Oskar looked down upon the people of Katlapi from Shadowmane's back, and before he spoke another word, he studied them.
Not as a crowd, but as a social structure.
That was the thing about people. They rarely needed uniforms to show rank. They arranged themselves by instinct, by habit, by fear, by old wounds passed down so long that no one remembered when they had first been made.
Here, in this small Baltic village beneath the rain, the whole old world stood before him in miniature.
The pastor stood near the front because God still had a voice where poor men did not. Beside him stood the estate steward and the better-dressed villagers: the clerk, the wealthier farmholders, the men with boots better made than the rest, coats better kept, backs straighter because they were used to being heard. They did not stand proudly now, not before him, not before Shadowmane, not with pistols freshly dropped into the mud, but even their fear had shape.
They were frightened men accustomed to importance.
Behind them stood the poorer men.
Farmhands, fishermen, tenant farmers, woodcutters, laborers, men whose hands were too rough, whose coats were too worn, whose eyes kept slipping toward their betters before returning to Oskar. They did not push forward. They did not expect to speak. Even when afraid, even when the world itself had broken open and a blood-covered prince sat before them on a black horse, they still waited for those above them to decide how fear should be expressed.
And farther back stood the women.
Some held children. Some kept their eyes lowered. Some stared at Oskar despite themselves, pulled between terror and the strange magnetism that always followed him. Yet none stood where decisions were made. None expected to be asked anything. Their place was behind the men, and behind custom.
Even the children understood it.
The boys stood closer to the men if they were old enough to be seen as future men. The girls stayed with their mothers. No law had to be read aloud for them. The village had already taught them where power stood.
Oskar saw all of it, written not in paper but in posture.
This was not Germany.
Not yet.
This was the Baltic world under Russian rule, or rather, the Baltic world beneath several masters layered one atop another until the common man could hardly tell whose boot pressed most heavily upon his neck.
At the very top stood the Tsar, far away in Petrograd, holy in theory and distant in practice. A crowned father whose officials spoke in his name while most of his children never saw his face except on coins, portraits, official proclamations, and church prayers. Beneath him came governors, police, courts, Russian officials, army recruiters, tax collectors, inspectors, clerks, and men who spoke of empire in a language many villagers barely understood.
But even that was not the whole truth.
Here, in these Baltic lands, there had long been another power.
The old manor order.
Baltic German nobles, estate owners, and old families whose names had weighed upon the countryside for generations. Some were capable. Some were educated. Some were disciplined and genuinely believed themselves guardians of civilization against chaos. Others were little more than local kings wrapped in law, habit, inheritance, and distance.
Even when Russian power grew stronger, even when Russification pressed upon schools, offices, courts, and administration, the man in the village still often knew the estate before he knew the state.
The estate owned the fields, or enough of them.
The estate owned the forest, or the right to use it.
The estate owned the mill, the pasture, the fishing lease, the grazing rights, the best road, the good barns, the credit, the storehouse, the tools, the work.
Perhaps not everything in law.
But enough in life.
And law, Oskar knew, mattered less to a hungry man than the hand that controlled his bread.
Once, under serfdom, the arrangement had at least possessed a cruel kind of clarity. The peasant had been bound. His freedom had been limited. His dignity had been made small. Yet the estate had also carried obligations. The lord owed some measure of protection, order, housing, access to land, and relief in bad times—not from kindness alone, but because the people tied to the estate were part of its wealth.
It had been bondage, but bondage with structure.
Then the old bonds were broken, and freedom came wearing a thin coat.
Men were told they were no longer serfs. They could work for wages. They could move more than before. They could, in theory, appeal to law, sign contracts, earn coin, improve their station, and live as persons rather than property.
In theory.
In practice, many found that freedom without security could become another kind of trap.
A man might no longer belong to the manor, but he still needed work from it. He might no longer owe the old labor dues, but he owed rent, tax, debt, food costs, church fees, tools, seed, clothing, and winter fuel. He might possess legal rights, but rights cost money to use. Courts were not free in any way that mattered to the poor. Doctors were not free. Education was not free where it was useful. Travel was not free. Time itself was not free when a missed day's work meant children went hungry.
