stretch of blessed land with our current numbers is wishful thinking, no offence to the lord’s confidence in us. We have maybe enough trained hands to properly garrison a third of the border, if we’re being generous with the estimate. Wards take time to build properly, and even rushed ones won’t hold against a coordinated attack from a real faction with actual military backing.”

“So your solution is to give away pieces of land we can’t defend anyway.”

“My solution is recognising that some of those alliances, even small ones, could translate into borrowed manpower during the gap years before we’re strong enough to stand fully on our own. Ashcroft’s forty blades alone could cover a section of border we currently have nobody assigned to.”

Brek nodded along with that, clearly having been thinking along similar lines even before the meeting started.

“It’s not about loyalty built from goodwill. It’s about logistics. Bodies on the wall, eyes on the border, hands on defence. Whether they love us or just find us useful enough to protect for now doesn’t matter if the result is the same: our land stays ours.”

The room had shifted again, the earlier two camps blurring slightly as people started picking apart pieces of each argument instead of sticking rigidly to one side. A man near the middle of the table, one of the fifteen who’d mostly stayed quiet until now, raised a hand.

“What about marriage alliances? I know it sounds old-fashioned, but a few of the smaller houses would jump at binding themselves to us through family ties instead of land grants. Costs us nothing material, and it’s harder to betray family than a business partner.”

“Easier to poison family too.”

Daven muttered, just loud enough to be heard, earning a groan from a few people around the table.

Another voice chimed in from near Seris, one of the quieter administrative staff who rarely spoke during these larger discussions.

“There’s also the option of expanding our information network instead of relying on borrowed eyes from houses like Ilvain. If we invest early into training our own scouts and informants, we remove the need to owe anyone favours for intelligence down the line. Costs time and coin now, saves us from being beholden to outside networks later.”

“That’s a longer play than most of us have patience for.”

Collis said, though his tone had lost some of its earlier bite.

“But it’s not a bad one.”

More ideas started stacking up after that, smaller schemes tossed onto the table one after another. Someone suggested reaching out to independent hired blades instead of formal mercenary bands, cheaper and with no house loyalty complicating things later.

Another brought up quietly funding a few struggling merchant caravans in exchange for future trade priority, without ever touching the land itself as payment. Carven kept jotting notes on his side of things, clearly filing away which ideas actually held operational weight and which ones sounded good only in the heat of discussion.

Through the entire back and forth, Krave hadn’t moved from her spot beside me, still watching everything unfold with that same quiet, warm expression. If she had opinions on marriage alliances or hired blades or information networks, she kept them locked behind that unreadable smile of hers, content to simply observe the storm of ideas swirling around the table.

I sat back for a moment, letting the arguments breathe a little longer before deciding it was time to steer things somewhere more concrete. The land wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was this meeting, not until we actually landed on something workable instead of just throwing every possible idea against the wall to see what stuck.