Back united at last, the fight Laura and Janna had had was forgotten. They both preferred not to talk about it, especially not after the most recent horrible episode. Neither of them could fully understand Furio's explanation of what had happened but it was good that he had emerged victorious. There had been a sphere of grey smoke, shadows and light and frightening noises but that was gone as well and the tiny mage standing in the middle of a circle with a Twelve pointed star and magic symbols he had drawn. It was the only remnant of all that unpleasantness and faded quickly.

Thorwal returned to a state of normal, at least according to Laura. Meanwhile, Janna's head still hurt and they had resolved it be best she not strain herself and rest for as long as necessary. Laura had turned the place into her little model city, much like her little village at the spaceship, but it seemed as though leaders were in short supply.

That provided a welcome pastime. Everything had to be micro-managed, every conflict or problem resolved by them personally.

“Rebuild?” Furio had asked sceptically when it was mentioned that they would stay and do that.

Janna had winced. She hadn't told Laura about the mission or the Horasians yet. But the mage had no choice and neither did Janna given that she had to cure out what might well have been a concussion. The gash in her forehead, where Laura had hit her with her stone dildo, was not too big and healing fine though, give or take some minor swelling.

They weren't crushing, eating or otherwise killing or hurting anyone, nor even threatening to do so. They had not conspired to act this way. It was another silent understanding. Being good that way was easy when it was obvious. After one day, they even opened the city gates again, instructing people to farm the fields outside. Some seeds were planted in hopes of squeezing one last harvest from the soil before the winter. The weather acted as though it was compliant. It was exceptionally good, not only for autumn but Thorwal in general, everyone agreed.

If people fled they would even allow it, but it didn't look like very many did. The Thorwalsh had to save and revive their city after all. It was crucial to their people. The death of the albino whale, or the god, as Laura described him, did not have the same effect on the people of Thorwal as it had on those of Serske. They had seen an alternative already, and the transition had been seamless.

When that fell away too they didn't turn headless either but rather diversified. Most plainly turned atheist or deist. A dwindling minority started to praise Janna and Laura as goddesses as it had happened in Lauraville but more readily accepted the Twelve gods as their own after Furio dropped some lines about how they had watched over him and guided his hand in defeating the demon worshipper and how they were smiling on all of them now, expressing it through the exceptionally nice weather. Furio was calmer than before. Patient. He had acquired coal and parchment and took to writing and drawing and was not seen often. He seemed to take a well-served break as well, choice-less as he was.

As for the people of Serske, Janna and Laura reached out to them in a humanitarian effort. There were less than a hundred villagers left by that time though, the majority dead or fled, but they saved them and took them into Thorwal kindly.

Janna and Laura were not gentle with absolutely everyone though. Two of Janna's giantesses had survived and had to be dealt with somehow. They did not speak the tongue, which made things difficult, and they had proved to be vicious and dangerous, the blonde especially. So, they broke them slowly.

Under Janna's and Laura's supervision, the girls had to perform crane duty in the rebuilding. That was easy enough. During the night, the two were shackled. Whenever Janna or Laura felt like it, they were abused, not really harshly, just a kick or some pressure to keep them down and humiliate them and let them know who was boss.

Once, Janna and Laura took them on a walk, away from Thorwalsh civilization. In a small valley, relatively safe from anyone's view, they taught them what a foursome was. Making love to Laura again was exciting and having two little Barbie dolls to share the experience with was even better. The blond and the auburn ogress picked up the concept of pussy-licking quickly enough. The auburn one, Knorrholde, was better at it. She had the calmer temper of the two, was more reasonable and more compliant.

Gruskona was more fun to hurt because she didn't weep and had a tendency to fight back. Janna had a high time and Laura loved to watch the little girl get bulldozed by Janna's rear end. She couldn't over do it without hurting her, but just acting as though she was going to sit on one of the girls was enough to drive them into a frenzy. They remembered the time Janna had almost killed them with her bum.

