CHAPTER 49: Mylene.
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Location: . Location: Kingdom of Holfort, Capital Island, Palace.
Time: April, Year 280.
Omni POV (Mylene Based).
****
"Your Majesty." Bernard set his cup down with the careful precision of a man choosing his words. "Are you certain this is the right moment to show them everything?"
Mylene didn't look up from the papers in front of her. "You've seen the documents, Bernard. You know better than anyone what the kingdom needs — and what it's going to need to get through what's coming. We need them to want to stay. If we go into this war without their investment and their networks behind us, we won't make it far."
"Sigh." Bernard pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. "If you've already decided, I'm not going to change your mind." He rose, gathering his folder. "Just make sure this is the winning move. Because after today there's no going back."
Before he left the room he added, "Just know, I'm only aligning myself with the Royal faction because at this moment you have the highest chance of success, if Camille gets up one on you I'm joining them.
Mylene sat with the silence for a moment, before making a long overdue call.
Leon's face appeared in the projection above her palm almost immediately — slightly flushed from whatever he'd been doing thirty seconds ago, but notably, visibly presentable.
"Your Majesty." He looked at her. "Wow. You look ragged. Things been difficult in the palace?"
"Something like that." She studied him. "I have to say — this is a first. You're actually presentable."
"Yeah." He pulled at his collar — a fitted black three-piece suit, the jacket cut long over a waistcoat and dress shirt, an overcoat falling almost to his ankles with a high collar and a tailored silhouette that looked like someone had thought about it. "Jenna called earlier. Told me to be presentable for her big moment. I don't think she knows we talk, so I just went with it."
"She did my job for me then."
He looked at her for a moment — carefully studying her face with a worried look on his face. "You know, Your Majesty, if something's on your mind, talking to someone without having to weigh every word might help you get some perspective."
"Is that so." She kept her tone even. "Why would I do that with someone I've known for less than a year? A child, no less."
"Come on." He spread his hands slightly. "I thought we'd already established I wasn't a normal child a long time ago. And on the time thing — I think we can let a few things slide at this point."
Stifling a small laugh she spoke, "If anyone realized this was how you spoke to your Queen, given your station, they'd have your head."
"Ehe." The corner of his mouth moved. "I'd manage it somehow. And if all else failed, I'm sure you'd protect me."
"You trust me that much?"
He considered it from a moment— genuinely. "Why wouldn't I? You haven't given me much reason to doubt you." A pause. "I'd just like the same in return."
"What makes you think I don't trust you?"
"Because if you did, you wouldn't have phrased it that way." His voice stayed light, but there was something direct underneath it. "What I'm waiting for is the day you board my ship on your own. Without the need for hostages." He let that sit for a moment. "Until then I'll settle for the lite version."
Mylene looked at him.
He looked back at her.
"Now." He leaned forward slightly in his chair. "What's actually troubling you? I can already see where the stress is settling. If you don't manage it soon you're going to age faster you know, and after managing to look twenty in your thirties, that would be a genuine shame.."
A beat.
Then Mylene laughed — briefly, genuinely, the kind that didn't happen often enough in this room. "Leon. Let me give you some advice for the future. Avoid commenting on a woman's age if you value your continued wellbeing."
"...Okay." He looked uncertain about what he'd said wrong. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Goodbye, Leon. I'll call you for the meeting shortly."
"Wait — you still haven't told me what's—"
"Later Leon." She smiled. "Goodbye for now."
She ended the call.
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then she stood, her mask comming back up. 'Time to go back to work.'
****
The meeting room was arranged with the particular deliberateness of a space that had been set up to communicate something before a single word was spoken.
At the head of the table sat Mylene — composed, unreadable, wearing the version of herself that this room required.
Standing at her sides: Yamato, his hand resting near his hilt by habit, with Nicks positioned a step behind him. Natasha, at Mylene's other side, with Jenna standing just behind her.
On the right side of the table, the government representatives.
Bernard fia Atlee— Minister of Finance. A round, well-kept face, light hair swept elegantly to one side with soft curls at the edges. His narrow, half-lidded eyes carried a calm and calculating quality that tended to make people feel they were being assessed in real time. The faint smile at the corners of his mouth was the smile of a man who had run numbers on more situations than he'd ever been given credit for.
Beside him: Viscount Roland Greaves, the royal treasurer, silver-haired and thin, wearing spectacles and carrying an abacus the way other men carried a sword — as a natural extension of his person.
And Lady Estelle Renford, Deputy Minister of Finance, blonde hair in a neat bun, her face carrying the composed authority of someone who had spent decades not just understanding financial systems but running them.
On the left side of the table, the guild leaders.
Cedric Volheim, sixty-one, Leader of the Golden Scale Merchant Guild. Industry, general trade, imports, exports. A man who had reached the twilight of a career that had made him the wealthiest non-noble in the kingdom — he carried himself with the precise ease of someone who no longer needed to perform competence because the results spoke clearly enough.
Helen Weiss, forty-two, Leader of the Silver Ledgers Commerce Guild. Investments and currency exchange. Silver hair, blue eyes, a white business dress that managed to be both elegant and completely functional. She and Cedric had been on opposite sides of enough negotiations that they had stopped needing pleasantries.
