PREVIOUSLY.
[The silence that filled the hall after my words was heavy with pure, astonished stupefaction. The monumental announcement had taken them by storm.
The unification of information and the idea of creating large supply depots for emergencies were pragmatic measures they had expected themselves, and which some of their hardest-hit regions might already have been planning on a small scale. The rest, however, exceeded their imagination.
The creation of a highly specialized military corps devoted to saving lives instead of taking them, and the direct inclusion of the brightest minds from the development institutions in the fight against disasters, lay beyond anything they had thought of.]
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Year 15 of the SuaChie Calendar, Fourth Month (June 1497).
Dawn City (Santiago de Cuba, Cuba), Caribá Region (FRFI).
Main dining hall, Council House.
The aroma arrived before the hunger did. Onion browning in fat, a base of bay leaf and cumin, and beneath it all, that warm, dense note of baked potato under a cheese crust that cracked beneath the spoons.
A few hours had passed since the last vice-governor had left the meeting hall. The dining hall had been arranged with a single long table of polished cedar, flanked by windows thrown open toward the harbor.
The breeze carried salt, fresh tar, and the distant murmur of dockworkers singing in time with the iron cranes.
Along the table, the vice-governors, the aides, and the guests took their places. There were faces from every latitude of the realm: those weathered by the sun of the plains, those with the sharp gaze of the jungle, those who still carried the cold of the mountain ranges clinging to their shoulders.
They spoke among themselves in three or four different languages, and I, seated in the middle of that noise, let it wash through me like someone listening to an orchestra tuning up.
The servants began to enter with the platters.
First came the fish broth with tender corn and mild ají, steaming, its vapor fogging my sight for a moment. Then the wheat bread, still warm, with a crust that crackled like dry leaves. And at last, on baked-clay trays that barely fit in the arms of two men, the potato pies.
I smiled without being able to help it.
I sank my spoon into the crust. It gave way with a soft crunch and released a puff of steam that smelled of stewed meat, caramelized onion, and herbs. I took the first bite and closed my eyes for a second.
The texture was exact: the top layer lightly toasted, the creamy mash beneath, neither too dense nor too loose, and the juicy meat filling with that sweetish edge of well-cooked onion.
Years of trials, of recipes dictated to patient cooks, of ingredients that did not exist here and that I had had to wait for transoceanic trade to bring me piece by piece, and at last it tasted the way I remembered.
It had taken me a decade to complete that dish.
"The potato is from the south, isn't it?" asked the vice-governor of the Eyadobida region from across the table, breaking a piece of bread with his enormous hands. "It tastes different from the ones in my region."
"From the Cuncos," I nodded. "We're already planting it in some regions, though not yet in yours. When winter comes, I'll send you seed."
"Then I'll have to prepare good soil for the gift," he said with a broad smile. "And the meat?"
"That's the complicated part." I stirred the filling a little. "Livestock production is still scarce. What you're eating today comes partly from our first head of cattle raised here and partly from those brought from Europe for consumption… When the herds grow, this will stop being a luxury."
"And the rest?" asked a young vice-governor, with evident curiosity. "The cheese, the herbs, that dark seasoning…"
"It depends on the recipe and the region. The onion comes from our own gardens, the cheese from the new dairies of Caribá, the cumin is brought from Africa, and the pepper from even farther. Every dish on this table is a small trade route."
A murmur of approval rose, and someone lifted a jug in an improvised toast.
The servants had poured low-strength drinks: a mild fermented corn beverage, slightly sour, and a Caribá fruit wine that smelled of guava.
I took my cup and drank a long sip.
It had been only a few months since I had begun doing so for pleasure. Until my fifteenth birthday, every sip had been a ceremonial offering, a measured drop to pour out in a rite or share with a cacique.
Now, instead, I drank because I wanted to, because the afternoon was warm and the table was full of people who had learned to love me without fearing me. It was a strange freedom, small, almost shameful.
I kept eating, and as the murmur of the table faded into a backdrop, my mind returned to the meeting hall, to the figures, to the faces of that morning.
Two years.
Two years since I had drawn the eight macro-regions, and the reports that day had been an uneven mix of pride and disappointment. The vice-governors had spoken honestly, just as I had asked them to, and that honesty hurt in certain places.
Education, for instance.
