Chapter 323: Ministry of Public Security
The town had grown too large for improvisation.
Twenty thousand people now: old residents, Longsong immigrants, refugees from the Eastern Region, and more arriving as Barov’s recruiting parties worked through the northern and southern reaches of the kingdom. Each group came with its own customs, its own calculus of what was owed and what was dangerous, its own threshold for when silence stopped being safer than speech. The collision at the East-West junction had been minor. The collisions that came next would be more numerous, and some of them would be worse.
Roland sat with the blueprint of a security system laid out in his head, checking the proportions.
He would keep legislative and judicial authority himself—write the laws, interpret them, hear the cases that mattered. That was not modesty about delegation; it was an accurate assessment of where the power needed to be anchored, at least until the territory’s institutions had enough substance to stand without him. The public security office would enforce the laws and handle civil disputes. The Security Bureau would keep the public security office honest, and use security personnel for anti-corruption investigations when necessary—two systems holding each other’s edges in place.
The model was clean. Simple enough to run without bureaucratic mass. Complex enough to adapt as the territory grew.
He would pilot it in Border Town. By the time he was ready to declare the city next year, he would have the data to scale it to the full Western Territory. Autonomous lordships that wanted the protection of his laws would hand over their power of self-governance. That was the price. He would remain above the system—he was not naive enough to pretend otherwise—but below him the law would be the same for everyone, uniformly interpreted and uniformly enforced. Not equality before the law. Something more modest and more achievable: a rule that did not change shape based on who was asking.
As for who would run the new public security office—he’d known the answer before he’d finished framing the question. Carter Lannis: a man with a soldier’s instinct for structure and enough of his own sense of justice to enforce the law rather than merely obey it. Not a pedant. Not a schemer. Exactly what the position required.
Vader made it back to the shelter in time to watch old man Kukasim’s face go through several stages.
“You—” Kukasim started.
“Tolerable,” Vader said, before the question could fully form. “Ten lashes.”
“Let me see.”
“Inside.”
The cave dwelling was narrow and warm—warmer than it had any right to be, given what it was made of. The earthen walls held heat with a stubbornness that the wooden shacks he’d sheltered in before could never match. He lay face-down on the kang while Kukasim peeled his shirt away and made the sound Vader had expected.
“The whole back is—”
“Dried blood. The bleeding stopped during the punishment.” He spoke in sections, pausing between phrases the way the body imposed pauses. “The knight who administered it said to leave the wounds open. Two, three days.”
“Three days without treatment, you’ll have a fever and a back the size of a—”
“He also applied something afterward.” A pause. “Water. But not salt. No burning.”
Kukasim fell quiet. Vader could feel the old man turning this over.
“He said it kills the things that cause infection,” Vader said. “Microorganisms, I think he called them.”
“What are—”
“I don’t know. Probably witch-related.” He shifted slightly on the kang and felt the cool tightness along the ridges of the wounds. Healing, or starting to. “He said to keep them dry and leave them alone.”
Kukasim sat heavily on the bench beside the kang. After a long time he said: “You didn’t need to do what you did. If Harvie had only been talking—saying things—you could have endured it.”
“We couldn’t,” Vader said. “He’d been taking money for days. Words might have been endurable. The pattern wouldn’t stop on its own.”
“He might have been acting on His Highness’s orders.”
“No.” Vader had thought through this carefully, at the time and in the hour since. “If His Highness wanted to reduce costs, he’d have cut meals, not added a charge—the deception would be too easy to expose. And the people here, the locals, the serfs—I asked about him before I planned anything. They all say the same thing. He doesn’t take from people. He gives.” A slight pause. “Also, he walks the western wall at the same hour every day. I knew he’d come.”
Kukasim looked at him.
“I picked the moment,” Vader said. “It wasn’t a brawl. It was a report.”
“And if he’d ruled against you?”
“Then I would have been wrong about him, and ten lashes would have been the price of learning it.” He didn’t say this the way a man says something brave; he said it the way a man says something he’d already accepted. “But he didn’t.”
What had surprised him was not the ruling itself but its texture. He’d worked a decade in Valencia’s patrol system—knew exactly how lords handled cases where their own officers were the problem. Most of them found a way to conclude the officer had been provoked. A few punished both sides symbolically and moved on. Roland had punished both sides, meaningfully, and ordered the money returned, and announced it publicly. That last part—announcing it—was not the action of a man protecting his reputation. It was the action of a man building a standard.