When she pushed them down and mounted them, their little tongues soon knew what they had to do and Laura did the same with the other. Another position Janna particularly liked was lying beside Laura and kissing her while each of them massaged a tiny head against their partner's sex. Then once, Janna was overcome by dominance and sat on Laura's face. She let it happen and pleasured Janna just as she wanted. To keep Knorrholde and Gruskona from escaping, Janna pressed their bodies into her mighty tits.

They weren't sexual with their little dolls inside or near Thorwal though. They were good to the Thorwalsh for once, each after wiping out thousands of innocent lives on their individual journeys.

But it soon became clear that being good was not so easy when it was not obvious. No crushing people, no eating them, no squishing them in between their fingers, no stepping or sitting on them, no inserting them into body orifices and masturbating with them, no making them worship them, scare them and no pissing on idle farmers were all pretty self-explanatory. Other things weren't so much.

The first instance was two families laying claim to the same workshop and home. The first family of five had owned it originally but been displaced and the second, consisting of three people, had taken it over after their own workshop had been destroyed under Laura's feet. Justice was not easily found here.

In their studies, both Janna and Laura had taken obligatory classes in ethics. Unfortunately, Janna had skipped many of the sessions and passed the test barely while Laura had bothered even less and flunked the class all together. It was part of the reason why she was here.

They had to rack their brains and piece together as much as they could and both of them were stunned that this stuff could be made to have actual real-world applications all of a sudden. Teleological ethics, utilitarianism, were simple and logical on the surface. Any decision was moral if it maximized the sum or average of all utility, happiness or well-being, depending on what one was going for. There was act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.

Act utilitarianism could actually be cruel. If for example the death of a person, or less radically expressed, their ill-luck or misfortune or whatever, maximized the average or total utility of others sufficiently, then it was moral. Regarding the case at hand, the first family had two more mouths to feed, therefore they must get the estate. The city itself had to enter the equation though, and as it turned out the second family was said to be more productive.

So, Janna and Laura were in a position where they had to quantify the greater good of the city in general through slightly more productive workers against the unequally higher increase in well-being of only two children. To do that required numbers which had to be picked arbitrarily, but the concept wasn't as much about calculating the result as getting a general idea of what each action alternative meant.

It was the first case, so deciding to simply build a new shop was an easy solution that would not work for everyone in the end. Resources were scarce.

Janna could not help but reflect that the Horasians had used act utilitarianism on her when she had questioned the morality of going to Thorwal and crushing everyone. The Thorwlash' destruction would bring more peace and security to the rest of the world and was therefore a good thing, they had argued. Rule utilitarianism would have disagreed. If every people wiped out every people that did them harm, soon only one people would be left and that would make for a really tiny gene pool sooner or later. On the other hand, if any people acting a menace towards others was exterminated as a rule, that could also be understood to be a good thing. It was never unambiguous.

Rule utilitarianism focused not on each act individually, but posed that any act was moral if it was moral as a rule. In a case such as this, the more productive family should get the estate every time was a possible conclusion. As such, rule utilitarianism was actually closer to deontological ethics.

Deontological ethics were a real pain in the ass and Kant, that moralizing son of a bitch, had surely been applied that name by poetic justice itself. Janna felt her heart rate quicken with anger when she thought about how to differentiate rule utilitarianism and deontological ethics. The principle was the same, though the evaluation was different. In utilitarianism it was still dependant on empiricism and individual inclination where Kant on the other hand just presupposed an objective moral good.

It was something about seeing other people as a purpose rather than a means, which meant that outcome played second fiddle to intent which entered the equation now. So, yeah, rebuilding Thorwal as opposed to making the city their tiny fuck-slaves was the moral thing to do, but again, it was obvious. How would Kant solve the underlying case? He'd probably give some lecture and fuck off only to return and throw a tantrum over the injustice of any conclusion that had been reached later. He wasn't much help in this case.

“But productivity is means, not purpose.” Laura argued. “So we should give the home to the larger family for the intrinsic moral good of helping children.”

“Whatever.” Janna half agreed.