If a man fell sick, wages stopped. If his wife gave birth, work did not wait. If his child needed medicine, the doctor asked for coin.
If the harvest failed, debt grew. If the estate reduced wages, who would force it to do otherwise?
If the landlord closed a path, fenced a forest, restricted grazing, forbade fishing, or demanded payment for what grandfathers had once used by custom, what could a poor man do?
He could complain, perhaps. And if no one listened, complaint became anger.
That was the true cruelty of the old system. A poor man did not lose his money to one hand alone. He paid in many directions at once.
He paid rent to the estate or landlord. He paid taxes to the state. He paid local dues for roads, repairs, schools, police, and poor relief, if such relief existed in any useful form at all. He paid church fees. He paid market fees. He paid for permits, tools, seed, fuel, clothing, medicine, and food. He paid higher prices because the state taxed goods before they ever reached the village shop. And when war came, he paid with his horse, his grain, and finally his sons.
Some of these burdens were written in law.
Others were hidden in custom, corruption, pressure, and fear.
That was the problem.
There was no single chain he could point to and say, "There. That is the hand ruining me."
If a man lost his farm, who was to blame?
The landlord who raised the rent?The village elder who divided the tax burden unfairly? The state official who demanded payment?The police who enforced the order unequally? The priest who asked for church dues? The shopkeeper who raised prices? The bad harvest?
The war?
Most often, the answer was all of them together.
And because blame was spread everywhere, it became easy for everyone in power to claim innocence.
The landlord blamed the state. The state blamed the village. The village blamed the harvest. The priest blamed sin. The police blamed the law.
And the poor man was still poor.
Oskar had seen systems like this before.
Not exactly this one, no. But close enough.
An old order built like a millstone, pressing down slowly, grinding the poor into flour while telling them such grinding was the natural shape of the world.
And then men wondered why revolution came.
They wondered why socialists, Bolsheviks, and red pamphleteers found ears among workers, soldiers, hungry peasants, factory girls, dock laborers, railway men, and boys who had watched their fathers break their backs for land they would never own.
Oskar did not wonder.
He understood perfectly.
People did not become revolutionaries because theory was beautiful. Most did not care for theory at all. They became revolutionaries because their lives taught them that the world was fixed against them, and then someone came along and told them it did not have to be.
A hungry man did not need to understand Marx to understand hunger.
A tenant did not need philosophy to understand rent.
A mother did not need a manifesto to know what it meant when sickness took her pay, her child's food, and her husband's patience all in the same week.
That was the weakness in the old order. Not merely poverty, but hopelessness.
A man could endure hard work if he believed work led somewhere. He could endure a small house if it was his house. He could endure taxes if roads, schools, doctors, courts, and protection came back in return. He could endure a lord if the lord was bound by law. He could endure hierarchy if hierarchy carried duty from above as well as obedience from below.
But if a man worked all his life and remained poor, if his sons were taken by war, if his daughters served in houses they could never own, if his wife fell sick and wages stopped, if the estate prospered while his own roof leaked, if officials took and took and no one explained why, then sooner or later he would listen to anyone promising fire.
And fire was easy to promise.
The Bolsheviks in Oskar's old memory had understood that. They had not created every grievance. They had harvested grievances planted by centuries of neglect.
Land, bread, peace, those three words were simple enough for any peasant to understand.
But Oskar also knew the lie hidden inside simplicity.
People said they wanted land, and many did. Yet not every man truly wanted to manage fields, buy seed, repair fences, fight soil, negotiate markets, feed animals, and carry the risks of harvest, debt, drought, and disease. Many who cried for land wanted something deeper and simpler.
A home with maybe a nice garden. A secure wage. A school for their children. A doctor when sickness came. A court that would hear them. A road that did not vanish into mud.
A police force that did not belong to the richest man in the village. A chance for a clever son to become more than his father. A chance for a daughter not to vanish into service without protection.
A life where one bad winter, one broken leg, one fever, one failed harvest, one cruel employer, one drunken official, or one landlord's whim did not destroy an entire family.
Dignity.
That was the word most men meant before they had the education to say it.
Oskar looked again at the villagers.
