"However, the Tower’s tithe to me does not count. That was already bargained for and accepted.” I’d been about to ask, so I shrugged and moved on.
“So, for each worshipper I bring you, you will grant me a Mark of Favor and their mana donations count towards my total, right?” I said, quickly tallying figures in my head.
“No, every two worshippers, Jax. Good try, but I’ve had millennia to play these games; do you really want to play with me?”
“Ah, no. Now that you mention it, I really don’t… okay, every two will grant me a Mark. Done deal. Lastly, I’m going to start looking for a healer to help with my problem and with generally keeping things together; any ideas?”
“The person you need isn’t amongst your people. I took the time to examine them since we last spoke. You could force a healer, give someone the memories and Spellbooks, but they’d be average at best. You need to grow your population, that’s all I can tell you. Now… I have things to do, but don’t forget to spread the word about me!”
I felt the sense of her presence disappear, and I sat back in my chair to think. Lifting one boot, then the other, I rested them on the table, crossing my ankles and relaxing, my mind awhirl with the possibilities.
I could maybe get access to a star of the Constellation in a couple of days if I asked my people to do it anyway. Even if only half were willing, I still had, what, forty people at present? There were the nineteen from the Warship, then there were… I thought for a minute, and an old quest notification popped up:
Completed:
Congratulations, you have made progress on your Quest: A place to lay your head.
Wisps sworn fealty: 3/3
Locations cleared and secured: 5/5
SporeMother killed: 1/1
Guardians: 11/10
Servitors: 27/10
Reward: The Great Tower is yours to command. Surrounding area will become aware of your rightful ownership. Access to supplies and facilities. 450,000 Exp.
I grinned and took the Servitor golem from that total, giving me twenty-six, then I took the three dead from the list, taking me down to eight guardians.
I had a total of fifty-three people sworn to me. I hadn’t realized I had so many living in the Tower, and I still had another twenty or more that were locked up. If half the people sworn to me would worship Jenae and donate their mana to her each day just once, say, fifty mana per person—couldn’t expect people to drain themselves and get a headache every day, after all—uh…
It took a minute, but I eventually worked out that half of fifty-three was twenty-six. That’d be thirteen Marks of Favor and thirteen hundred mana… Crap. That was access to the Starscape in just under eight days for the first star. Once that was unlocked, I could start to earn benefits from it. Double crap…
Math was never my strong point, and I also knew that I’d refused to let the kids swear fealty, so they weren’t counted yet. It just felt wrong to force them into that when they really didn’t have a choice.
There were five ‘kids’ out of the original slave group, and four that we’d freed from the Warship, so nine in total. I had no idea what to do with them; hell, I barely had a plan for the adults!
I knew that they were basically safe in the Tower from attack, as Seneschal was watching over things, but still, the damn place was crumbling. They could fall down a hole or something, and it would all be my fault, I just knew it.
I got up and headed back up the Tower. Ideally, I’d have everyone and everything centralized on the bottom floors, so we weren’t constantly climbing, but it just wasn’t safe. I’d have to just get my head around the damn climb for now.
It took about half an hour to get to the twenty-sixth floor, and as I approached it, I could hear a lot of noises filtering down to the stairs below: shouts, laughter, clattering and banging, and a final crash of falling stone, followed by a cheer that stopped my sudden panic over a collapse just as it began.
I set off jogging the last bit, anyway, coming out onto the floor to find it abuzz with people. Almost the entire contingent of the Tower was there; Barrett stood off to the right, directing his ‘security’ force and the wanna-be hunters.
He had them picking up rock and debris, running to the edge of the balcony, and chucking them as far out as they could, dropping to do five pushups, then running back inside. I caught his eye and he grinned, jogging over to meet me.
“What do you think? I took what you said about your own training, and thought, ‘why not make them useful at the same time?’” I nodded to him, thinking back to the interval training I’d endured, and as much as I’d damn well hated it, it was bloody effective.
“How are they coming along? Do you need anything?” I asked him, and he shook his head.
“For now, it’s best they have the bare minimum. I have armor we can mostly fix up from the ship and yesterday’s fight, and a load of melee weapons. We’ll need some bows for the hunters; we’ve only got four, and a couple dozen arrows, but no sense wasting them yet.”
“Best to teach them to work together first,” I agreed, nodding, “I don’t know if you’ve seen Oracle yet, but…”
“You’ve got some batshit crazy plan?” Barrett asked, chuckling. “I saw her come up a few minutes before you. She had a quick word with Oren, and he went stomping off swearing. Looks like it’s gonna be bad.”
“You could say that,” I said, drawing him off to the side. “Look, it’s a bit of a mad plan, maybe, but it gives us what we need—time—and it’ll hurt Barabarattas.”
“Plus, we might be able to get some of the
