Knife-in-the-Butt liked war, but he despised wars fought solely for money and desire.
The noisy tavern, the mountains of coins, the faces flushed with greed-all of it filled him with a deep weariness and alienation.
Revenge was noble, a flame that united people.
Plunder was not. It was merely a mire of desire that dragged people into endless, ugly conflict.
So, after settling his share, Little Knife left the tavern without hesitation. Turning his back on the light that symbolized success and wealth, he walked into the darkness of Omdur Harbor's night without a trace of regret.
The cool night breeze, carrying the briny scent of the sea, brushed his face. It swept away the last lingering heat and stale air from the tavern, leaving him refreshed.
"All right, time to head back to Ankandela."
The Revenge Fleet was being rebuilt once again, but this time, it had little to do with Knife-in-the-Butt.
Chris was conducting an inspection in Treasure Island City, unleashing a swift and precisely targeted auditing storm on the local bureaucracy in the name of the King of Bagnia.
Yet just as the eye of a storm was its calmest point, Chris himself, at the center of this auditing storm, seemed remarkably composed-even rather bored.
The reason was simple. His daily civil service examinations and persistent efforts to build a modern bureaucracy were finally beginning to bear fruit.
Chris no longer needed to handle everything personally as he had in the early days, nor did he have to rely on an iron fist and intuition to distinguish the loyal from the treacherous and weed out corrupt officials.
A finely tuned machine comprising the Tax Bureau, the Inquisition, and the Department of Justice had begun operating efficiently. They meshed like gears, checking and balancing one another, translating