He saw the estate steward watching him with the tense caution of a man afraid of losing old privilege. He saw the poorer men watching the steward while pretending not to. He saw the women listening from behind the line of men, wondering whether this new promise of law would pass over them as every old promise had done before. He saw children with hollow eyes, young men with anger in their shoulders, and old men who had endured too much to imagine change without first imagining ruin.
But class was only one crack in the ground, a single problem amongst many in the Baltic's of this century.
There were other problems as well.
Before himself he could see wealthy German landholders and their servants. Latvian farm families. Livonian fishermen. A Russian blacksmith standing beside his wife and daughter. A few Poles who looked less like settled villagers than refugees who had been carried north by war and necessity. Perhaps there were Jews among the crowd as well, quiet enough not to be named too loudly, careful enough not to draw attention from men who had always found someone weaker to blame.
They were Lutherans, Orthodox, Catholics, and perhaps other things besides. Some crossed themselves one way, some another. Some spoke Russian. Some German. Some Latvian. Some understood several tongues and trusted none of them fully. Yet beneath all those differences, most were simply men and women who cared less for doctrine than for bread, shelter, safety, and the hope that their children would not be crushed by the same world that had crushed them.
Before him stood a tangle of languages, religions, loyalties, old privileges, and new resentments.
This was the empire's borderland, where there was no one people, tongue, culture or memory.
The Russian state had tried to bind it with officials, schools, soldiers, police, taxes, and the Tsar's portrait. The German manor order had tried to bind it with land, inheritance, contracts, debt, and habit. The churches had tried to bind it with God. The army had tried to bind it with fear.
None had succeeded completely.
That was the danger.
Because here, where poverty ruled, difference became a weapon. A hungry man did not always blame the system that starved him. Often, he blamed the neighbor who prayed differently, spoke differently, dressed better, owned more, paid less, or seemed protected by powers he could not reach. Ethnicity became a wound. Religion became a border. Language became a wall. History became a knife passed from father to son.
And Oskar knew what would come if nothing changed.
He knew the future from which he had come. He knew that poverty, war, humiliation, nationalism, old religious wounds, and ethnic hatred would not simply disappear because men wished them away. They would grow. They would harden. They would be used by parties, empires, armies, secret police, revolutionaries, occupiers, and men with flags in their hands and graves behind them.
He knew that this land would not find eternal peace on its own. It would be torn again and again by war, occupation, revolution, deportation, collapse, and the long cold shadow of empires that had not yet even been born.
If he did nothing, these people would keep being divided by their differences, until each generation inherited the hatred of the one before it.
So Oskar would try something else. Not Bolshevism. Not old monarchy. Not blind capitalism. Not anarchism.
Not the empty freedom of a system where the rich bought power and called it liberty.
And not the old order, where birth pretended to be wisdom and the poor were told to be grateful for obedience.
No.
He would build something new in this world, yet familiar enough that men could understand it.
A middle path. A new, better path, or so Oskar hoped.
Now that Oskar understood the grievances of the Baltics beneath Russian rule, it was time to place those grievances beneath a new law.
The time for pretty words had passed.
Now came structure.
He began with the estate holder and the wealthier villagers clustered near him. The man stiffened beneath Oskar's gaze, and the people around him seemed to hold their breath, as if expecting blood. They expected punishment. Perhaps confiscation. Perhaps public humiliation. Perhaps the first act of the new order would be the burning of the manor and the division of its fields among cheering peasants.
But Oskar did not intend to build his kingdom like some fool from his old world, drunk on slogans and revenge.
He did not kill the estate holder.
He did not burn the manor.
He did not promise every poor man a strip of land by sunset.
Instead, he spoke of law.
From this day forward, he declared, land inside Katlapi would belong to the law of Katlapi, just as land inside every village of the Northern Baltic Kingdom would belong to the law of that village.
The estate holder could keep what he owned, but he would no longer stand above the village as a little king. He would pay taxes like any other landholder. His fields, forests, barns, workshops, leases, mills, and pastures would be registered. If land was used well, it would remain in private hands. If it was abandoned, hidden from tax, abused, left idle, or if some harmful project was begun without village approval, the village could bring complaint before the town court. The Crown could then investigate and decide whether the village, the estate, or both had right on their side.
