Chapter 38 : The Saboteur
The nets were cut three days before the trial's end.
Garrett found Harmon standing at the riverbank, the ruined fishing equipment spread before him like evidence at a murder scene. Ropes severed cleanly, meshes torn with deliberate precision. Days of work destroyed in a single night.
"Third time this week," Harmon said. His voice was tired, the weariness of a leader watching his community suffer for reasons he couldn't explain. "First it was the food stores—someone added something to the salt fish, turned it rancid. Then the smithing tools went missing. Now this."
"You think it's one of my people?"
"I don't know what to think anymore."
But Garrett could read the suspicion in the old man's posture. Three months of careful building, trust earned through labor and fair dealing, potentially unraveling because someone wanted the integration to fail.
"I'll find out who's responsible."
"And if it is one of yours?"
"Then I'll handle it. The same way I'd handle it if it were one of mine."
Harmon's expression shifted—doubt mixing with something that might have been hope.
"You really mean that, don't you?"
"I don't make promises I can't keep. It's bad for business."
The investigation took three days.
Garrett approached it systematically—the same way he'd learned to approach logistics problems in his previous life, before death and rebirth and the impossible reality of the Badlands. Establish patterns. Identify opportunity. Eliminate possibilities until only the truth remained.
The sabotage had started two weeks into the extended trial, which ruled out most of his Vanguard. They'd arrived with the expedition and had been under constant observation since. The timing suggested local involvement—someone who'd watched the integration progress and decided they didn't like where it was heading.
Mira ran counter-surveillance on their own people anyway, confirming what Garrett suspected. His fighters were clean.
Which meant the saboteur was one of Harmon's.
"Narrow the list," Garrett told Mira. "Who has access to the food stores? Who knows where the tools are kept? Who has the skills to cut those nets without being caught?"
"Maybe a dozen people. The fishing crews work different shifts, overlap in strange ways."
"Then we set a trap."
The trap was simple: announce that a new shipment of valuable equipment had arrived, leave it visibly stored in an obvious location, and watch. If the saboteur was driven by opportunity, they'd strike again.
If they were driven by ideology, they'd be more careful.
Either way, patience would reveal them.
On the ninety-third day, the trap sprung.
Garrett was reviewing the bridge repair reports—the structure was finally at full function, capable of supporting loaded wagons—when Mira's signal came. Three sharp whistles, the pattern they'd established for "target acquired."
He found her at the supply shed with two Vanguard fighters, a lantern casting harsh light across the scene. A young man knelt in the dirt, his hands bound behind his back, his face a mess of tears and defiance.
Cal. Harmon's nephew. Maybe nineteen, with the soft features of someone who'd never known real hardship and the wild eyes of someone drowning in fear.
"Caught him cutting rope," Mira said flatly. "Had a knife. Tried to run."
The evidence lay beside him: a coil of rope, half-severed, and a small blade that looked like it belonged in a kitchen, not a saboteur's hand.
"It's not what it looks like," Cal said. His voice cracked. "I wasn't—I didn't mean—"
"You've been sabotaging the integration since it started." Garrett kept his tone neutral, the voice of a man discussing facts rather than passing judgment. "The food stores. The missing tools. The fishing nets. All of it."
Cal's face crumbled.
"You don't understand. We were fine before you came. Safe. Invisible. No one bothered us because we had nothing worth taking." Tears streamed down his cheeks. "Now look at us. Soldiers everywhere. Training. Weapons. All this talk about networks and alliances. You're turning us into a target."
"We're turning you into something worth protecting."
"We don't need protecting! We need to be left alone!"
The words hung in the air, the desperate plea of someone who'd watched his small, safe world transform into something bigger and more frightening.
Garrett understood the fear. In another life, he might have felt the same way—the comfort of obscurity, the safety of being too small to notice. But obscurity was an illusion. The Badlands didn't spare the invisible. It simply consumed them quietly, without witnesses.
"Bring Harmon."
The confrontation was ugly.