They were speaking English while the two claimant parties were before them in the market square.

Throwing outcome overboard completely and focusing only on intent was called the ethics of virtue, going all the way back to such figures as Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. As the name suggested, it was about virtues such as courage, wisdom, prudence and justice. It was about finding a balance between two extremes.

Courage was good but cowardice and foolhardiness were not. Compensatory justice was a part of this ethic too. In case of a crime, perpetrator minus advantage should equal victim minus crime. Therefore the punishment should fit the crime. Simple. There was also something about distribution of resources though. According to this ethic, the first family's share divided by the second family's share should equal the first family's worthiness divided by the second family's.

“If we give each person a base rating of one we get three divided by five. The second family should get like, uh, sixty percent of what the first family gets?” Janna surmised as best she could.

“It's like, to each according to their needs.” Laura noted. “But the resource pool is limited. We can't even split the damn house.”

“Then no one gets the house according to this.” Janna replied with a shrug. It was the logical conclusion. Everything else would be unjust.

“Janna, that's retarded.” Laura held against. “You can't just leave houses empty just because others may have none.”

“Ha, but you're arguing outcome.” Janna grinned. “That's utilitarianism.”

She was smug about winning the argument but not about the inconsequential brain storm. It was enough to put anyone off crushing people. They ordered any inner city palisades to be torn down and used for building. The palisade around the winter harbour was the largest remaining one by far and Janna couldn't see any purpose it served other than being able to control who went in there. It was obsolete.

They had already dismantled the practise yard outside the east gate to use for wood too.

“So what is your decision?” The mother of the family of three asked carefully.

Janna regarded her from above. Her husband was about the same height as her, but it was clear that she called the shots in the household. Their son was fourteen, blond, tall, strong, already looking half a man, if a little dimwitted in the face. The other family had visibly had their share of suffering. They were gaunt, haunted. No doubt they had lost family members, perhaps even children to Laura's uncaring feet or hunger. Their three living children were younger, two in between eight and eleven and one four years old at the most.

“You will get it.” Janna decided, pointing at the family of five. “If everyone can just randomly repossess things they find unattended the very concept of property would lose it's meaning.”

That was textbook Kant she reflected with surprise. Nonetheless, she felt the decision to be reasonable and just. She was pretty surprised when it caused a riot shortly after.

Many things had swapped their owners since Laura had walked into the city, some by her very orders. While scavenging for food, the occasional item of value had been abducted too and now many people laid claims to their previous possessions which the new owners often refused to give up because they had lost so much themselves. There were many wrongs to be rectified.

“I'll gut you!” A man with a short axe spat at a woman. “Give it back!”

“No, it's mine!” The woman clutched a golden medallion in her hand. “Your house wasn't crushed, but mine was! I need it to...”

The man cut her off: “It belonged to my father!”

Similar fights broke out across the city all at once as the understanding of Janna's ruling came to pass. One man saw his neighbour fight to get back what was now legally his again and was thereby motivated to do the same ere anything changed.

“No one is gutting anybody you stupid animals!” Laura shouted on her feet. “Stop it now, or I'll...”

“No,” Janna interrupted her in English, “we're not crushing people. That's the rules now, gotta stick to 'em.”

“Huh.” Laura sighed with her hands on her hips. “You're right.”

It was all a game to Janna but she wasn't going to arbitrarily lower the difficulty. If Laura was serious about it, she didn't know. Probably not though. Probably it was just another phase of hers. They'd have to start acting gentle that way at one point or another anyway. They might as well practise a little now.

“So, do we just let them fight each other?” Laura asked. “Is that the moral thing to do?”

“No.” Janna replied determinedly. Not even the most technocratic interpretation of act utilitarianism could stand for this. By now there was already full-scale looting going on in some places.

“Stop any violence now!” Laura shouted over the city. Everyone could hear her easily. “If you have any grievance, come to the market place and we will sort you out, I mean, solve your problems individually!”