Property would remain property, but property would no longer be a private kingdom outside the law.
All in the village would be equal before the law.
That alone was enough to make the estate holder pale. His wife's mouth tightened. His two sons looked at the ground. Oskar saw their fear and understood it. They were not wrong to be afraid. Something was being taken from them.
Not land, not yet, but untouchability. And that was often the first privilege men mourned.
Then came the vote.
This was Oskar's first physical act in drawing the village into the new order. Not merely telling them they had a voice, but forcing them to use it.
When Captain Carter and the others arrived, Oskar gave the order, and the chapel became the village hall. A wooden box was placed near the altar. Strips of paper were cut. Ink and pencils were brought out. The rules were simple: anyone old enough to pay tax, hold property, work, marry, or suffer under village law could vote.
That caused muttering at once.
Women voting was too much for some. Younger people voting was worse. A few men seemed almost personally insulted by the thought that a girl, a widow, or a farmhand might place a mark on paper equal to theirs.
Oskar allowed the murmuring to continue for a little while.
Then he smiled faintly.
"If you dislike this rule," he said, "then your new village government may petition to change it later. For now, you will taste equality as I have given it to you."
No one argued after that.
Instead candidates were called, and for a moment, no one moved.
Then the estate holder stepped forward, stiff as a man walking toward judgment. After him came the pastor, not because he desired power, but because he feared what might happen if no steady soul offered himself. Then came the Russian blacksmith, broad-shouldered and rain-dark, pushed forward by his wife and daughter both. A farmer followed. Then a fisherman, because the fishermen muttered that men of the fields should not speak for men of the coast.
And then, to the shock of nearly everyone, the blacksmith's daughter stepped forward.
She was young, hardly more than a girl in the eyes of the village, though old enough to have opinions and stubborn enough not to hide them. She wore her hair to her shoulders like a boy's, her sleeves rolled beneath her shawl, and mud covered her boots as if she had never learned to care who saw it. When some of the men laughed, she lifted her chin. When her father turned to stare at her, she stared back.
Oskar's mouth twitched. A tomboy, then.
Good.
Numbers were assigned, because numbers were simpler than names. Even those who could not read properly could copy a number onto paper.
One for the estate holder.
Two for the pastor.
Three for the blacksmith.
Four for the farmer.
Five for the fisherman.
Six for the blacksmith's daughter.
The villagers formed a line inside the chapel. One by one, they took a slip of paper, marked a number, folded it, and dropped it into the box. Outside, rain tapped softly on the roof. Inside, the old world watched itself being asked a question it had never been asked before.
When the votes were counted before everyone, the result struck the village like a slap.
The blacksmith's daughter had won.
Not by a landslide, not by wisdom, not because she was the most experienced, the most educated, or the most prepared.
The vote had split exactly as Oskar had expected, and yet somehow worse.
The estate holder had received the votes of those who wanted safety, habit, and the continuation of what they already knew. The pastor had gathered the pious and the frightened, those who believed God's man was safer than any worldly man. The farmer had gained the votes of ordinary land people who wanted someone plain and familiar. The fisherman had taken the fishermen and their families, because they wanted one of their own. The blacksmith had drawn a smaller group of practical working men, but not enough.
Ethnicity, trade, habit, religion, fear, desire, and foolish hope had all voted.
The Latvians leaned toward their own. The fishermen toward theirs. The cautious toward the estate. The devout toward the pastor. The working men toward the blacksmith.
And then the young men had voted with their eyes. That much was obvious from the way they cheered when the girl's number was read.
The women, too, had given her more votes than anyone expected. Some did it from sympathy. Some from spite. Some because they had never before seen one of their own stand where only men had stood. Some because they wanted to know what would happen if a woman was finally forced into the place where men made decisions and excuses.
And so, by beauty, youth, rebellion, curiosity, resentment, representation, and the idiocy of young men, the blacksmith's daughter became the first mayor of Katlapi.
For a moment no one spoke.
Then everyone spoke at once.
