The council meeting ended, but a buzz of stunned energy remained in the great hall. The members filed out, each lost in their own thoughts, their minds struggling to process the sheer audacity of their new Baron.
Gideon remained behind, fussing over the lone gold coin Kaelen had left with Borin as if it were a fragile egg.
Kaelen ignored him, his mind already moving to the next phase: execution.
Elspeth, the village elder, was the first to act. She waited for him by the castle gates the next morning, her expression as stern and unyielding as the land itself.
"My Lord," she began, not with a bow, but with the directness of a woman who had no time for pleasantries. "You want a field for your... turnip experiment. I will not risk the village's farmland. Not yet."
"A reasonable position," Kaelen conceded.
"But there is land you may have," she continued. She led him away from the village, down a path that petered out into wilderness. She stopped at the edge of a wide, barren stretch of earth that sat between the woods and the main road.
The ground was pale, hard-packed, and littered with stones. Nothing grew there but stubborn weeds and patches of grey, brittle moss.
"Here," Elspeth said, gesturing with a sweep of her arm. "The elders call it the 'Graveyard of Ambition.' No one has farmed this land in living memory. The soil is like stone. If you can make something grow here, the village will see it. They will know your methods have merit."
It was a test. A clear and clever challenge.
Kaelen walked out onto the field, kicking at the hard dirt. It was worse than he'd expected. The soil quality was abysmal. But that only made the potential for success more dramatic.
"Perfect," he declared, a genuine spark of enthusiasm in his eyes. "A blank slate. A clean case study with no contaminating variables." He turned to her, a confident grin on his face. "I'll take it. Have a dozen of your best workers meet me here at midday. We'll begin breaking ground."
She stared at him, taken aback by his unbridled confidence. With a slow, disbelieving shake of her head, she left to gather the volunteers.
✧✧✧
Meanwhile, Kaelen's next stop was the forge.
The air was thick with smoke and the rhythmic clang of a hammer on metal. Borin was at his anvil, already at work. The gold coin Kaelen had given him was placed carefully on a high shelf, gleaming in the firelight like a holy icon.
"Borin," Kaelen said, walking into the heat.
"My Lord," the blacksmith grunted, not stopping his work. "I've sent my apprentice to the next town. He's to buy up every piece of scrap iron he can find."
"Good. But it won't be enough," Kaelen stated.
The hammering stopped. Borin turned, wiping sweat from his brow. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, according to Gideon's ledgers, the scrap merchants won't have enough to build all ten plows. We might get enough for two, maybe three. After that, the project stalls. We have a resource deficit."
The blacksmith's brief moment of hope soured. "Then what was the point of the gold? We're still cursed to fail."
"We are not cursed," Kaelen said firmly. "We are just facing a logistical problem. Every problem has a solution." He leaned against a workbench, his eyes scanning the forge. "This barony has existed for hundreds of years. There has to be a local source of iron. An old mine, perhaps? A forgotten deposit?"
Borin snorted, picking up his hammer again. "If there was a mountain of iron nearby, my Lord, don't you think we'd know about it? This land has nothing but rocks and rain."
Kaelen's gaze sharpened. The problem was not just a lack of resources, but a lack of knowledge.
A learned helplessness had set in over generations. They had stopped looking for solutions because they believed none existed.
"Then we'll have to find it," Kaelen said, his voice quiet but intense. "Spread the word in the village. I'll pay in silver for any old stories, any legends, any forgotten maps that speak of strange places in this barony. A mountain that bleeds red. A cave where the rocks are heavy as lead. A swamp where the water is the color of rust. Anything."
Borin paused, his hammer held in mid-air. He looked at Kaelen, at the fierce, analytical intelligence in his eyes. The Baron wasn't just giving orders; he was trying to solve the puzzle. It was a strange way for a lord to act.
"I'll ask around," the blacksmith finally rumbled, turning back to his anvil. "But don't get your hopes up."
Kaelen left the forge, his mind already processing. The farming had begun. The search for iron was underway. Now for the third, and perhaps most undignified, part of his plan.
He walked toward the castle's training yard, where he knew Seraphina would be drilling her handful of guards. He had given her the most absurd task of all. He needed to see if she had accepted her new role as the barony's first Sanitation Marshal, or if she was planning a quiet, dignified mutiny.
The fate of his fertilizer, and a significant part of his survival plan, rested on her reluctant shoulders.