Chapter 11: Negotiations Backed by Catapults

The first sign that the holy knights had arrived was not the sound of hooves or the ring of steel, but the silence that fell over the fields.

The goblin crew stopped arguing over irrigation ditches. The demon laborers straightened by the granary. Even the crows on the fence line went still, black beads of eyes turning toward the eastern road as if some invisible hand had tightened around the air.

Nate stood on the upper terrace of the fortress with a mug of tea gone lukewarm in his hand and watched a line of white banners emerge from the morning haze.

“Well,” he muttered, “that’s either a diplomatic delegation or the world’s most judgmental wedding party.”

Beside him, Vexa leaned on the parapet with a gardener’s ease, her dark braid stirring in the wind. She squinted down the road, where polished helms flashed like a row of angry coins.

“Holy knights,” she said. “Six mounted. Two wagons. One priest. No siege ladder.”

Nate glanced at her. “You can tell all that from here?”

“I can also tell the priest is pretending not to be nervous.” Her mouth curved. “He’s failing.”

Below them, the road to the gates had become a thing Nate still half expected to wake from. It was smooth stone now, edged with trimmed hedges and little signposts that Vexa insisted made the place look “civilized, not suspiciously tidy.” Past the road, fields of hardy black-grain rolled toward the river, watered by channels cut through the earth with unnerving precision. Goblin farmers were already at work, their tools shining and their tax tokens tied to belts with practical pride. A pair of demon women were moving crates toward the mill, arguing about flour yields like veteran merchants. Near the orchard, a young saint candidate in a plain cloak was trying very hard to look like she belonged there and not like she was hiding from half the continent.

Nate lowered his mug. “Okay. So. They’re really here.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised. We have a fortress in the Demon Lord’s old backyard, a runaway saint, and a tax office that was a pile of cursed rubble last week.” He looked out at the fields, then back at the approaching riders. “Still. Holy knights are kind of the exact opposite of ‘please come in, have tea, ignore the armed wall.’”

Vexa’s expression was dry. “That depends on the tea.”

He snorted despite himself, then straightened as a faint shimmer moved along the top of the outer wall. Three catapult arms, newly reinforced with blackened iron and practical ropework, rose into view like enormous fingers stretching after a nap.

Nate stared.

“Vexa.”

“Hm?”

“Why are the catapults visible?”

“Because they’re there.”

“That is not an answer that should satisfy me.”

She finally looked at him, one brow arching. “You wanted leverage.”

“I wanted the catapults hidden until we’d established trust.”

“Trust is a luxury. Deterrence is efficient.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Because, annoyingly, she was right. And also because the gates themselves had started behaving strangely whenever the walls felt threatened. There were some arguments Nate still didn’t fully understand, and the fortress always won them anyway.

At the courtyard below, the settlement stirred into the particular kind of busy that pretended to be casual. Goblins began sweeping dirt from already spotless paths. The demon laborers hauled a water cart into place near the gate. Somebody—probably the saint candidate, whose sense of self-preservation had reached the stage where she was extremely helpful out of terror—had set out a table with ink, ledger books, and a stack of tax receipts neatly tied with red ribbon.

Nate pinched the bridge of his nose.

I am somehow running a frontier state with receipts.

Divine Settlement System

Territory Status: Stable

Notable Structures: Outer Gate, Roads, Farms, Administrative Office, Catapult Emplacements

Public Order: Improving

Tax Collection: 71% Efficient

Warning: Local sovereignty may attract diplomatic incidents.

“May?” Nate said under his breath. “That’s generous.”

The holy riders reached the first marker stone at the road’s edge and slowed. Their armor was white enamel over mail, etched with golden scripture that flashed as they moved. Their horses were capped in light chamfrons, and every one of them sat straight-backed in that particular way that suggested they’d all been trained from birth to look at monsters with disappointment.

At their head rode a woman with silver-threaded hair tucked under a helm crested with the sunburst of the Radiant Church. She dismounted at the road marker, one hand resting on the hilt at her hip. Her gaze moved across the fields, the hedges, the road, and the farmhands at work. For one breath, her expression remained unreadable.

Then it sharpened.

“This is the Blighted March?” she called.

Nate stepped forward before anyone else could answer. He descended the stairs to the courtyard with what he hoped was the stride of a man who absolutely belonged in charge of a dubious but respectable town.