For a lord to care more about the structure than about how it made him look—that was not something Vader had previous data on.
Kukasim said: “What will you do now?”
“Rest two days.” He closed his eyes. “Then go back to carrying supplies for the soldiers with the strange weapons.”
“You could be in the inner city. You qualified.”
“You can’t.” Vader did not elaborate. The old man knew the full shape of the reason. He’d been in a prison cell in Valencia when the pirates came through—a scapegoat for people he’d never met, abandoned by everyone who should have vouched for him—and he’d covered a patrol officer with a stinking mattress and saved the man’s life without knowing why, maybe without deciding to. That wasn’t the kind of act you walked away from without carrying it.
“I’m not going anywhere without you, Kukasim. Stop asking.”
The old man was quiet. Outside, snow fell steadily against the earthen roof with a sound like distant applause.
Two days later, word came down from the inner city.
His Highness was recruiting for the new public security positions.
Vader lay on the kang and stared at the ceiling and thought about that for a while.
Chapter 323 Ministry of Public Security
Roland already had a rough plan of the future public security system for his territory.
At present, the town had a population of about twenty thousand. Besides the local indigenous people, there were also people who had immigrated from Longsong Stronghold as well as the refugees who have escaped from the Eastern Region. By the time the messengers sent by Barov came back, they might already have brought people from the Northern or Southern Region of the kingdom and as a result would further complicate the cultures that the population consists of. With all the different morals, conflicts like what had happened today would only become more and more common.
He would therefore need to establish a public security system to separate the First Army’s task of patrolling from internal and external violence. He had already thought of this issue before but had not thought of anything definite because of how few staff he had. However, now that he had the First Army to fight against the demonic beasts and the population was growing very rapidly, the time to implement his plan had come.
By formulating and interpreting the laws himself and holding trials of major crimes, he would be the first and also the final instance; the public security would capture criminals according to the law while also settling civil disputes. The Security Bureau would be responsible for maintaining the purity of the system and to effectively prevent the corruption of the systems, they would also use public security personnel to carry out the corruption cleaning operations and in that way save on human resources. This was the outline for Roland’s security system.
The ideal situation would be if he could first try to run the security system in Border Town, and by the time he had established Border Town as a city next year he would expand the system to the whole of the Western Territory.
By then, no matter if it was an autonomous Lord’s territory or not, they would all have to implement the same set of laws and accept the rule of a unified department. Only he alone would be able to stand above the law.
As the mightiest noble of the Western Territory, Roland knew that it was unrealistic to say that everyone was equal before the law, nor could he abolish the aristocracy. But at least he could make sure that the traditional system of feudal fiefdom does not exist within his city anymore. If they wanted to get the protection of the Western Territory, they would have to hand over their power of self-governance.
As for the head of the Ministry of Public Security, Roland already had the right person in mind for that.
Someone filled with a strong sense of justice while also not being pedantic, Carter Lannis would be a fitting choice.
When Vader stumbled back to his temporary residence, old man Kukasim came out to welcome him.
“You… never mind.”
“It’s tolerable,” Vader grumbled, “His Highness only sentenced me with a punishment of ten whips.”
“Let me take a look,” Kukasim eagerly stepped forward.
“Go back to the house,” Vader said as he walked into the house where the warmth inside immediately dispelled the chill within his body. As the door closed, it appeared as if the inside and outside were two completely different worlds. Compared to the wooden sheds from before which would let through wind and rain, this somewhat low and narrow mud house gave people a sense of comfort.
That’s right, the locals seem to call this house ‘cave dwelling’.
The old man let him lie on the kang, and when he tore off the clothes at Vander’s back he couldn’t help but suck in a mouth of cold air.
“Your back is covered with blood, I’ll go get some ash to cover it.”
“Wait, there is no need. It’s only dried blood left from from after the torture, the blood has already stopped flowing long ago.” He had to repeatedly pause as he spoke, “Sir Knight has said that it would be best to keep it open like this and to wait for two or three days by which time the wound will have already healed.”
“Two or three days?” Kukasim shook his head in fear, “No, son, by then you may have already fallen into a high fever and your back will swell up into a ball. Even if you might have a strong body, you will still need at least a week to recover. You of all people should be aware of what happens when a disease flares up.”