We had built up the primary and secondary levels with determination, and not long ago we had split higher education into two branches: the Regional Academies, technical in nature, and the Simte Academy, the pinnacle of advanced knowledge.
On paper, the design was elegant. In practice, the network was still a constellation of lights too far apart: large cities, a few important towns, and between them kilometers of jungle, plain, and mountain where a child was still born, would grow up, and would die without ever having seen a school.
I tore off a piece of bread, dipped it in the broth, and forced myself to be fair to myself. I could not expect educational reach like that of the future, not with a territory so vast and so diverse, with roads that were only beginning to be paved and technology that still depended on the raft and the foot, and only recently on horses and carts… That was what there was.
Even so, watching Caribá, Coquivacoa, Eyadobida, and Achagua-Nirua steadily expand their classrooms while the newer, larger regions drowned in impossible distances left a bitter aftertaste.
And then there was the other wound, the one that had truly bitten at my conscience during the session.
The food reserves.
I had proposed them myself. Silos, regional granaries, surpluses for droughts and floods, all calculated with clean, rational logic. And yet, when a region in the south suffered drought the previous year, the grain had been stored ten days' travel from those who needed it most, and the mountain roads were cut off by landslides. People went hungry while the corn piled up, perfectly preserved, in an unreachable depot.
It was obvious. So obvious that it shamed me.
A problem of transport, of logistics, of the most elementary kind, and I, with all my abilities and my "centuries" of military history and strategy absorbed in a previous life, had overlooked it.
I gripped the spoon harder than necessary.
I breathed deeply.
"Mistakes can be corrected," I told myself. "That's why we created the Civil Rescue Guard and the supply depots. That's why I asked them to bring me their worst failures."
And, in the balance of the morning, not everything had been bleak.
I recalled the vice-governors' words on resource management and compared them with what I knew from Zasaba and the Shadows.
Every official report matched, almost figure for figure, what my agents had observed in secret. Corruption, embezzlement, the exploitation of office… they existed, of course. They always would. But they were minimal, little more than the small friction any machinery generates as it moves: a relative placed in a post, a commercial favor, a surplus diverted to a household instead of a depot. The same thing the caciques had done before we existed as a kingdom, only now it was standardized, measured, contained within reasonable limits.
I did not regret it. I had learned, in my previous life and in this one, that no system of government was free of it, and that whoever pretended to eradicate it entirely ended up creating an apparatus of surveillance more corrupt than the evil it fought. What I could do, and did, was keep it small, visible, and punish excess without mercy… That was enough.
What truly pleased me was something else.
From the pouch at my belt, I took out one of the coins I always carried with me, a gold disc stamped with the sun and moon intertwined, and rolled it between my fingers beneath the edge of the table.
In the reports that morning, over and over, the same pattern had appeared: the royal currency was being adopted more and more, displacing barter in regions where until recently it had been barely a curiosity.
And the most interesting thing was the engine behind that change.
Many regions were beginning to anchor part of their economy to trade with Caribá, which was, by far, the one that moved the most foreign commerce. Metal coins circulated there in abundance, both ours and European ones, and from there they radiated toward the interior like circles in water.
A mercantile heart beating at sea, and veins extending inland. I had not planned it exactly this way, but it was a beautiful way to grow.
"Leader Chuta." An aide's voice brought me back, discreet at my ear. "They have finished."
I looked up. Indeed, the plates were empty or nearly so, the cups half full, and the volume of the conversations had begun to drop to that expectant murmur that precedes the resumption of a working day.
The rest of the aides were gathering papers, the vice-governors were smoothing their tunics, and several gazes had turned toward me, waiting.
I put the coin away, drained the last sip from my cup, and set my napkin on the table. The potato pie had vanished completely from my plate.
As I rose, there was a noise of chairs scraping, creaking wood, the rustle of fabric.
…
The meeting hall had kept the coolness of the morning.
Everyone returned to their place without anyone needing to tell them. The vice-governors took their seats as if the meal had never happened, and the aides withdrew toward the walls, where they formed a row of light-colored tunics and folders pressed against their chests. They were half the eyes and all the ears of that room. Two of them exchanged a brief nod before falling still.
I sat at the head of the table. In front of me I spread out the sheets I had prepared during the night: reports folded in half, plans with the margins filled with my own handwriting, a sketch of routes I had redrawn three times.