Harmon's face went through shock, denial, rage, and finally something that looked like grief. His nephew—the boy he'd raised since his sister's death, the youth he'd taught to fish and repair and survive—exposed as the source of the community's recent misfortunes.
"Why?" Harmon's voice was hoarse. "I told you we were giving them a chance. I told you it was working."
"It isn't working! They're changing everything!" Cal's defiance had collapsed into desperate justification. "The training, the weapons, the way people talk now—about networks and expansion and futures. We're fishers, Uncle. Not soldiers. Not parts of some bigger machine."
"And when the next bandit gang comes through? When the next Baron patrol decides we're worth raiding? What then?"
"We hide. Like we always have."
"Hiding didn't save your mother."
The words cut deeper than any blade. Cal flinched as if struck, his remaining resistance crumbling into raw pain.
Garrett stepped forward.
"Harmon. What punishment would you give?"
The old man's jaw worked.
"Our law... for theft and destruction... banishment. Or death, if the community votes for it."
"And what do you want?"
"I want my nephew back. The boy who worked the nets with me, who helped build this place." Harmon's voice cracked. "Not the scared fool who tried to destroy it."
Garrett considered his options.
Execution would be clean. Final. A message that sabotage carried ultimate consequences. Some leaders would choose that path—Kael would have, in the days before Mira ended him. Baron Chau certainly would.
But Garrett wasn't building an empire through fear. He was building a network through trust, and trust required mercy when mercy was possible.
"Cal."
The young man looked up, his face a ruin of tears and snot.
"You have a choice. I can banish you—send you into the territories with nothing, let the wilderness decide your fate. Or you can stay and work."
Hope flickered in Cal's eyes. Dangerous hope, the kind that could cut both ways.
"Work?"
"Triple shifts. Every day until you've replaced what you destroyed, then more until you've earned back the trust you broke. Public accountability—everyone will know what you did and what you're doing to make it right." Garrett crouched to Cal's level. "Fear made you stupid. Labor will make you useful. Or you can leave with nothing."
The choice wasn't really a choice. Banishment in the territories meant death, slow or fast depending on luck. But Garrett wanted the words spoken, the decision made by Cal himself.
"I'll stay." The words came out as barely a whisper. "I'll work."
"Good." Garrett stood. "Cut him loose. He starts now."
Harmon found Garrett at the river that evening.
The old man's face was drawn, aged years by the day's revelations. But there was something else in his expression—surprise, perhaps. Or gratitude.
"You could have killed him."
"Yes."
"Most would have. Soldiers, especially. Sabotage is treason. Treason gets death."
"Scared people can learn. Dead people can't." Garrett watched the water flow past, unchanging despite the human drama on its banks. "Cal isn't evil. He's frightened. Fear can be addressed. Evil has to be removed."
"How do you know the difference?"
"Experience. And mistakes." Garrett turned to face Harmon. "I've seen scared people do terrible things because they couldn't see another way. I've also seen them become the most loyal supporters you could ask for, once they understood they weren't alone."
Harmon was quiet for a long moment.
"The vote's tomorrow. End of the trial."
"I know."
"My people will vote to join. All of them, I think. Even Cal, though he won't meet anyone's eyes for months."
"And you?"
Harmon extended his hand—the same gesture Garrett had offered a month ago, now returned with genuine meaning behind it.
"Welcome to River Crossing. For whatever it's worth."
Garrett shook.
"It's worth more than you know."
Author's Note / Support the Story
Your Reviews and Power Stones help the story grow! They are the best way to support the series and help new readers find us.
Want to read ahead? Get instant access to more chapters by supporting me on Patreon. Choose your tier to skip the wait:
Noble ($7): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public.
Royal ($11): Read 17 chapters ahead of the public.
Emperor ($17): Read 24 chapters ahead of the public.
Weekly Updates: New chapters are added every week. See the pinned "Schedule" post on Patreon for the full update calendar.
Join here: patreon.com/Kingdom1Building