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The tension in Baron Hanrahan’s Great Hall was so thick and oppressive that the people seated at the lower tables barely dared to make noise as they ate their meals.

Some of them were business owners, important people by local standards, while others held positions of status among the servants in Ian Hanrahan’s household.

But when Guild Master Isabell responded to the portly baron’s mocking comments with biting retorts of her own, everyone in the hall who wasn’t sitting at the High Table ducked their heads low and did their best to stifle any untoward laughter that threatened to spill past their lips.

Wealthy they might be, or important to the functioning of the baron’s estate, but no one at the lower tables thought themselves powerful enough to speak as candidly as this visiting engineer had!

"Since you want to hear my impressions, then let me make several things clear to you," Isabell began as she gestured for one of the servants to refill her wine goblet.

"I’ll drink whatever his lordship is drinking," she said when she saw the servant reaching for a pitcher of watered-down wine. "Perhaps the women of the frontier have weak constitutions with no stomach for alcohol, but I haven’t drunk watered wine since I was a girl half of Lady Jocelynn’s age. "

"Are women in Blackwell County truly so bold?

" Baron Hanrahan said with a snort. "Women of the frontier know to defend their virtue from the excesses of strong drink," he said as he glowered at the arrogant engineer.

"Or perhaps women where you come from have looser morals and looser legs that can accommodate strong drink. "

"Watch your words, my Lord Baron," Owain said, clutching the hilt of the knife in his hand and pointing sharply at the fat oaf who had just insulted his Jocelynn along with Isabell. "Unless you think that your words are appropriate for Lady Jocelynn?"

"What? No!" the baron stammered, sweat breaking out on his brow.

"I would never include your lady wife or your sister-in-law in such a statement. The virtue of the Blackwell sisters is so well known that it’s spoken of in the highest of places," he said, quickly blotting the sweat from his brow as he looked to other guests at the table for support.

"If this is how you treat your women, it’s no wonder your town is shabby with its infrastructure in shambles," Isabell said, pointing at her goblet and giving the servant a stern look until the man changed out the watered wine for something more suitable. "Tiernan, I’m not going to be able to enjoy my meal if I have to give a lecture on their foundations. Could you explain to them what would happen if you tried to exploit the wealth of Airgead Mountain with the Town of Hanrahan in the shape that it’s in? "

"Try the turkey," Master Tiernan said, using exquisite table manners that seemed at odds with his powerful frame and calloused hands as he set down his utensils and gently blotted away the gravy that clung to the corners of his lips. "It’s under spiced, but this far from a port, you can’t expect them to have much from across the sea. Still, it’s tender and it was prepared with considerably better care than the roads of this town," he said with a despairing shake of his shaved head.

Inwardly, the powerful Master of the Iron Mongers’ Guild was already to flip over the heavy oak table and storm out of the baron’s great hall for the way the haughty lord was treating Isabell.

Clearly, the man had some kind of ax to grind with the woman who led the coalition of guild masters negotiating with Owan and his father, Bors, to fund the upcoming war against the demons, but he had no idea what had happened to draw the fat baron’s ire.

He and Isabell had only just arrived in Hanrahan Barony, and this was their first time meeting Baron Ian Hanrahan and his son Bastian.

It should have been a pleasant meeting or at least a neutral one, but instead it felt like they had sat across the dinner table from their most bitter rivals.

But, since the other party clearly had no intention of respecting the Guild Masters, Tiernan had no intention of holding back in his words as he described the problems he saw.

"I don’t know how the demon tribe who lived here before chose to live their lives," Tiernan started. "But it’s clear that they situated their settlement atop the hill instead of down in the valley. The old road built by demons is a thousand times better than the ones you’ve built since coming here, but it doesn’t actually connect directly to the fortified town here.

So, anything that needs to be shipped by the good road you inherited from the demons needs to first suffer for the nightmares you call roads in this town. "

"Roads are simple things to repair," Bastian said from beside his father.

"Once we claim victory over the demons of Airgead Mountain, a single summer of men laying stones and filling potholes will have them in fine shape to transport the wealth of the mountain to Lothian City or wherever it can fetch the best price. "

"Ha," Tiernan snorted, shaking his head at the young lord’s ignorance. "Fool. The wealth of Airgead Mountain is trapped in stone. It weighs tons and even if we smelt it on the mountain’s slopes, we’ll still have ton after ton of iron, copper, gold, and precious stones to ship to places where the raw materials will be refined into useful things to trade.

Put that many tons of material in wagons and cart it over a shoddy, quickly-patched road and watch your repairs crumble away in a single season. "

"But isn’t this why we’ve invited you and your fellow masters to settle out here in the first place?

" Owain offered helpfully as his hand caressed Jocelynn’s soft thigh under the table.

Just as his beautiful darling had suggested, these masters were proud, arrogant, and could easily be led by the nose when their professional reputations were placed on the line.

All he had to do was give them a little push. ..

"Baron Hanrahan’s men might only be able to handle the basics of smelting and refining on Airgead Mountain," Owain added. "But with a Master Iron Monger here, and with your fellow masters to turn that raw iron into weapons and armor of high-quality steel, the Hanrahan Barony won’t need to transport bulk materials. Instead, they’ll ship the finest of finished goods across the frontier. "

"Why bother," Isabell said in between bites of the succulent turkey. Tiernan was right that it was under-spiced, but as long as she slathered enough of the rich gravy on it, it was actually fairly enjoyable. "This is a town that’s not worth fixing," she said, shaking her head.

"It would almost be better to tear down everything except the walls and the fortress and start over.

Then you could lay in proper drains to handle the sewage in the streets, rebuild homes atop solid foundations and purge the town of molding thatch that all but begs for sickness and death each rainy season," she said, rattling off a list of problems that were immediately apparent to someone who had traveled as much of the world as she had.

"But you have too many people who have made their lives here to do such a heartless thing," the steel-haired engineer said, with a heavy sigh, as though she were a physician telling the family of a patient that they couldn’t be saved.

"So all you can do is pour everything you have into fixing the problems for the next ten to twenty years," Isabell said flatly.

"By the time young Bastian here is ready to pass on the Barony to his heir, it might actually be something to have some pride in.

.. but before that, the only thing that gives the Town of Hanrahan any value is the position of the land it sits on. "