The Merchant Assembly hall was dead. In its place, Lydia Moreau had built a brain. Information was its lifeblood, flowing not to a council, but to a single mind—hers.
Maps covered every available wall surface, their edges weighted down with amber paperweights that captured and fractured the afternoon light streaming through tall windows. The largest map dominated the room's center, spread across a massive oak table that had once hosted heated debates about trade regulations and tariffs but now served as the stage for far more dangerous games of conquest and manipulation.
Moreau stood behind that table, her scaled left hand resting on the map's surface near a location marked in crimson ink simply as "Deep Excavation Site." Her golden eyes traced the coastline, not as land and water, but as ambush points and escape routes. A lesser mind saw a map. Moreau saw a chessboard.
