PREVIOUSLY.
[Edmund let out a sigh, feeling a weight he hadn't even known he was carrying vanish from his shoulders. The Suaza were shouldering a monumental share of the responsibility for keeping the expedition alive, sharing the heavy burden of leadership.
Edmund glanced at Fuhupqua, who had already turned back to instruct an English foreman on how to place the iron rods. The nobleman smiled to himself, pulling the collar of his coat tight against the gusting wind.
Massachusetts, he murmured, feeling a warmth and a sense of accomplishment as he watched the settlement grow.]
3 weeks later.March 17, 1496 (Year 14 of the SuaChie Calendar, First Month).
Massachusetts Town (Boston, Massachusetts), North Quyca.
Weeks after the first foundations of the port had been sunk into the frigid coast, the settlement was no longer a mere camp; it had laid claim to the title of a town.
The soundscape of Massachusetts Town was a ceaseless symphony of saws, hammers, and shouts exchanged in English and Suaza.
As he walked through the newly traced arteries of the settlement, Lord Edmund Howard could not help but feel a profound reverence for Fuhupqua's mind. The scholar had not merely clustered cabins together; he had sculpted the future.
The streets were unusually wide, designed to prevent the overcrowding and pestilence that suffocated London. Flanking the main thoroughfares, workers had dug deep, stone-lined trenches—an impeccable drainage system that, according to Fuhupqua, would soon house subterranean waterworks.
There were vast empty quadrants, tracts of dark, damp earth reserved exclusively for plazas and green spaces. Yet, upon this grid of mathematical efficiency, the English had raised their own soul: sturdy half-timbered houses with gabled roofs, carved oak beams, and facades that looked as if they had been plucked from any prosperous late-fifteenth-century European merchant village.
It was a strange yet harmonious marriage between Suaza urban planning and English aesthetics. Save for one colossal exception.
Edmund halted his steps in the central square. There, breaking away from all the right angles and raw timber of the rest of the town, rose the future Suaza embassy. It was a declaration of power molded in liquid stone and metal.
Following the ancestral architectural customs of the Muisca culture, the building had a circular floor plan, crowned by what would soon be an imposing conical roof. But any resemblance to the ancient thatch and wattle-and-daub malocas from before the era of Chuta ended there.
The embassy was built with the impenetrable gray cement of the kingdom, reinforced by thick, ribbed iron rods and treated wooden beams.
In a town that smelled of fresh resin and newly felled pine, that round monolith stood out with an aura of overwhelming permanence; it did not look newly built, but rather as if it had sprouted from the bedrock itself.
Edmund crossed his arms, marveling anew as he recalled the dizzying progress of the past few weeks.
During the first week, Fuhupqua and his engineers had merely profaned the earth: marking out an immense circle, excavating deep trenches, and filling them with their miraculous mixture to create an unmovable foundation.
By the second week, pillars of concrete and iron were already pointing toward the gray sky like the fingers of a giant. During the third week, before the disbelieving eyes of the English master builders, the first floor had been completed and sealed.
Now, Fuhupqua was directing the work up high, finishing the curing of the second-level walls.
Edmund dodged a group of laborers hauling a heavy bucket of mortar and approached the base of the structure. Fuhupqua, dressed in a work tunic stained with grayish dust and clutching a roll of blueprints under his arm, was walking down a makeshift wooden ramp.
"Investigator," Edmund greeted, raising his voice above the clatter of tools. "Every time I pass by, your fortress seems to have devoured another piece of the sky. It is a magnificent work."
Fuhupqua paused, brushing the dust from his sleeves with a sober gesture.
"Circular geometry better distributes structural tension and resists the battering of the hurricane-force winds that, I suspect, lash these coasts in autumn, my lord. It is mere mathematical efficiency," the scholar replied, though the faintest gleam of pride crossed his dark eyes.
"Without a doubt," Edmund conceded, nodding. But his mind, that of a statesman and merchant, was already racing toward another front. "Speaking of securing our future here... Have you received any word from Captain Quemuen? His men have been patrolling the interior for some time now. How is the contact with the local peoples progressing?"