Garron Blackforge, fifty-five, Leader of the Iron Mountain Guild. Mining and material production. Massive build, black beard, burn scars across both forearms from an incident nobody brought up. He'd built his guild from a three-man operation into the kingdom's dominant raw materials supplier, and he had opinions about everyone in this room that he was not remotely shy about expressing.
Isabella Valtieri, thirty-five, Leader of the Azure Wave Trading Company. Shipping, ports, inter-island trade. Long navy-blue hair, olive skin, sapphire eyes — the kind of woman who had sailed every major trade route in the kingdom personally before she started sending other people to sail them for her.
Tobias Redwood, fifty-eight, Leader of the Harvest Crown Guild. Agriculture and grain distribution. Brown hair streaked with grey, weathered face, green cloak that had seen more weather than any item of clothing had a right to. He dealt in things that kept people fed, which he considered the most important work in any kingdom, and he was right.
Sebastian Auric, forty-six, Leader of the Auric Artisan Consortium. Luxury goods, jewelry, magic tools, crafts. Blonde hair, amber eyes, a perfectly tailored black suit and white gloves, a golden cane he didn't need. He'd built his reputation on knowing what people wanted before they knew they wanted it.
****
Mylene entered the room.
Everyone rose.
"Your Majesty."
She raised one hand slightly — at ease — and took her seat. Her eyes moved across the assembled faces with the same unhurried attention she brought to everything that mattered.
"Lady Bartfort," she said. "You may begin."
Jenna stepped forward from beside Natasha with a small bow. "By your will, Your Majesty."
"I beg your pardon." Garron Blackforge's voice carried the particular quality it got when he'd decided to be difficult before anyone had finished speaking. "Your Majesty, we came here in good faith. We cleared our schedules. We gave you our trust. Sending a child to present to us — what exactly are we supposed to make of that?"
Mylene looked at Bernard.
The look contained several paragraphs.
Bernard cleared his throat. "Mr. Blackforge, I understand the reservation. Give her the benefit of the doubt. I reviewed her work personally." A pause that carried weight. "She'll surprise you."
At the same moment, without any announcement, Mylene took a bead from her bracelet and rolled it quietly down the center of the long table.
It came to rest at the middle and activated — projecting Leon's image above it, three-dimensional, life-size from the chest up, in his black suit.
He looked at the room, registered what it was, and gave a short bow. "Your Majesty."
Mylene nodded once.
Every person at the table looked at the hovering image with the carefully controlled expression of people who had questions they were not going to ask out loud, because asking them would reveal how surprised they were, and surprise was an edge you didn't give away for free.
Jenna pressed a bead against the wall.
It split into four, each piece spreading to a corner, and the wall transformed — a clear display surface, active and responsive. She navigated it with the ease of someone who had rehearsed this enough times that the technology had stopped being technology and become just the tool she was using.
She began to explain the banking system.
****
A month of joint review between Jenna, Bernard, and his department had produced something more refined than what either of them had brought to the table individually. The framework was cleaner. The reserve requirements were more precise. The regulatory structure had been stress-tested against scenarios that Jenna hadn't anticipated and Bernard had, and against scenarios Bernard hadn't anticipated and Jenna had.
The presentation reflected that. It was not a pitch anymore. It was a blueprint.
By the time Jenna reached the core mechanics — notes as transferable value, deposits funding lending, the circulation of idle wealth — the room had stopped being restless and started paying attention.
Cedric Volheim was the first to speak. "I'll hand it to you. It's interesting." He'd leaned forward at some point without appearing to have moved. "A few of the mechanics, I've seen approximations of in practice. Nothing this systematized."
"Interesting is generous," Helen Weiss said, her voice carrying the flat precision of someone who had been running currency exchange for twenty years. "If this works the way it's described, it steps on several things my guild currently does."
"Which is exactly why we were hoping you'd be willing to merge your guild's operations with the new system," Jenna said, without missing a beat. "You don't lose your infrastructure or your relationships. You become the foundation the system runs on."
Helen's eyes moved across the proposal summary on the wall. "So we get to stay in business in the new structure."
"With expanded reach," Jenna said. "And we get access to your existing network, which is worth considerably more to us than starting from nothing."
"The Silver Ledgers have operated independently for thirty years," Helen said. "Collaboration of that scale comes with conditions."
"That's what the negotiation is for."
Tobias Redwood shifted in his chair. "The grain question." He had the direct manner of a man who didn't have time for abstractions. "Right now my distribution networks run on credit notes and delayed payment cycles. Farmers produce, merchants buy on credit, I clear the note at harvest. If your system speeds up payment clearing, that changes the entire seasonal rhythm of how my guild operates."
"It speeds *and* stabilizes it," Jenna said. "Seasonal payment risk transfers to the bank rather than sitting on your books."
"And if the bank fails in a bad year?"
"That's what the reserve requirements are for. The bank holds enough to cover withdrawals even in a bad period."