“Depends on your standards,” he said. “If you mean the cursed wasteland part, no. We’ve been renovating.”

Behind him, one of the goblin clerks—tiny, green, and wearing spectacles borrowed from somewhere impossible—straightened the ledger table with the solemnity of a tax collector in a cathedral.

The knight’s eyes flicked to him, then to the demon laborers, then to the saint candidate pretending to be a shrub by the orchard gate. One of the mounted knights muttered something under his breath and made the sign of warding.

The leader’s hand tightened fractionally on her reins. “I am Captain Elsbeth Arvain of the Third Radiant Pursuit. We are here under sanction of the High Church to investigate reports of corruption, infernal gathering, and the possible reemergence of the Demon Lord.”

“That’s a pretty broad job description,” Nate said. “You guys get overtime for all three?”

One of the knights made a choking sound. The captain didn’t blink.

“State your name and title.”

“Nate Mercer.” He hesitated a fraction, then spread one hand toward the fortress behind him, where the morning light burned on fresh stone and repaired battlements. “Landholder. Local administrator. Temporarily inconvenienced tenant of a haunted ruin.”

Vexa’s voice drifted from the wall above them. “You forgot owner by accident.”

Every holy knight looked up.

On the parapet, Vexa stood beside a catapult arm, one hand resting on the counterweight like she had all the time in the world. She wore practical working clothes in deep green, with gloves stained by soil and something darker. Behind her, the second catapult rotated a few degrees with a slow, deliberate creak.

Captain Arvain’s gaze narrowed. “And you are?”

“Vexa,” she said. “Resident horticultural authority.”

“On the walls?”

“The view is better.”

Another knight took a slow breath through his nose, perhaps to pray. Perhaps to remain upright.

Nate cut in before the situation could develop teeth. “You’re welcome to inspect the settlement, Captain. We have nothing to hide. Well. Not much. The taxes are filed. The roads are maintained. The demon labor crews have dental care.”

That made the holy knights freeze in perfect, startled unison.

“Dental care?” one of them repeated faintly.

“It’s a benefit.” Nate shrugged. “Retention goes way up when people aren’t terrified of the local governance.”

Captain Arvain stared at him for a long moment in the way only a woman trained to fear cultists, not spreadsheets, could stare.

Then she looked past him.

“Those are tax records.”

The saint candidate, who had decided that all attention was now a death sentence, squeaked from beside the ledger table and shoved the stack forward with both hands. “Filed weekly, ma’am! With receipts!”

Her hood had slipped back. The captain saw her face, the silver mark at her temple, and all the color in her own seemed to drain by a shade.

“Saintly candidate Miriel,” one of the priests whispered. “The missing one.”

Miriel made a tiny, defeated noise and then stood very still, as though if she became a piece of furniture maybe the world would stop noticing her.

Captain Arvain swung down from her horse and approached the table with measured steps. Nate felt the mood around her harden, a disciplined presence as sharp as polished steel. She picked up the top ledger, opened it, and read.

Field yields. Water access. Mill output. Road maintenance. Labor allocations. Imported salt. Livestock losses. Tithe remitted in stamped coin and grain. A note in one margin from someone with a childlike hand: Goblins objected to the old tax collector’s hat. New hat approved.

Arvain turned the page.

Another receipt.

Another page.

She read the tally columns with the fixed intensity of a woman trying to find a hidden blade and instead discovering civic administration.

“This is impossible,” she said at last.

Nate spread his hands. “You’d be amazed what happens when people aren’t living on top of corpses.”

“We’ve had reports of infernal movement in this region.”

“There are demons here, yes.”

“And goblins.”

“Also yes.”

“And a runaway saint.”

“She’s temporary.”

Miriel made an indignant little sound. Nate pretended not to hear it.

Captain Arvain folded the ledger closed. “Then this is either the most elaborate deception I’ve ever seen, or you are grossly underestimating the danger of the company you keep.”

Nate smiled with what he hoped was effortless confidence and what probably looked, to any trained battlefield observer, like a man holding a chair between himself and a wolf.

“Captain, if I were trying to deceive the High Church, would I put the tax office by the main gate?”

She looked toward the gatehouse. The sign above it had been painted freshly in two languages, with a third line in goblin pictographs. WELCOME TO GLOOMHOLD MARCH read the largest line. Under it, in neat smaller script: Visitors Please Sign In Before Cursing the Premises.

Arvain stared at the sign for a beat too long.