Fuhupqua half-unrolled one of his maps, revealing fresh ink strokes delving into the uncharted territory.
"The captain has ventured several dozen kilometers inland. He has established dialogue with several local leaders from nearby settlements. Thus far, we have encountered no armed hostility, which confirms the success of our initial approach."
"That is excellent news," Edmund murmured, rubbing his chin, feeling the morning chill on his knuckles.
"It is, but there is a logistical obstacle," Fuhupqua warned, pointing a finger at a series of marks along a river drawn on the map. "They have encountered other groups that do not share the same linguistic root as the first leader... Our translators estimate it will take a month, perhaps more, to decipher and structure each new local dialect before we can forge formal, secure treaties."
Edmund frowned.
A month of linguistic studies seemed like an eternity to him. For a man raised amidst courtly intrigues and the fierce trade routes of Europe, anthropology was secondary. The true language of empire was commerce.
"I understand the academic difficulty, Fuhupqua," Edmund said, lowering his voice slightly and stepping closer, a shrewd glint in his eye. "But treaties aside... was Captain Quemuen able, in his meetings, to promote our presence? Do those leaders of other tongues know that here, among these great hills, they now have a port thirsting for trade and brimming with goods they have never even dreamed of possessing?"
Fuhupqua finished rolling up the map with deliberate slowness, tying the leather strap around the parchment. The sea breeze fluttered the edges of his grayish tunic, dusted with the remnants of cured mortar.
"My primary function here is to ensure that the foundations of the city yield to neither earth nor sea, my lord," the investigator replied, his tone as unmovable as the building behind him. "Diplomacy and exploration fall under Captain Quemuen's banner. However, ... yes. I conveyed your particular request to him before he departed."
Edmund's eyes gleamed with scarcely concealed greed.
The English nobleman had not crossed the Atlantic merely to plant a flag in the mud; he had come to claim wealth. Days ago, during a brief exchange with a local hunting party, Edmund had seen pelts of extraordinary quality and rarity.
There were dense, lustrous coats from unknown animals, foxes of ashen hues, and giant beavers whose pelts could fetch a small fortune in the cold drawing rooms of London. England, exhausted by its own internal tensions, was in desperate need of capital injections, and those exotic pelts were pure gold.
What the young nobleman was completely unaware of, standing there before the Suaza stone giant, was that his desperate commercial plea fit flawlessly into the vast plans engineered by Chuta.
Quemuen had agreed immediately, knowing that integrating the English economy with the local one was but another cog in the great machinery of his empire. But that secret remained sealed tight between the captain and Fuhupqua.
"I am profoundly glad to hear that, Investigator," Edmund said, rubbing his gloved hands to ward off the cold, though his smile betrayed a feverish relief. "It is vital that those leaders understand we stand ready to purchase everything they can offer."
Fuhupqua nodded, but his expression remained impassive, devoid of the European's mercantile enthusiasm.
"Captain Quemuen has promoted the settlement and its commercial novelties, just as you requested. But he entrusted me to pass on a warning, Lord Edmund."
The Suaza scholar took a step forward, and though his height was not imposing, his presence seemed to cast a massive shadow.
"If the tribes flock to your docks tomorrow with hundreds of these pelts... what does England plan to pay them with? Your holds are empty of bartering supplies. If we are to trade on your behalf, the payments will inevitably come from the Suaza storehouses. We can promote the town, my lord, but it is England who must take the reins of its own economy here."
The words, though spoken without an ounce of venom, mockery, or superiority, struck Edmund with the force of a slap. The nobleman felt a hot flush creep up his neck, setting his cheeks ablaze in the biting morning cold. He lowered his gaze for a fraction of a second, ashamed.
Fuhupqua was entirely right. It was a humiliating fact that, since the very first felled trunk, the administration, logistics, health, and even diplomacy of the town had naturally fallen into the efficient hands of the Suaza kingdom.
Edmund was meant to be the leader, the visionary, but reality was crushing him.