Knorrholde and Gruskona cowered by the palisade they were supposed to be dismantling, unsure what to do. They had started to learn their place at least. Even for all being gentle, some degree of authority was called for.

Ships and housing had been in the process of being built, food being prepared, still lives and normalcy being returned to. Now, nearly all work halted in Thorwal. The amount of people with grievances was staggering. Half the market square was full and more people stood in the streets besides.

There had been nine murders, or close enough.

“It was no murder!” Some huge, big-chested woman swore when she was dragged before them. “I hit her and she just died, that's all!?”

Witnesses were called, testimony given. All of those being accused of murder were found guilty, even though some made very reasonable claims of self-defence. Compensatory justice called for killing them, but that they would not do because it conflicted with the virtue of gentleness. They could neither be vengeful nor passive and so Laura had them transferred and locked up in the dungeon keep, standing over the cliffs on the most southern point of the western side of the city. So, the keep had to be manned again, after all, if the prisoners weren't fed, watered and looked after, it would just be like a death sentence. Killing them would have been cheaper in terms of resources expended but they did not turn to utilitarianism for this.

Then there were petty disputes about property and that was were things got really hairy. For some of the property no impartial witnesses could be found to determine the rightful owner. It was claim against claim and one of the two was lying. In other cases there were witnesses lying too and that angered Janna greatly. It was like their gentleness was being exploited. Deontology condemned lying per se, declaring it un-virtuous. But if it could not be determined who did the lying, no one could be condemned.

The obvious liars were sacked and brought to the dungeons as well and to deal with he non-obvious cases it was determined that the claimant with the higher number of trustworthy witnesses to his case would be approved. That without a doubt created a lot of injustice in and of itself but it was a logistical necessity. There simply were too many.

When it became clear that the disputes were still too many and too complicated Laura decided that it was best to try something else. Too many unsolvable cases had to be postponed.

“Enough!” She called. “This is how we will do it. Janna and I have to eat. Right now, we take food from you without compensation. This will stop. We will pay you for anything we consume.”

The idea was entirely strange because neither Laura nor Janna held anything of large virtue to the city folk. Laura made clear how she intended to finance this a moment later.

“All gold, silver, weapons and armour in the city belong to us now. Bring them here and give them up! You will get them back in exchange for work and food.”

Thus the most productive members of the city would get rich the quickest and put their assets to the most use. It was smart, though utterly immoral, beginning with one huge injustice that was to be remedied step by step. Of course it didn't work out.

The amount of what Laura had determined to be currency arriving at the market place afterwards was dismal. People simply held on to their possessions suspiciously, hiding them or simply not declaring that they had them. A system for compliance had to be put in place. With what little currency they had, Laura and Janna started to reward people for snitching on those who refused to give up their items of value. Most people were very eager and willing to hand out other people's property.

The immorality of ratting on their fellow man for money and thereby destroying the incentive of being intrinsically good and honest was certainly preventing some from reporting what they knew. Nonetheless, procurement, or rather theft was more effective afterwards and all four of the front pockets of their jeans healthily filled. Their fingers were too large to grab and handle any individual flimsy, little coin but they managed with the aid of some tiny helpers to get even the last of it off the ground.

Taking basically all goodies away from the people resolved almost all property disputes at once. The poorer people seemed even happy about the sudden degree of equality. Most people hated it though but they knew better than to object. Furthermore, there seemed no one left to rally behind, no one to challenge the authority of two gargantuan girls that played at turning their city into a real-life game of Settlers of Catan.

“How much should we pay them for the food?” Laura asked Janna when it was time for supper.

“This was your idea.” Janna shrugged with a tired smile.

“Should we ask them what the regular price is?”

“And be cheated?” Janna laughed.

“Normally, prices vary.” Laura reasoned. “If there is more of something it becomes cheaper and so on, but I don't know how much food there is actually.”

Even though she was dead tired from all the days' dealings, her and Laura's struggle had something amusing.

“We also need to pay the workers.” Janna reminded her friend. “Or else they will starve as soon as what they have stored away is used up, if they have stored anything for themselves in the first place.”

