Chapter 5 : Twelve Gold Crowns
Twelve gold crowns sat in a lockbox on the study desk, and I'd been staring at them for twenty minutes.
Twelve. That's my entire operating budget for a territory of two hundred people. In Portland, twelve bucks wouldn't cover lunch. Here, twelve gold crowns is the difference between survival and extinction, and I'm about to spend eight of them on seeds and farming tools.
Mathis stood across the desk, ledger open, pen poised. His spectacles caught the candlelight and turned his eyes into two bright discs of judgment.
"Eight gold crowns." He said it the way a doctor says "terminal." "On seeds and agricultural implements. Leaving a reserve of four."
"The Farm Tier 1 blueprint requires cleared land, an irrigation channel, seed stock, and labor. The labor is free—people work for food. The land is available—the southeast field beyond the mill hasn't been planted in three seasons but the soil's recoverable. The seeds and tools are the bottleneck."
"And if the crop fails?"
"Then we were dead anyway, just slower. Forty days of food isn't survival, Mathis. It's a countdown."
He removed his spectacles. Polished them. This was becoming familiar—Mathis's version of a deep breath before saying something he didn't want to say.
"With respect, my lord. Hope is not a budget line. I have attempted to enter it in the ledger and the ledger declined."
That's actually funny. The steward has a sense of humor buried under thirty-one years of financial crisis management. File that.
"It's not hope. It's arithmetic. The fishing operation extends our supply, but fish alone won't sustain us through summer. We need grain. We need vegetables. Every day we don't plant is a day of harvest we lose."
He put his spectacles back on. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I see. And shall I note in the ledger that this expenditure is funded by necessity, or shall I use the traditional method of actual justification?"
"Note it as an infrastructure investment with a projected return of three hundred percent over six months."
He wrote something. I was fairly sure it was more polite than what I'd said.
---
[Ashwick — Town Common, Day 7]
Two hundred and three people fit into the common yard if nobody breathed too deeply.
They came in clusters—families, neighbors, the natural groupings of a community that had been shrinking for a decade. The old ones stood in the back, arms crossed, faces carved from the same grey stone as the hills. The younger ones—and "younger" here meant forties—gathered near the front with the wariness of people who'd heard lords talk before and learned to measure promises against results.
I stood on the well platform. No podium, no stage. The well cap was solid stone and put me about eighteen inches above the crowd. Enough.
Don't give a speech. They've heard speeches. The old lord gave speeches while the town emptied around him. Give them numbers.
"Three facts." My voice carried further than I expected. The common yard's walls acted as a natural amphitheater—someone had designed it that way, generations ago. "First: we have thirty-eight days of food at current consumption. Second: the northern wall cannot stop a determined wolf pack. Third: nobody is coming to help us. The Crown is not sending relief. Our neighbors are not offering aid. Ashwick survives because Ashwick works, or Ashwick doesn't survive."
Silence. The kind that has weight.
"Three actions. Tomorrow, I'm starting a fishing operation on the Ashburn River. Every person who works the nets gets fed first—full rations, not survival portions. The day after, we begin wall repair on the northern approach using timber salvaged from the eastern quarter. Same deal: work earns food. By week's end, I'll have seed stock and tools purchased for new farmland south of the mill."
A man stood up in the middle of the crowd. Tomas Breck. I recognized him from Mathis's population roster—fifty years old, built like a low stone wall, face weathered to leather. He ran the largest surviving farm and he hadn't said a word to me since I'd walked past his fields on Day Three.
"And what does the lord plan to do while others work?"
No hostility in the question. Something harder—a test. The kind of question a man asks when he's watched three lords fail and wants to know if the fourth understands what failure looks like from below.
"I'll be on the fishing crew at dawn."
He held my gaze. Three seconds. Five. Then he sat down.
The crowd dispersed in murmurs. Most of them noncommittal—the sound of people deciding to wait and see. Fair enough. Words were cheap. Fish were not.
A hand caught my elbow as I stepped off the well platform.
"Lord Ashwick."