“You may not believe it,” he licked his dried lips. “But I don’t feel much pain from the wounds on my back. On the contrary, I feel a cool and itchy feeling, which is a sign that its healing. After they finished the whipping they splashed a bucket of water on my back… “
“Saltwater?” The old man frowned.
“At the beginning, I had the same thought, but the scorch I expected did not come,” Vader laughed twice, “The Knight executing the penalty said that this can eliminate all disease-causing microorganism. If I want to let my wounds heal quickly, I shouldn’t do anything superfluous with it, and allow it to dry.”
“What are those disease causing micro… organism?”
“Microorganism,” he curled his lips, “Who knows what they are, most probably something related to those witches.”
The old man lowered his head, then after a long time he opened his mouth again: “You shouldn’t have stepped forward because of me, if it is only words it’s still bearable… “
“If we were to keep on enduring it, we would have to suffer under an even more severe treatment. I know that kind of person, they have the morality and appearance similar to many of the nobles living in King’s City,” Vader spat. “I’ve heard that in this area the snow will last for several months, but the money we have won’t last until then.” He paused, “and… I also deliberately picked that time to hit him.”
“Caused, deliberately?” Kukasim asked disbelievingly.
“Yes. After all, the Prince will always appear on the west side of the city wall at this time of the day. Since he had promised to give us free food, he must hate this kind of behavior which is damaging his reputation. Thus, this was also the most effective way. If we had merely caused a simple fight, it wouldn’t be certain that it would ever reach His Highness’ ear. After all, Kohya Harvie might have received instructions from others. So if any of the City Hall officers wanted to suppress news about this, it would become meaningless regardless of what we said.”
“But he could also have been instructed by His Highness…”
“The possibility that this was the case was very low. If His Royal Highness wanted to save his money, then the three meals he promised would be reduced to two meals. Furthermore, I have inquired about him in advance and no matter whether it is the local residents or those serfs, all of them praise His Highness’ kindness and wisdom.” Vader said, smiling proudly. “You see, I wasn’t gambling or anything like that, right?”
“Originally… so that’s how it is,” the old man sighed in relief, “It seems you really have considered everything already.”
But there was also a part I hadn’t guessed, Vader thought, that was the penalty.
Working for ten years as a patrol officer in Valencia, he had a profound understanding of the ugliness hidden beneath the city’s glamorous appearance. There were more than a dozen of nobles who have used their power to blackmail, even among the ranks of the patrols. Therefore, there wasn’t much need for him to want to punish these nobles.
His Royal Highness’s reaction had been basically the same as what he had expected, it was only that the amount of punishment was beyond his expectation.
In this kind of circumstances, the Lords who mind their reputation would have ruled the suppressor as the innocent party, but he instead had punished everyone. It seemed that His Highness cared more about the system than of his reputation.
For a Lord, accustomed to doing as he pleased to care so much for his subjects, this was something that was rarely seen.
“What are you going to do next?” The old man asked after a moment of silence.
“Just like Sir Knight had said, rest for two days, then continue as before, and help those guys carrying those strange weapons by delivering groceries.”
“You could have lived a decent life together with the craftsmen in the inner city.”
“But it would be impossible for you to get in, Kukasim. So, stop talking about this,” Vader said, shaking his head. “I refuse to leave you behind.”
This old man was neither his family nor his elder. Half a year ago, the other had still been a prisoner kept in prison. Everyone knew that the old man had been pushed forward by the black street rats to act as a scapegoat, but this matter appeared too often that the patrol had become too lazy to take notice of it anymore. Later, when a group of pirates looted Valencia, Vader had believed that he would die within the turmoil, but in that critical juncture, the old man hidden within the prison had covered him with his stinking bed sheets which in the end allowed him to luckily escape.
Vader did not expect that he would be saved by one of those prisoners he was normally so unwilling to look at. But at that moment he had finally come to understand that there was essential no difference between how they acted and the disgusting nobility.
The other two people in the room were both aware of Kukasim’s identity, but since he was looking after him they didn’t dare to touch him. However, in case he left, they would certainly try and make trouble for the old man.
“Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” Vader patted his counterpart’s shoulders.
Two days later, he heard the news from the inner city that His Highness was recruiting for the positions in public security.