“Shit.” Laura messed up her hair in frustration. “We have to get some money in circulation.”

“It's fine.” Janna said. “We didn't take the copper coins. Silver and Gold are actually quite valuable. We have many so we should just fix the price at one coin per unit of food like dish, barrel, basket or whatever. If they get gold, they're lucky and if they get silver it's probably still a good price. As for work, we just give 'em a coin per day or so.”

“Yeah, but that way they'll rather trade with us than on the market.” Laura pointed out. “Those that do not have food or work in food production are gonna be fucked because there's nothing they can sell to the others and they need more than one meal per day.”

“Sure, but they can live much longer off a barrel of grain than we can, right?”

“True.” Laura agreed sceptically. “But there is like two thousand people in this city. How long are our coins gonna last? Besides, if we do it your way, the one thing we ensure is that barrels and baskets get smaller.”

Janna laughed straight in her face: “Damn, you're smart!”

“So what are we going to do?” She went on after a pause. “I mean, we can always just take it from them, right? There's nothing they can do. Or we start eating them again. I kinda miss the taste anyway.”

Laura gave a reproachful smile: “Come on, I thought we agreed on this. Sure, we put a lot more work into the city than we get out of it, but it's fun, right?”

Janna couldn't help but nod and agree.

“Besides,” Laura went on, “we should be like, what, two thousand years ahead of them? We should be able to figure out a way that works.”

“So, trial and error?” Janna suggested. “I'm starving.”

Before now, food had been a collective group effort for the city. It was served three times a day and everyone participated as they could. Since Laura had declared food to be public domain after her arrival, it had been this way, stored and prepared in central places. It was in everybody's interest that the man eating monsters be fed and satisfied, lest they take their displeasure out on them. Not any longer though.

Another protest was forming right before their eyes and it didn't take any leaders for this one either. Some people stood guard for food that was being transported while those who didn't have anything to gain in this were upset and attacking. Those who had no one to guard what they had prepared were being robbed. At any mealtime, a crowd of people gathered, and this day was no exception. For the people it was a time of great anguish, seeing the fruit of their labour be found good and social interaction with the giantesses. Today though, rocks and rotten apples were being thrown from the crowd.

“What did we do wrong this time?” Laura asked perplexed.

Janna didn't know. She spied a teenager throwing something and picked him up at once. He realized his mistake and struggled in between her thumb and forefinger. She didn't crush him though. Thus were the rules. She hadn't really picked up a man in days, not against their will anyway, and found herself marvelling at how tiny and powerless he was.

She held him closer to her face than necessary, enjoying the intimidation. The violent protest stopped and the procession of arriving food halted.

“What is your grievance?” She asked him. It must have been the thousandth time that day she asked that sentence.

“What ever he says, don't crush him Janna.” Laura reminded her quickly.

“Nothing!” He swore frantically. “I'm sorry I threw the stone, I didn't mean it!”

“Nothing?” Janna addressed the crowd of people. They were all so tiny and insignificant to her. She could wipe them all out had she wished. But not now.

Some shivered and looked away in haste. It was a shameful display. They hadn't killed anyone in four days and still no one had enough backbone to say what was wrong. The Thorwalsh had come forth willingly enough during the day while Janna and Laura tried to resolve their conflicts for them. Janna couldn't see what was different now.

“We created almost total equality among you.” Janna reproached them from above with the boy still struggling and kicking in between her fingers. “We have tried to be as good to you as we could. We even agreed to pay you for your food, and this is how you thank us? Really, a riot?”

It wasn't really a riot yet, but exaggeration helped getting the point across she often found. The money they wanted to pay them with had also been ill gotten but in that case she would have expected the outrage to be directed at Laura and her, not the people who brought the food.

“Are you two still playing at statecraft?”

“Furio!” Laura exclaimed.