Lena Breck. Tomas's daughter—nineteen, the roster said, with the energy of someone who'd been running on frustration for years. She had a piece of paper in her hand, folded twice, and she held it out like a weapon.
"The well pump is failing. The grain storage has rats—not a few, a colony, and they've been nesting in the south wall for months. The Harrow and Voss families are about to come to blows over a boundary marker that nobody adjudicated because the old lord was too—" She stopped herself. "Because it wasn't adjudicated."
I unfolded the paper. A list. Neat handwriting, organized by urgency, with rough estimates of labor and material costs next to each item.
She made a project tracker. Without being asked. Without a system interface or a spreadsheet application. She just... organized the problems.
"You wrote this."
"Someone had to." The words came out sharp and then she caught herself, recalibrated. "My lord."
"Lena. Starting tomorrow, you report to Mathis. You track work crew rosters—who shows up, who doesn't, hours worked, tasks completed. He handles the money. You handle the people."
Her mouth opened. Something flickered across her face—surprise, maybe, or the particular shock of being taken seriously for the first time.
"I'm a farmer's daughter."
"You're the only person in this town who handed me a prioritized problem list with cost estimates. Report to Mathis at dawn."
She left without another word, but her back was straighter.
---
[Ashwick Keep — Study, Evening]
The Building Menu hovered in my vision, and I'd been cycling through it for an hour.
[Farm — Tier 1]
[Requirements: Cleared land (minimum 2 acres), basic irrigation channel, seed stock, labor]
[Cost: Approximately 8 gold crowns equivalent (seeds: 5gc, tools: 2gc, irrigation materials: 1gc)]
[Labor: 40 person-days]
[Output: Reliable food production for 100 people]
[Construction Time: 14 days (weather dependent)]
[Note: Seeds must be purchased from external source. Nearest supplier: Thornwall Market (3 days by horse)]
Thornwall Market. Of course. The nearest place to buy seeds is controlled by the duchy that wants us dead. Which means they'll know we're investing in agriculture, which means they'll know we're trying to survive, which means—
Stop. One problem at a time. The seeds first. The political implications second.
I pulled out four gold crowns and set them in a separate pouch. Emergency reserve. The remaining eight I divided: five for seeds, two for tools, one for irrigation materials—clay pipe sections, if available, or failing that, carved wooden channels.
The quest timer pulsed:
[Quest: Stabilize Food Supply — 24 Days Remaining]
[Progress: 18%]
[Current Food Supply: 40 days (fishing supplement active)]
Mathis had been right about one thing—this was reckless. Eight gold on an unproven farming operation in soil that hadn't been worked in three years, using labor from people who were already stretched thin, on a timeline that assumed no storms, no pest infestations, and no interference from neighbors who wanted us to fail.
But he was wrong about the alternative. Sitting on twelve gold crowns and rationing until the food ran out wasn't caution—it was choosing which week to die.
I closed the lockbox. Locked it. Pocketed the key.
Eight gold. Forty person-days. Fourteen days to build. The crop won't feed anyone for months after that—this is planting, not harvesting. The fishing operation buys us time. The farm buys us a future. And the four gold in reserve buys us exactly nothing if everything else fails.
Tomas Breck had stayed behind in the common yard after everyone left. I'd watched him from the study window—just standing there, looking at the well platform where I'd stood, his arms at his sides. Then he'd walked to the demolished buildings in the eastern quarter where Sera's crew had begun pulling logs, and he'd stood there too. Watching the work happen.
He hadn't volunteered. He hadn't refused. He'd watched.
A farmer who nods costs something. A farmer who watches costs more. He's deciding. When he decides, the other farmers follow, because Tomas Breck doesn't follow lords—he follows results.
Before dawn, I was at the river with a fishing net I didn't know how to cast, and fifteen townspeople arranged behind me in a line that was equal parts work crew and audience.
Get Early Access to New Chapters
Thank you for reading. For those who want to skip the wait, my Patreon is currently 21 chapters ahead of the public sites.
Schedule: 7 new chapters released every 10 days.
Benefit: Gain a significant lead of 7 to 21 chapters depending on your tier.
Support the project and start reading the next arc now: Patreon.com/IsekaiStories