He clenched his fists deep inside his coat pockets. He was only a young man, not yet twenty. He had received a privileged education, yes, but not the training of a statesman. That had been reserved for his older brother, Thomas. He had been given mere notions of diplomacy; Thomas had been given the resources and knowledge to govern their family's estates in England.
"We shall assume control as soon as the first resupply galleons arrive from London," Edmund murmured, attempting to regain his composure and aristocratic bearing. "We will settle our accounts without fail for all the assistance you have provided."
"Control is not exercised solely through goods, my lord," Fuhupqua retorted, relentless in his constructive logic. "It is exercised through the word. And currently, you rely entirely on our translators to exchange a simple greeting with the locals. I have offered your scholar and the priests of your retinue the opportunity to learn the native dialects we have already cataloged."
Edmund closed his eyes and let out a sigh of genuine exhaustion. "I know. And I know their answer."
It was another battle lost in his own camp. The English clerics and the scholar assigned to the expedition had flatly refused to soil their tongues with what they considered "pagan babble."
Their arrogance dictated that it was the natives, the "Massachusetts," who must bow down and learn the noble tongue of England. They had tried bribing them with petty trinkets and rations to repeat words in English, but the failure had been absolute. The locals looked at them with indifference and rejected the payments, deeming the English language noisy and guttural—or rather, their attitude naturally alienated them.
Edmund turned his head toward the outskirts of the town, where the makeshift market stood. There, a group of local hunters was exchanging venison for agricultural tools. He watched one of the natives, a tall man with a painted face, point to an iron hoe.
"Quie..." the native articulated in a deep voice, addressing the Suaza guard. "Quie hyca."
Edmund felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the March wind. The locals had no desire to learn a single syllable of English, yet, quite naturally, they were already adopting words from the Suaza vocabulary to refer to tools and trade.
Assimilation had already begun, and the English Crown, for all its ambitions, was little more than a mute spectator in its own city.
One month later.April 12, 1496 (Year 14 of the SuaChie Calendar, Second Month).
Massachusetts Town (Boston, Massachusetts), North Quyca.
Almost a month later, the frigid bite of winter had begun to yield to the damp breeze of spring. It was April, and the grayish horizon of the Dawn (the Atlantic) presented a spectacle that made Edmund's heart pound fiercely against his ribs.
Sails.
A forest of thick white canvas and red crosses was silhouetted against the sky.
Edmund lowered his spyglass, feeling an overwhelming wave of relief. Three towering carracks, their high stern castles swaying heavily, and six agile, sharp caravels cut through the waves toward Massachusetts Town.
John Cabot had returned.
The nobleman recalled the urgency with which he had dispatched the Genoese navigator. Following his arrival on those shores on February 1st, Cabot had remained at the fledgling camp for barely a week.
During those seven days, he had frantically mapped the river mouths, the hidden bays, and the small islands of the cape, before Edmund ordered him to set sail without delay.
His mission was vital: to cross the ocean and demand the resources promised by King Henry VII before the courtiers could smother the expedition beneath mountains of bureaucracy. Seeing the magnitude of the fleet, Edmund smiled; it seemed God Himself had breathed into Cabot's sails.
The entire settlement ground to a halt. For an hour, the organized chaos of construction was replaced by logistical orchestration at the port.
The pier, that feat of iron and cement engineering built by Fuhupqua and his men, jutted defiantly into the cold waters. The carracks, their draft too deep, were forced to drop anchor at a prudent distance. However, the caravels maneuvered deftly toward the berths, their hulls brushing against the sturdy pillars with a dull creak.
Even before the main mooring lines were tied, an agile figure transferred from a small shallop to the first caravel to dock. John Cabot was the first to step onto the damp timber of the port.
"John!" Edmund exclaimed, advancing at a brisk pace down the pier. He shook the navigator's hand with an effusiveness he rarely allowed himself. "You have brought an armada with you. I feared the King's advisors would delay you until winter."
"My lord," Cabot replied, returning the grip with profound respect. His face was weathered by sun and salt, but beneath the shadow of his hat, his gaze harbored a dark glint—a silent tension that instantly extinguished Edmund's smile.