Isabella Valtieri hadn't spoken yet. She'd been looking at the bead in the center of the table — the one projecting Leon. "Inter-island trade," she said finally, "runs on trust and timing. I can get cargo from the eastern provinces to the capital in three days if everything lines up. The payment for that cargo takes three weeks to clear because it goes through three different credit systems across two noble territories." She paused. "Your notes clear instantly?"
"At any registered branch, yes."
"Then my transit time becomes my actual competitive advantage again instead of something I lose to payment lag." Isabella sat back, a decision settling behind her sapphire eyes. "I'm interested."
Sebastian Auric had been silent, his golden cane resting across his knees, his expression carrying the mild detachment of someone who processed information faster than the conversation was moving. "The luxury market runs on exclusivity and provenance. My concern isn't the payment system — it's the record system. If every transaction is visible to whoever administers this bank, that creates problems for clients who value discretion."
"Private accounts with transaction privacy," Jenna said. "Standard banking practice. Records exist but access is controlled."
"Controlled by whom?"
"The regulatory framework. Which we can discuss."
Garron Blackforge set his hands flat on the table. "I want to know something simple." His voice was the voice of a man who had built everything he had out of rock and physical labor and was instinctively skeptical of anything that lived on paper. "Why would I trust that this bank of yours will pay my people their money? Or that it won't find some clever way to cheat us?"
Jenna looked at him directly. "Let me ask you something. When a noble hands you a credit note — why do you trust that he'll honor it? Why do you trust he won't be robbed before you collect the coin?"
Garron was quiet for a moment. "Years. You build trust over years."
"And all we're asking is that you give us a fraction of that. The benefit of the doubt. Let it grow from there."
"Agreed," Mylene said, from the head of the table. "The Crown is backing this. If you feel cheated, come to me directly."
Garron looked at her for a long moment, the burn scars on his forearms catching the light as he shifted his weight.
He didn't agree out loud. But he didn't argue either. Which, from Garron Blackforge, was close enough.
Isabella Valtieri looked back at the bead projecting Leon. "There's one thing you haven't addressed. For any of this to work — branches across the kingdom, instant clearing, real-time account access — you'd need a communication network that can cover the entire kingdom instantaneously." She paused. "I know for a fact nothing like that currently exists."
Her eyes moved back to the bead.
"Or at least I thought I knew."
"Leon," Jenna said. "Take it from here."
"Sure, sis." Leon abandoned any pretense of formal address without apparent guilt.
The wall display shifted, replaced with clean three-dimensional animations that simplified several centuries of engineering into something the room could follow in real time.
"We're positioning eight satellites in the upper atmosphere. Think of them as relay stations — they receive a signal from one point and amplify it at near-light speed to another point anywhere in the kingdom's range. Ground-based computers will send and receive that information in readable form." The animation showed the satellites in position, the signal paths between them, the distribution nodes on the ground. "Every bank branch connects to the network. Every transaction clears in seconds regardless of physical distance."
"And longer term," he continued, "every account holder will have access through a personal card. Walk into any registered merchant in the kingdom, use the card, the transaction clears immediately against your account."
The room received this in the particular silence of people who were recalculating several things simultaneously.
Cedric Volheim looked at Mylene. "Your Majesty. I'll be direct." His voice had the measured quality of a man who had spent sixty years knowing when a situation had shifted. "You didn't bring us here just for the bank."
"Whatever do you mean?" Mylene said.
"A kingdom on the backfoot of an upcoming war. It would be begging for our backing, not presenting us with technology we've never seen." He looked at the satellites still rotating on the wall display. "You've already shown us things that suggest the war isn't going the way your enemies are counting on. And you're telling us there's still more." He folded his hands. "If we leave now, we leave ahead of something significant. And we'll regret it. Am I right?"
Mylene smiled.
It was the particular smile she kept for moments when several problems resolved themselves at once.
****
By the end of the day, every person at that table had signed.
The agreements were different for each of them — shaped to what each guild and each representative actually needed, negotiated across three hours of professional sparring between people who had spent their careers across from each other in rooms like this one. Helen Weiss's currency exchange network became the operational backbone of the new clearing system. Garron Blackforge's mining guild received priority contracts for the raw materials Merlin Incorporated's production lines needed. Isabella Valtieri's shipping routes became the preferred logistics partner for inter-island distribution. Tobias Redwood's agricultural distribution network integrated with the payment clearing system, eliminating the seasonal lag that had cost him money every harvest for twenty years. Sebastian Auric's consortium received first access to the consumer products Merlin would eventually bring to market. Cedric Volheim received a seat on the advisory board of the banking system itself — not control, but visibility, which for a man of his experience was worth considerably more.
And all of them received something the agreements didn't explicitly name but that had been the real point of the meeting from the beginning: the knowledge that whatever was coming, they were standing on the winning side of it.
Leon's bead sat quiet at the center of the table as the last signatures went down, his projection still hovering above it, watching the room settle.
"So," he said, to no one in particular. "How am I going to put my signature?"
'Not now you idiot.' Jenna pressed the bead and ended his projection before he could say anything else.
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PS
I'm gonna be AWOL for a bit, Mid Years are here and your boy needs to lock in.
See you in two weeks.
CycoPass out.😎😎😎😎😎😎