Voices rose in outrage, disbelief, laughter, fear, protest, and nervous excitement. The estate holder looked as if he had been stabbed. The pastor closed his eyes. The blacksmith stared at his daughter as though she had become a stranger before the altar.
The girl herself went pale.
Then she heard the women murmuring approval. She saw several young men grinning like fools. She saw, perhaps for the first time, that the whole village was looking at her not as the blacksmith's troublesome daughter, but as someone who had just become impossible to ignore.
So she lifted her chin, puffed out her chest, and smiled.
Oskar almost put a hand to his face, almost.
This, he thought, was democracy in its purest village form: not reasoned debate, not careful examination of policy, not the triumph of wisdom, but tribe, trade, religion, appearance, resentment, and hope all thrown into a box and counted as if arithmetic could turn chaos into justice.
Still, he let it stand. Because that was the lesson. Then he raised one hand, and silence fell.
"Now you have seen a piece of the new order," he said. "This is your little dose of democracy. This is fairness. You chose, and the choice is yours. She will be mayor for four years."
A wave of horror and fascination passed through the chapel.
Oskar continued before anyone could protest.
"But she will not govern alone. No mayor governs alone. She will choose from a council elected by you, and that council will support her, advise her, restrain her, and carry the village's burdens with her."
His pale eyes moved across the crowd.
"Smile, then. You have had your first taste of equality."
The girl looked relieved and terrified at once.
A second vote was held for the council. This time the village was more careful. The pastor was chosen. The blacksmith was chosen. The farmer was chosen. The fisherman was chosen. And after a tense pause, the estate holder was chosen as well, though not with the dignity he would once have expected.
Oskar confirmed the result before the chapel.
The girl would be mayor. The council would support her.
The estate holder would sit beneath her authority in village matters, and if that wounded his pride, then his pride could learn discipline.
Thus, in one rain-soaked afternoon, a democratic government was born in Katlapi.
It was not perfect. It was not wise. It was not even especially respectable, but it was theirs.
And that mattered.
Still, Oskar was glad this sort of democracy would remain small. Villages and towns could learn from their own foolishness without ruining a kingdom. Let them vote for beauty, tribe, trade, faith, or revenge here, where the damage could be corrected by a council, a court, and time.
The higher rungs of the state would not be left so naked before impulse.
That was why the kingdom would have a crown.
Then after the vote came the paper, and paper, in Oskar's world, meant law.
His men brought bundles from oilcloth satchels: printed sheets bearing the first provisions of the Northern Baltic Kingdom. German writing stood at the top, clean and sharp in black ink. Beneath it came rough translations where they were available—Latvian, Russian, sometimes Polish—and where translation failed, handwritten notes had been added by men who knew enough to explain the meaning aloud.
The pastor received a copy. The new mayor received one. The estate holder received one with hands so stiff he nearly tore it.
Another copy was nailed to the chapel wall, where all who could read might see it, and where those who could not read might gather while others read it aloud.
Oskar didn't wish to only leave the people beautiful words and speeches, but law.
The founding provisions were simple enough to be understood, but broad enough to become the bones of a state.
The village would elect its mayor every four years, and the mayor would govern with a council.
The village would collect land taxes from all who held land within its borders: estates, mills, forests, workshops, pastures, fisheries, barns, and leased fields alike. No estate would stand outside the village ledger. No rich man would be allowed to claim that his land belonged to law only when law served him.
From the village, a fixed share of tax would move upward to the town. The town, governed by its elected officials, would keep records, maintain roads, oversee markets, police, courts, schools, and clinics, and send its own lawful share upward to the province.
The province would answer to its appointed noble lord.
The noble lord would answer to the duke of the region.
The duke would answer to the king in Riga Castle.
The king would answer to the charter of the kingdom and to German protection.
And if every step failed, if corruption rotted the ladder from top to bottom, then Oskar himself would come down upon it.
Such was the ladder system of the Northern Baltic Kingdom.
It was not perfect. It could not be perfect, because men were not perfect. It still relied on trust, record-keeping, fear of punishment, and the willingness of officials to do what they were sworn to do. But unlike the old order, the ladder could be seen. A poor man would no longer be crushed by invisible hands and told that no one knew who was responsible. If a road failed, a tax vanished, a court sold judgment, or a noble protected a thief, there would be a rung to point at.
