Chương 277: 56. Queen of Logistics 2

It took me until the second day after accepting that list to fully understand how inauspicious the words "living line" actually were. Because they sounded like something nimble, flexible, and important — a skilled intermediary weaving gracefully between all parties. Translated into plain language, they meant: Wherever something breaks, that's where you run. And not just run.

Listen, observe, remember, and ideally extinguish whatever's smoldering before "everyone's mildly annoyed" becomes "one side is about to flip the table." In short, the job was essentially firefighting. The only difference being that some fires don't burn in wood. They burn inside people's heads. And fires inside people's heads are, as a general rule, considerably harder to put out.

My first task after taking on the role arrived before I'd even finished breakfast, when someone pulled me out of the dragoon outer camp and sent me at a run toward the west artillery shelter zone. The reason was simple. The dragoons and the artillery corps had nearly come to blows over a gust of wind. By the time I got there, the atmosphere had already achieved the specific ripeness of a situation that was one ill-timed remark away from someone's face being introduced to the mud.

The incident itself hadn't started large. At least not at first. A group of dragoons had been returning from the morning river-channel patrol, and on descent, the wind shear caught them slightly wrong — the resulting gust of dust and chaff swept across the edge of the artillery shelter zone, directly over a group of artillery soldiers who had been airing out moisture-barrier cloths and inspecting powder sacks. Because there is one thing black powder fears above all enemies: Dampness. Disorder. Stray sparks.

And any incident you subsequently find yourself unable to explain to your commanding officer. So the artillery side had, understandably, detonated. Not in the literal sense. In the emotional one.

"I told you this zone was airing cloth today!" An artillery corps officer stood at the edge of the shelter, half a roll of moisture-barrier cloth still clenched in her fist, her expression the precise shade of a person who had just swallowed half a bucket of black powder.

"Was a different descent angle really too much to ask for!?" On the other side, a dragoon who'd barely finished dismounting wasn't backing down.

"The wind shear shifted earlier than the day before — you think we wanted to be pushed over your side?"

"Whether you wanted to or not, three of our crates almost got a face full of dirt!"

"Better dirt than fire, isn't it? We'd already pulled up as low as we could!"

"This is the artillery shelter zone, not somewhere for you to sweep the ground with your wings!" I stood at the outer edge and watched for two quiet seconds. Then, very honestly, reached one conclusion in the privacy of my own head. Both sides are completely correct. And "both sides are completely correct" is, without exception, the most exhausting kind of situation. Because you cannot take either side. The moment you do, the other one writes it down. I pushed my way in.

"Hold on, hold on — everyone stop for a second." I did my best to make my voice sound like it belonged to someone useful, not some hapless idiot who'd been dragged in just because he happened to be walking by. The artillery officer gave me a look, recognized me as "that Dragon Kingdom guy who's been running around Three Rivers Fortress talking like a human being," and while her expression didn't soften much, she at least didn't immediately add me to the enemy list.

The dragoons were even less inclined to bite my head off. The first thing one of them did when she saw me was mutter, not entirely under her breath:"Oh, the errand lord's here." I made a mental note to remember that line and seek vengeance at some unspecified future date. Sadly, this was not the time. I turned to the artillery side first.

"What's the actual damage?" Her brow stayed furrowed, but her answer came sharp and fast.

"Nothing truly unsalvageable — but three crates took surface grit, two lengths of moisture cloth have to be re-aired, and this morning's inspection has to be redone." I nodded and turned to the dragoons.

"And you?" The rider in charge wiped sweat from her forehead, tone still hard but no longer aimed at me personally.

"The crosswind shifted earlier than forecast. We weren't planning to drop over the western sheds at all. That sweep over the edge was already after we'd forced it down as tight as we could. Any sharper and we'd have clipped the roof." I glanced up at the terrain and the placement of the sheds, then at the rutted track chewed up by wagon wheels nearby, and suddenly saw the problem. No one was actively trying to make trouble. There was just too much crammed into this one patch of ground. Dragoon landing lines.

Artillery moisture sheds. Supply wagons swinging through. River patrol return vectors. Each piece, considered alone, was barely manageable. Stack them into the same time slot, and you got exactly this: a situation where no one was entirely wrong, and everyone wanted to yell anyway. I went silent for a couple of seconds, then tried:"Here's a thought. First wave of dawn river patrol landings loops a bit further south." A dragoon immediately frowned.

"That extra loop eats more wingpower." The artillery officer jumped back in.

"And we cannot afford to re-air our cloths every single morning."

"I'm not saying you have to take all of it." I raised both hands slightly.

"Artillery side shifts your airing cycle back too." They both looked at me. I pointed up.

"Right now the wind is chaotic every morning at this hour. Whoever happens to be under whom is just unlucky. If the artillery airing starts half an hour later and the first wyvern patrol drops a little further south, you both take on a little inconvenience — but neither side eats the whole loss." The artillery officer narrowed her eyes.

"And what guarantees they won't cut across again tomorrow?" I turned my head toward the dragoons. The lead rider pressed her lips together, then finally spoke.

"I'll take it to Lei Lian and have the first landing markers moved." I looked back at the artillery officer.

"If you don't have enough hands to re-air your cloth today, I'll borrow two people from the outer camp later." She gave me a long, measuring look.