Laura had taken an exaggerated liking to the tiny mage as soon as Janna had told her about him. The thing she had seemed to like most though had been when Janna told her that she shouldn't squash or otherwise kill him. That was worrying but there was nothing to be done about it. The death of such a tiny creature was always just a squelch away, even though they had been successful the gentle way for such a long time now. Apparently not in running the city, but they hadn't intentionally or accidentally killed anyone other than those nine who got murdered because of their mismanagement.

“Can you show me a magic trick?” Laura always said that when she saw him and he always looked troubled and refused.

He came striding through the crowd with his little white magic staff. His clothes were simple now which made him harder to spot but he swore he did not want to wear his previous robes again.

“I wanted to buy an apple earlier.” He told them. “I almost got beaten up. What were you thinking?”

Laura was perplexed: “What do you mean beaten up? Who wanted to beat you, we'll throw them in the dungeon at once!”

“In the dungeon?!” His displeasure was directed at Janna. She knew he wanted to go on with the mission, have Laura and her crush everyone here, lay waste to the city and move on to get some more villages underfoot until Olaf showed up.

He sighed visibly: “The moment you took everyone's wealth away and said you would pay them for their food the entire city collapsed. It is brother against brother now, though you may not see it most of the time. Gangs have formed, a resourceful minority controls most of the food stocks, looking to get rich off of you. They have men who guard their goods as well, promising to pay them with your coin. Have you not noticed that all the sheep on the hill have disappeared?”

They hadn't noticed but it sounded pretty obvious when he said it like that, Janna had to admit. And indeed, where before there had been sheep grazing over the cliffs, over where the Ottaskin had been, there was only clean grassland now.

“Meanwhile, many people have nothing.” Furio went on, gesturing to the agreeing crowd. “And even if you were holding court again, they are scared you take the food away from them like you did their other items.”

“So, we should put those who control the food now into the dungeon?” Laura frowned.

“No, let them have it. If you mean the system to remain intact, you need those people and the organisations they have set up. But you have to pay the others, otherwise those who work on building houses and ships have nothing to bargain with, not even their labour.”

It was clear that Furio gave all this advice against his own best interest. He could have stayed silent and watched the system fail but he was a servant at heart and being of help was so deeply engrained in him that he could not help himself. Janna found him adorable.

“So there are leaders.” She observed. “Why didn't they come forth? We would have given them all the power they wanted. We need them in fact, it is tedious to organize every little thing by ourselves.”

“Because being a leader or a person of note in this city has become as deadly as hanging.” Furio explained.

“Janna, you are scaring that boy to death.” Laura noted with at nod at the teenager in her hand. Janna had almost forgotten about him and gesticulated happily away while he was still in between her fingers.

“Oh.” She regarded him again before setting him down. “So let's pay people.”

“Actually,” Laura switched to English and grinned apologetically, “that's a really shit idea.”

Janna smacked her hand against her forehead and sighed: “Why again?”

“Let's say there's two thousand people here. How long would the line be to get paid? I promise you, there will be fraud, people getting in line multiple times and whatnot. Our money wouldn't last two days. It's impossible to keep so many faces apart, you know that, and it will take ages anyway. We need underlings to do the paying for us.”

“Can't we just flatten them, take their stuff and eat it?” Janna groaned.

“No.” Laura was amused. “They're my pets and you don't treat pets that way.”

It was the first time they really discussed their sudden gentleness.

“Your pets are really work-intensive.” Janna sighed again.

“Ya, they're pets.” Laura laughed and grinned. “Also, so long as you refrain from killing my pets, I will refrain from killing yours.”

Janna was painfully aware that she was hinting at Furio. It wasn't fair to pitch a city of thousands against a single, cricket-sized man, but Laura would not lose any sleep over that fact.

“We're just keeping this up to torture each other, aren't we?” Janna returned a tired grin.

“Yap.” Laura made happily.

They both started giggling uncontrollably while the crowd of people looked on with rather terrified faces, not having understood a word.

“Furio.” Laura finally said. “I have a mission for you. You will find out who exactly the leaders of these gangs are and point them out to us so that we can make them our foremen.”