No one spoke.
"Before we continue," I said, and the heads rose all at once, "I want to thank you. This morning you explained your failures to me instead of your virtues, and that is harder than it seems. Many of you knew it would hurt, and you did it anyway. With half of the reports, you have given me today, I have learned more than in ten years of smiles."
Something loosened in the shoulders of the room. A short-bearded vice-governor from the highlands of Achagua-Nirua let out a breath through his nose with a half-smile. Another, younger one, rubbed the back of his neck like someone receiving a teacher's praise and not knowing where to put his hands.
"Now comes the other part," I continued. "There are measures we will adopt in the coming years, and data you need to have before returning to your regions. Some of it you will like. Some of it will cost you effort."
No one moved. I recognized that stillness: that of people who have understood that what comes next is not protocol.
I took the first sheet.
"I'll begin with what I believe will please you most. The breeders working with the animals that arrived from across the ocean handed me their report a few weeks ago. Almost four years after the first specimens disembarked, we have a complete second generation of horses, mules, cattle, and sheep. Complete means they have been born, have grown, and have reproduced here."
The word "horses" did what I had expected.
A vice-governor from the Sunset Coast straightened his back so fast the chair creaked, and to my left the vice-governor of Caribá let out a very soft "ah."
"The projections indicate that in the coming years we will be able to send specimens to every region, progressively," I went on. "So that you may breed them, multiply them, and use them for whatever you need."
"For whatever we need?" repeated the one from the Pacific coast, carefully. "Even outside the ranks of the army?"
"Even outside," I answered. "Until today, only the military forces had mounts, apart from what is raised in Caribá and in some overseas territories. That situation changes. A peasant will be able to own a mule. A merchant, a cart with oxen. A family, a flock."
The murmur that ran down the table was not that of an argument. It was rather the sound of people doing sums: how many pastures, how many corrals, how many years. The aides along the walls had begun to write without anyone asking them to.
A hand rose from the northern end of the table. It was the vice-governor of Roraimá, a broad-shouldered man with a dark face, tattooed at the temples with marks of his people, who spoke Suaza with the pause of someone who has learned it recently and guards every syllable.
"Leader Chuta," he said, "forgive my ignorance. In my region it rains almost all year and the air weighs like a wet blanket. I have not seen those animals in person. Can they live there? Or will the humidity eat them alive?"
There was no mockery in the room. More than one person seemed grateful that someone had asked what everyone else kept quiet.
"It's a good question, and it isn't ignorance," I told him. "According to the records we have and what I've learned about them, these animals endure very different climates. There are breeds that live in arid lands, with little water and a great deal of sun. If they withstand that, I don't see why your jungle should destroy them."
The man nodded slowly, with the relief of someone who has been treated as an equal. I let a moment pass before adding:
"But I won't promise you anything I haven't seen. Before formally opening breeding in each region, we will study how they behave in its climate, with its pastures and its diseases. If I'm wrong, I'd rather be wrong with ten head than with a thousand."
"That's fair," he said, and for the first time he smiled.
Then I saw the movement.
It was an aide from the Eyadobida region, a slender young man in a gray tunic. He had stepped forward from the wall and was leaning toward his vice-governor's ear, hand cupped, murmuring something brief.
The vice-governor, an elderly man with white hair combed back, listened without moving a muscle of his face. Then he nodded once, and the aide withdrew to his place.
"Leader Chuta," said the old man, "may I ask something?"
"Of course."
"These animals… will they be considered a key resource of the realm, reserved for internal use? Or will they be freely tradeable once that opening takes place?"
I remained silent for a moment.
My first reaction was curiosity: why had that question occurred to the aide, and why precisely now?
It was too sharp a doubt to come from nowhere. I looked at the old man, then at the young one pressed against the wall, and the map engraved in my memory finished arranging itself.
Eyadobida. The Sunset Coast, the border with the Andes.
The region where Fagua, even without sitting in this room, had spent years cultivating with the Incas a trade far more interesting than the official reports let on. Corn heading south, ships taken apart to be studied, messengers crossing the border more often than was advisable. A horse in that market would be worth more than a cargo of silver.
It was not an innocent question, but neither was it a betrayal. It was a region with a neighboring partner and an opportunity in sight. It had to be answered with care.