"Borrowing dragoons to help in the artillery sheds?"

"I can always do it myself," I offered, entirely sincere. She watched me for another two seconds, then finally snorted.

"... Fine. Just don't let anyone who doesn't know what they're doing near my powder. Send me two who know how to pull a line and set a prop."

"Done." And that was that — for now. No one was happy. But no one flipped the table, either. Walking away, one realization settled with unnerving clarity. Coordination means getting everyone to feel like they're only being cheated a little, not like they're being treated like idiots. It was exhausting. Unfortunately, that was only the first item. The second was about local quartermasters and forage for the roost. The third involved the construction site and the archer companies both eyeing the same stack of lumber.

The fourth was a complaint from the river unloading crews that the dragoons were drawing too much water up front, leaving pack animals waiting too long at the troughs. The fifth was the most ridiculous of all. Jessi and one of the fortress cooks had nearly come to blows over whether rationed salt meat should be sliced thick or thin. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

By the time I got there, Jessi stood with her arms folded, wearing a face that said you'd better have a watertight argument for me today, while the cook — knife in hand — looked so red in the face I half-expected steam.

"These are fortress rations," the cook snapped.

"Fortress rations doesn't mean you get to slice the meat into paper," Jessi shot back.

"What, are you afraid if we bite too hard we'll put a hole in your treasury?"

"It's called equal distribution!"

"It's called visual fraud!" I stood to the side and, for one fleeting moment, seriously considered pretending I had never walked past this tent. Because no matter which side I took, I felt like I was going to lose credibility as a human being. In the end, there was nothing for it.

"How about this," I said, feeling my soul die a little.

"Half the tray sliced your way, half sliced ours. We'll send both to the dragoons and see which one gets us yelled at first." They both turned to look at me. Then, to my mild horror, they both shut up.... Right. Sometimes the most effective form of mediation isn't logic. It's outsourcing the blame to the group most qualified to complain. In this case, obviously: Lei Lian's six hundred dragoons. I did, in fact, carry both trays — one thick-cut, one thin — to their tent.

The verdict came back in less than a quarter hour. The scar-browed veteran took a bite of the thick-cut plate and delivered her judgment with complete calm.

"This tastes like meat." Then a bite of the thin-cut.

"This tastes like the memory of meat." The tent nearly collapsed under the laughter. And just like that, the matter was settled. Sure enough, not long after, the kitchens at Three Rivers Fortress quietly adjusted the thickness of the salt meat sent to the dragoon outer camp. When I found out, all I could do was shake my head in reluctant admiration, while feeling a complicated kind of sympathy for the local cook who'd been quietly overruled.

Turns out six hundred mouths really can be more persuasive than a page of official rationing policy. Anyway. For the first few days after Olivia hung that "living line" title around my neck, my days looked roughly like this: Mornings, at the artillery sheds, talking people out of treating the wind like a personal enemy. Middays, at the worksite, listening to mage-engineers accuse each other of carving guide-runes like a drunk trying to walk a straight line.

Afternoons, back at the local quartermaster's, confirming whether the forage and dried dragon meat tallies had been miscounted again. Evenings, at the dragoon outer camp, walking straight into an argument over whose wyvern got groomed first. Nights, back at the main tent, running through the day's collection of problems — the kind not yet big enough for a formal order, but guaranteed to breed maggots if left alone — one by one, for Olivia and Ignicia.

There were moments I genuinely wondered whether this counted as a promotion. Because the job description was starting to sound suspiciously like "senior errand runner, with a minor in civilian dispute resolution." And the part that really made me want to sigh was this— I was actually pretty good at it. Not because I was particularly talented. Purely because my position here was awkward — awkward to precisely the right degree that just about anyone could exchange a few words with me.

The local garrison knew I wasn't the type to throw the Dragon Kingdom's weight around. The dragoons filed me under "brings food, occasionally useful, still very funny." The mage-carpenters at the worksite were the simplest of all — as long as you didn't step on their chalk lines, they barely cared who you were. And Olivia and Ignicia had both, quite visibly, given their silent approval for me to keep threading back and forth through all those gaps. Put plainly— I had become a thread that hadn't snapped yet.

Not a glamorous description. But in a place like Three Rivers Fortress, simply not snapping yet was already something to be grateful for. While I was being dragged across the entire fortress by an endless string of trivial crises, Olivia and the people she'd brought with her were formally settling into our side of daily life. More precisely: her system arrived first. Then, her people followed. The first to find her footing was Adeline.

My earliest impression of her was still frozen in that dust-covered fragment of memory from the auction house in Angel City — a woman whose life had barely still belonged to her. The Adeline standing in front of me now was a completely different matter. The moment she put on House Eisenberg's captain-of-the-guard uniform, it was as though she'd been thrown back into the forge and hammered out anew. Not softened. Quite the opposite.

It was the particular kind of steel you get left with when every past humiliation, every indignity, every moment of being appraised like an object, gets burned straight into the bone instead of breaking it. She was quiet. But not absent. She stood there like a closed door. She didn't talk much, didn't move without reason — but you knew something stood behind that door, and that it wasn't something you got to touch casually.

The first thing Olivia had her do, after placing her on our side, wasn't go around making introductions. It was to let her watch. Watch the camp layout. Watch the entrances and exits. Watch the distance from the main tent to the outer camp. