Gordon had slept like a log all night. His stomach was empty, and he needed a breakfast that could wake his soul.
The things along the Blackwater River were grayish white, wet, and occasionally bit people. The things on the dining table were golden, hot, and existed only to be bitten. That made quite a difference.
Soon after he sat down, lovely preserves, hot chocolate, and roast fowl appeared before him. In the sunlight, even the butter looked like a melting gold bar.
Then a servant brought over an enormous pie, its crust baked a deep gold, with curling layers of decorative edging.
Gordon looked up in delight. The instant his eyes focused on it, his vision swam, and information appeared word by word.
[Stargazy Pie. Dead fish heads pierce the crust, gazing at the heavens, their despair and agony frozen into the pastry. You wonder whether this is a dish or an occult sacrificial ritual...]
Gordon silently looked away from the fish heads and picked up his teacup. At least the teacup would not stare at him.
"This tea certainly tastes like tea." Gordon handed it to Vera, sentencing it to her stomach without parole.
"The finest Darjeeling." Charlotte sat diagonally opposite him, having changed into a pale gold morning dress and restyled her hair. She radiated youth and refinement.
Gordon gave a slight nod. He had actually detected only two things: it was hot, and it was expensive.
Gray was also at the table.
His fees were steep. He had already collected twenty gold pounds from the count without doing a thing, and they were nonrefundable. Now he was helping the count clear out some breakfast supplies, as an extension of his professional dedication.
Of course, he knew he was not the star of the breakfast table.
Vera took the fish-head pie Gordon would not touch and inhaled it.
"..." Count Montfort's hand stopped halfway through cutting his bacon.
He had seen court banquets, naval officers competing to see who could drink the most, and sailors stuffing live octopuses into their mouths to show off their courage. But this Essence Hunter named Vera was on another... level entirely.
No wonder His Majesty wanted to restrict the movements of Essence Hunters. If she visited a colony whose food supply depended on the weather's charity, she could eat the entire island into a famine.
Gray watched Vera for a while, then finally voiced the question on everyone's mind.
"Miss Cateret, I sincerely hope you only killed those Deepclaw Demons yesterday, rather than also... eating them," he said.
Everyone pricked up their ears. They all cared deeply about the answer.
"I generally only eat things that have lost both their human form and their humanity." Vera looked up amid her frantic eating.
"You should know that sounds nowhere near as reassuring as you think." Gray sighed deeply.
While no one was watching, Charlotte quietly nudged the jam jar toward Gordon. Her movement was so natural that the raspberry jam seemed to have simply lost its way and wandered over to his hand.
"You look wonderfully rested." Charlotte smiled at Gordon.
"Of course I am." Gordon spread jam on his bread. "I feel as though there's nothing left in the world to worry about."
The count noticed Charlotte was smiling much more than usual today. Previously, she had either said nothing or complained-about her boring school, her dull professors, and classmates who did nothing but curry favor, like pigeons waiting for breadcrumbs.
Now it seemed there was something at school she cared about. And her smile was genuine, an expression even the count himself had forgotten how to make.
"I spent all of yesterday in meetings," Count Montfort said slowly, wiping his mouth. "The Treasury Department, the River Authority, the Sanitation Committee, and the Harbor Office argued for ages. But we finally have a budget proposal for cleaning up the Blackwater River."
Cleaning up the Blackwater River.
Something stirred in Gordon's heart.
Those words were far more invigorating than black tea.
The Blackwater River was the filthy plate sitting on Lundenim's table that nobody wanted to clear away. No matter how many proposals there were, they always ran into the same great obstacle: who would pay?
"How much is the budget?"
"His Majesty the Emperor lost patience and authorized one million gold pounds. He didn't say how the money should be spent, only that he wanted results," the count said.
A million gold pounds.
Charlotte had already begun imagining an island, a castle overlooking a blue sea, and servants bringing her iced grape juice.
Gray imagined throwing money around at Source Substance auctions, crossing the threshold to become a fourth-tier hunter, and watching his enemies flee Lundenim overnight as the world opened its roads to him.
But a fried steak dinner and an envelope kept circling through Gordon's mind.
The million gold pounds certainly would not belong to him. But as such a vast sum passed through the Logris Empire's bureaucracy, it would surely change many people's fortunes and create plenty of overnight millionaires.
Only Vera remained oblivious at the table.
"What I mean is, how many sausages would that be?" she asked.
"If you insist on measuring it that way, a hundred million." Gordon sighed.
"This big?" Vera held up her index finger.
"This big." Gordon pointed at his arm.
"Count me in. Where do we start? The Blackwater River is my mortal enemy now," Vera said.
Gordon gave it a quick thought. The Blackwater River had everything in it: Aberrants, industrial pollution, cultists, fishmongers...
"There is no 'where do we start,'" the count said with a cold laugh. "The Blackwater River runs through all of Lundenim. Everyone says they only throw away a little, every workshop says it hardly discharges anything, and every ship claims its hold is clean. What grounds would we have for cleaning it up? Environmental protection?"
Charlotte gently stroked the handle of her cup with her fingertips. She knew this was no ordinary assignment.
The Blackwater River was now a stinking waterway that bred Aberrants. No one wanted to give it a second glance.
"But there's no 'finish it completely,' either," Gordon said.
Every pair of eyes around the table turned toward him.
"What I mean is, nobody can clean up the Blackwater River completely, and nobody needs to. We only need to show the emperor progress at each stage. Less pollution, Aberrant corpses lined up in rows, hospital beds no longer overflowing, smoother shipping, prettier scenery, being able to stand by the river for ten minutes without vomiting... Whoever can produce a before-and-after report can earn His Majesty's praise."
The count silently committed those words to memory.
Gordon continued, "Better still, choose a particular stretch of river as a showcase. When foreign envoys visit, or during the world exposition, have journalists report on how clean and peaceful it is... As for dealing with the other stretches, that gives us precisely the reason we need to apply for the next round of funding."
Inwardly, the count nodded in satisfaction.
Yes. That was exactly the right approach.
Rather than treating a difficult problem as a difficult problem, focus only on what His Majesty the Emperor would see and what the press would report. Now that was someone who knew how to think.
But the count could not praise him.
Absolutely not!
The moment he said it aloud, Charlotte's eyes would light up. She would start arranging the wedding seating plan in her head, and Count Montfort would be shoved into the role of the father who "reluctantly agreed but was deeply moved."
No!
"Perhaps. Perhaps," Count Montfort said. "That is one possible approach."
"Where will this million gold pounds come from?" Charlotte asked shrewdly.
"You'll see it in the price of bread," Count Montfort said.
"That doesn't matter. This is all still far too dangerous." Gray shook his head vigorously. "The Blackwater River doesn't just have Deepclaw Demons. There are Dragon Lizard Demons, Poison Eel Demons, Giant Claw Demons, Sea Dragon Demons at the estuary, and the monster [Thessus], which only appears during torrential rain. You have no idea... If you really want to clean up the Blackwater River, you'll need an expert to hold the line."
Gordon took a sip of tea. Gray was right.
What he had felt last night was too dangerous.
He had stood on the bank, watching his judgments become reality, watching monsters turn into money.
It was captivating. And terrifying.
When someone kept succeeding, it was easy to forget they could still die. And if something went wrong, the newspaper would merely gain one very short article: "University student falls into river while drunk; body still missing." If the journalist dug deep enough, they might add, "Possibly due to excessive student-loan pressure."
After breakfast, the sound of servants clearing plates rang out in the distance.
The count asked Gordon to stay behind.
"My first class is about to start," Gordon said. "Hopefully, this time I can..."
"I want to know the truth," Count Montfort said.
Gordon nodded. Sometimes he could be vague; sometimes he had to lay his cards on the table.
"As I said before, targeted luring. Only this time, my experimental material was the Silverfish Casket's [precipitate]. This casket must be closely connected to the fate of the entire Blackwater River... and to the task of cleaning it up. And it's sitting in your collection room," Gordon explained calmly.
"Precipitate." The count seized on the word, which clearly made him uncomfortable.
An aristocrat's collectibles could have a patina, a history, or mysterious origins, but preferably no precipitate. Much like his mistress, they absolutely should not have any "seepage" unless he personally had a hand in it.
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