"I'll be clear," I said, and rested both hands on the sheets. "I want some years of local growth to pass before the trade in these animals is fully opened. It is not a prohibition. It is a matter of value… A horse today is not a commodity; it is a seed. If we sell before there are enough, no region will have a herd of its own, and whoever buys will carry off the harvest you planted with your labor."
The old man held my gaze a moment longer than necessary. Then he inclined his head with the correctness of someone who has understood more than he says.
"I understand," he said.
"When every region has its own," I added, "we will talk about opening the doors."
The murmurs erupted at once, like a flock taking flight. Overlapping voices, the slap of a palm against the table, someone asking how many years "some" was. The aides looked at one another. I let the noise run a couple of seconds and then rapped the wood with my knuckles, twice, dry, without raising my voice.
The room fell silent.
"This is related to the next point," I said, picking up the second sheet. "If we are going to have pack animals in every corner of the realm, we need something to move them along. We have considered a network of royal roads crossing the entire territory."
This time the silence was of a different kind. I unfolded the sketch on the table and pushed it toward the center. The lines were barely suggestions: strokes that departed from Central City, descended through the plains, climbed toward the Andes, vanished into the jungle.
"Each region may submit a proposal for the location and extent it considers ideal," I continued. "You know the terrain better than I do. But I warn you now that it will be a project of years, not months. And when evaluating the stretches, we will give priority to those far from the major river routes."
The vice-governor of Caribá looked up from the sketch.
"So as not to compete with the rivers?"
"So that roads and rivers complete each other instead of getting in each other's way. What water moves well, let water keep moving. What doesn't reach the water, let the road carry. If we do the work right, what is lost on one side we will gain on the other."
The old man from Eyadobida stroked with one finger the line that descended along his coast, and I pretended not to have seen it.
The discussion caught fire with other measures, one after another, without respite.
I spoke to them about the common language: of Suaza as a tongue that unites, but that cannot stand still. We had begun incorporating terms from foreign languages into the royal dictionary, words from the Europeans, the Africans, the islands of the other ocean, because a language that closes in on itself ends up without words for new things.
"And from now on," I added, "we will measure each region's progress also by the level of Suaza spoken there."
The man from Roraimá frowned, not in anger but with effort, because it was precisely his case.
"You will measure how much we speak the language of the realm?"
"We will measure how much your peoples understand it and how much they use it," I clarified. "Not to punish anyone. To know where a school, a teacher, an interpreter is lacking. You yourself have just shown how far you've come."
There was a brief, affectionate laugh, and the tattooed man straightened in his chair with a pride he made no attempt to hide.
I moved on to the next sheet. This one weighed more than the others, and not because of the paper.
"There is one last measure I want to announce today. It is the one that matters most to me and the one that demands the most care. Variolation, which has worked well in Caribá and in the nearest overseas territories, will begin to be applied in the rest of the regions. No objections."
I said "no objections" slowly, and looked each vice-governor in the eye, one by one, until I had closed the circle.
No one spoke, but by the window, a round-faced vice-governor in a freshly new tunic, one of those who had come into office only a few months earlier, leaned forward with his eyebrows arched and his mouth slightly open.
"Leader Chuta," he said, in an unsure voice, "pardon me. I wasn't aware. What is that about?"
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
First, I owe you all another apology for not uploading chapters or posting updates. The truth is, I haven't quite managed to get used to my work schedule yet.
I don't understand how other writers on this and other platforms manage to work and write at the same time... I found it very difficult, and I have a lot of respect for those who pull it off.
Second, for this chapter, I decided to challenge myself by using a more fluid and realistic structure than my usual style.
As you've likely noticed, I tend to write in a very structured way, but that can sometimes make the text sound unnatural.
For instance, I often write scenes involving sudden flashbacks or recollections—essentially summarizing events—before returning to the present, whereas in reality, these things often happen while you're talking, eating, or doing something else entirely.
The result might feel different from what you're used to, but I wanted to try and improve this aspect of my writing.
On another note, I want to highlight the difference between the policy measures in the previous chapter and those in this one. Here, the focus is on long-term measures, whereas the previous chapter presented short-term actions in response to the issues raised by the vice-governors. Obviously, I haven't covered every single detail, as that would be tedious.]