And to guard the ladder, the kingdom would have police sworn not to private estates or local masters, but to the king and the founding charter. Courts would answer to the law of the kingdom. The Church of the New Dawn would place its own watchers, confessors, sisters, inspectors, and future inquisitors wherever corruption, treason, or cruelty tried to hide beneath respectability.
Oskar did not call that gentle.
He called it necessary.
The army and diplomacy would belong to the king. Kingdom-wide law would pass upward through the councils of the realm: from petition and parliament, through the High Lords' Council, and finally to the king's hand. The king could approve, reject, delay, or override if the safety of the realm demanded it. His normal council would be the dukes, the so called High Lords of the kingdom, and their task would be to keep the provinces beneath them functioning without dragging every village quarrel into Riga Castle.
A king could not personally judge every broken fence, corrupt mayor, stolen cow, or unfair tax. So the burden would be divided.
The village Mayor would answer for the villagers. The town Mayor for the village Mayor's. The lord for the town Mayors. The duke for the lords. The king for the dukes. And Oskar for the whole.
To begin with, the state tax would be modest. Villages and towns would owe only a fixed tenth of their yearly public revenue upward, enough to bind them to the kingdom without strangling them before the new order could breathe. Oskar knew better than to promise prosperity and then tax it to death before it had been born.
Yet the heart of the law was not taxation.
It was Home Rule.
Under Home Rule, no ordinary inhabitant of the Northern Baltic Kingdom would be treated as a full citizen at once. At the beginning, only the king, his chosen officers, and those already recognized by the Crown would possess full citizenship. Everyone else would be registered as protected residents—guests of the new order, living under its protection, but not yet fully belonging to it.
That word mattered.
Guest.
A guest was protected while he obeyed the house. He could work, trade, pray, marry, raise children, rent property, and live under the law. But he had not yet earned the full rights of the household. He could be expelled if he betrayed it. He could be punished harshly if he raised arms against it. And if he attacked the people or officers of the kingdom after being given peace, then the kingdom could answer with death.
Citizenship had to be earned.
Ten years of loyal service would open the way. Military service in the Red Turban Legion would be the fastest and most honored road, but not the only one. Service could be given in ordinary forms of work, and any labor that strengthened the kingdom. A loyal farmer, teacher, nurse, blacksmith, sailor, road worker, or merchant could earn his place.
Once citizenship was gained, the fuller protections of Oskar's modern Germany would begin to apply: welfare benefits, stronger legal rights, tax protections, labor protections, accident support, maternity protection, sickness support, the right to buy land, and the dignity of being no longer a guest, but a citizen of the realm with permanent status and belonging.
Until then, the bargain was simple. "Obey, serve, and rise. Refuse peacefully, and leave. Resist violently, and die."
As an act of calculated mercy, Home Rule would not immediately strip land from its current holders. Estates would remain unless grave crimes were committed. But those estates would now be recorded, taxed, and judged by law. A manor lord might remain rich. He might even become richer. But he would no longer be above the village, above the court, or above the king.
Then came education.
Basic schooling would be made universal, and where necessary, enforced. Every child would learn letters, numbers, hygiene, civic duty, useful skills, and the law of the kingdom. But all proper schooling would be done in German.
German would be the official language of the state.
German would be the language of courts, higher education, administration, military service, and advancement. Local languages could remain in homes, churches, songs, markets, and as secondary subjects in schools. No soldier would punish a mother for singing to her child in Latvian, Livonian, Russian, Polish, or any other tongue. But the kingdom itself would speak German.
Germanification would come.
Oskar did not deny it.
A state of ten tongues could survive only if one tongue carried the law. Rome had used Latin. Other empires had used court languages. The future had used English across oceans and markets. His kingdom would use German, not because blood made a man worthy, but because citizens needed one language in which to read the same law, serve the same army, and belong to the same state.
Then came religion.