Feeling the weight of the eyes of both the colonists and the Suaza workers upon them, Edmund decided not to prolong the mystery.
"Do not keep me in suspense, John. How much aid is there? What does the Crown send us?"
Cabot exhaled, relaxing his shoulders slightly.
"A great deal, Lord Edmund. The holds are overflowing. We have brought tons of provisions, firearms, dry powder, tools, and dozens of new colonists ready to work. Along with a few scholars... though I fear they are of a volatile temperament."
Edmund nodded, encouraged.
"And the King?"
"King Henry was overjoyed," Cabot continued, but his tone lacked any jubilation. "When I presented your reports and the news that the first English settlement was firmly established, his delight was such that he threw a banquet that very night. He urged his court to open the coffers and hasten this second shipment without a single day's delay. He wished to secure our dominion here immediately."
"That is the best news I have heard in months," Edmund sighed, feeling the ghost of failure vanish. Glory awaited him.
Cabot paused. The silence stretched between them, drowned out only by the shouts of the sailors and the lapping of water against the pillars. The navigator looked around and swallowed hard.
"However, my lord..." Cabot lowered his face. "I fear the next deliveries will suffer an indefinite delay. In fact, I doubt we shall see another English ship for a long time."
Edmund's stomach knotted, shifting from euphoria to a frigid anguish in a fraction of a second.
"What?" he demanded, his voice hardening. "What has happened in London for things to change so drastically from one day to the next?"
Cabot cast a nervous glance at the approaching colonists. With a discreet gesture, he took Edmund by the elbow and steered him away from the bustle of the pier, pulling him into the shadow of some thick supply crates, far from prying ears.
"It is spoken of in the streets and in the darkest corners of the court, my lord," Cabot whispered, his Genoese accent thickening with tension. "Perkin Warbeck has landed in Scotland."
Edmund felt the air leave his lungs. Warbeck. The damned impostor who claimed to be the rightful heir of York.
"He is seeking military support," Cabot continued, relentless. "And he has found it. King James is backing him, and spies report that powerful duchies across Europe are sending gold and troops to finance his claim to the throne. England is preparing for war, Lord Edmund. The King will need every ship, every cannon, and every ounce of gold to defend his crown. There will be no more shipments for the Great Quyca... We are alone."
The English nobleman took a step back, resting his back against the rough wood of the crates. His breathing grew heavy. The lifeline to his home had just been severed with the brutality of a sword.
He frowned, clenching his jaw so tightly his teeth ached, and raised his gaze above the heads of his compatriots.
In the distance, oblivious to European wars of succession, Fuhupqua peacefully oversaw the unloading of a crate of English construction tools. The Suaza scholar, unyielding, represented the true power in these lands.
Edmund swallowed the knot that had formed in his throat.
Without London's backing, the illusion that England led this port would shatter to pieces in a matter of weeks. If he wanted his people not to starve or be devoured by neglect, it was no longer enough to delegate tasks or ask for favors in secret.
As he watched Fuhupqua give orders in a language the English refused to learn, Edmund realized it with chilling clarity: he would have to depend on them, absolutely and shamefully.
Or worse still... he would have to adopt, once and for all, the Suaza way of doing things.
.
----
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
Thank you all for your support.
First, I wanted to ask if you'd like me to thank you for the powerstones in the Author's Notes. I'd always seen them in other novels and it never occurred to me. Now I feel a little ungrateful.
Second, this chapter is shorter, to test if you like them this long (Haha, maybe that sounded weird). But you can imagine what I mean.
Should I keep the previous length? Or is this better?
Unnecessary Fact of the Day: Did you know that the first Bible printed in the Americas was created by John Eliot and a group of Indigenous linguists and translators? Also, the language wasn't English, but the local language. Guess which one? Massachusetts.
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Read my other novels.
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future (Episode 91) (ON HOLD)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Episode 34) (ON HOLD)
#The Walking Dead: Patient 0 - Lyra File (Episode 14) (ON HOLD)
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