Janna noted that Laura was trying to apply the system that had worked so well in Lauraville but the idea of using Furio didn't sit well with her.

“No.” She objected. “What if they kill him?”

“They can't kill him.” Laura cocked her head. “He's the hero and also he's a mage. Surely he can defend himself?”

Furio looked particularly distraught at that, even more than Janna would have imagined. But as it turned out there was no need to save him. Everyone in the city, except for Laura and Janna, already knew who was in charge of those gangs and the mob was glad to arrest them and bring them forth.

They were presented with ten slightly beaten up people shortly after, four gang leaders and their seconds in command. These were shrewd people, Janna knew just from looking at them. It was also clear that they didn't expect to be crushed and still they looked sour.

Laura left six of them to run individual food storage and preparation operations. They should compete with each other. Then one of them got the farmland, housebuilding and shipbuilding respectively while the last was tasked with overseeing the rest of the city's economy, smithery, leather tanning, cloth making, dying, tailoring and all that. Any worker in any given field at the moment was theirs to command.

“We didn't ask for this?!” A brutal looking woman spat angrily.

Laura smiled and leaned over her like the behemoth that she was: “But you will do as I say. You can put your people to work or use them as guard or use them to put other people to work as you please. You are responsible for their pay and you will pay them, or else they have a grievance they can bring to us. We will give each of you two hundred pieces of gold to start with and pay you handsomely for your work afterwards, so long as you have any to present.”

It was brilliant. Laura put market forces and competition to work to increase productivity while paying with a currency neither she nor Janna cared about. And on top, she did it all without being overly cruel. Laura could be a real fox if something caught her genuine interest.

Janna got responsibility for five of the forepeople and their branches, which also entailed the obligation to pay them. She made sure she got the ones that required the littlest oversight, the house- and shipbuilding, the farmland and two food providers. Laura agreed but declared that fishery would be attached to shipbuilding and livestock to farmland as well. That was fine.

Somehow Janna was as giddy as a schoolgirl to play CEO of her own little operations on the morrow. She was hell bent on achieving high production, higher production than Laura's businesses. She already thought about how to bend the rules. Perhaps her workers would work better if she threatened them when Laura wasn't around to hear. Or maybe she'd pay her workers more and hire people away from Laura's businesses. Perhaps she could make some of Laura's workers disappear some other way too.

Furio counted and dealt each of her forepersons the two hundred gold coins from her pocket. It wasn't really that much yet, but if there really were two thousand people in total, there was now one gold coin for each of them, if the forepersons were to distribute them that way which of course they weren't.

By then it was almost too dark to see anything and the problem of food was solved quickly and with some practical brutality. Janna and Laura just ate after having all the food that had been prepared brought to the market place. As it turned out, the competing gangs had overproduced for that day.

They gormandised.

Janna really liked the local gruel and poured barrel after barrel into her mouth before tossing them away. She didn't linger long with any particular one to make sure she got the last out of it and hungry Thorwalsh fell over her scraps like animals. For some of them, the last meal had already been a day away, she realized wearily. Pork, beef and poultry were in short supply too, as were certain sorts of vegetables and fish. Janna ate fish and mussels, unlike Laura who shunned them. She found them especially good here. Somewhere in her mind she was worried about how long the food would last. Perhaps, in the end, they would starve Thorwal to death rather than crushing it. And just as it had started to grow on Janna. They really had to make sure production went smooth.

Furio ate at a safe distance, though a meal of his own and not scraps. Janna had tasked him to write down the names of her forepersons and commanded him to read them to her every now and then. But as much as she tried, she couldn't remember them. Her day had simply been too full of things. It would be best to try again tomorrow, she decided.

Laura and her gave the Thorwalsh permission to eat the rest of the food, made sure Knorrholde and Gruskona were safely shackled and went to sleep. They slept outside the walls, there where the practise yard for the warriors had been before. Side by side in their sleeping bags, Janna and Laura kissed each other good night. Then they slept like babies.