All loyal Christian churches would be tolerated: Lutheran, Orthodox, Catholic, Reformed, and others recognized by the Crown. But all churches would register. All clergy would swear loyalty to the kingdom. No pulpit would be allowed to preach rebellion for Russia, ethnic hatred, or violence against the law.
And above them, slowly but certainly, the Church of the New Dawn would rise.
Oskar did not want churches to be buildings used only for Sunday worship and funeral bells. A church, in his order, was to be a house of service. It should heal the soul, yes, but also the body and mind. Confession would remain, but it would also become counsel for troubled people. Churches would keep poor kitchens, sick rooms, beds for the displaced, emergency stores, records of widows and orphans, and places where those broken by grief, hunger, war, or madness could receive help.
Every priest, pastor, or holy man would be expected to have assistants. At least two sisters or nuns, if possible, trained in basic medicine and nursing. The priest would not be merely a speaker of holy words. The sister would not be merely a woman in a veil. They would serve as healers, nurses, counselors, teachers, and keepers of mercy.
A church that saved only souls while bodies rotted outside its door was, to Oskar, only half a church.
The economy, too, would follow the middle path.
The kingdom would be capitalist, but not lawless.
People could buy land, sell land, lease land, start businesses, take loans, change employers, compete with the rich, sue employers, sue estate holders, and rise by work, discipline, talent, and service. A poor man could become a landholder. A clever child could become a clerk. A skilled worker could open a shop. A fisherman could buy a better boat. A blacksmith's daughter could become mayor, absurd though that still seemed to half the chapel.
But business would obey the law.
Contracts would be written. Workers would be recorded. Dangerous workshops would be inspected. Land use would be registered. Taxes would be paid. Courts would judge disputes. Employers who crippled men through negligence, cheated wages, abused children, or treated workers as animals would face punishment.
Freedom, yes, but not freedom to devour the weak.
And then came Germany.
The kingdom would be opened to German trade at once. From Germany would come books, tools, medical supplies, kerosene, salt, flour, seed grain, school primers, engineers, doctors, New Dawn sisters, printers, merchants, weapons, uniforms, and whatever else the war allowed to be spared. The people would not be asked to believe only in words. They would see supplies arrive. They would see paper, bread, medicine, nails, boots, books, and law.
That was how trust in one part would begin. Not through speeches alone, but through things men could hold.
Finally came the matter of refusal.
Those who accepted the new order could stay. Those who refused peacefully could leave eastward into Russia. Those who swore loyalty and later rebelled would be treated as traitors. Those who raised arms after hearing the offer would be killed.
Those who refused the duties of citizenship would remain guests, protected only so long as they did not threaten the household that sheltered them, or as long as the household decided to tolerate them.
Oskar's law was not soft, but it was clear.
Join, serve, and rise.
Refuse peacefully, and leave.
Resist violently, and die.
The final page showed the new banner.
Red dominated the field: the color of blood, sacrifice, and the Red Turbans who had first knelt in Riga. Black and white crossed through it, the bones of Prussian and German order. At the center rested a golden shield, bright as the rising sun of the New Dawn. Upon that shield coiled a black two-headed dragon, one head turned east, one west, guardian of the light and watcher of the borders. In the four corners stood crosses of differing form, signs of the Christian confessions that would be tolerated beneath the kingdom's law, all circling the same dawn.
It was a military banner. A religious banner. A political banner, and even a warning at the same time.
The Northern Baltic Kingdom, in its simplest form, would be a German-protected capitalist civic monarchy: local mayors elected by the people, landowners taxed by local law, citizenship earned through loyal service, German as the language of state and advancement, Christian churches tolerated under the growing influence of the New Dawn, and Oskar standing above the whole structure as final protector.
To Oskar it felt like hope, it felt practical, yet authoritarian, even dangerous. But surely it was much better than anything the old order had ever given.
Whether it was right, Oskar did not know, but he would try.
Once the first reading was done, Oskar left the finer explanations to Captain Carter, the pastor, the new mayor, and the Red Turban clerks who would remain behind for thirty days. The village had to begin learning to govern itself without Oskar standing in the mud like a god with a sword.
He had larger work ahead.
So he rode north toward Salacgrīva, the coastal town waiting beneath the rain.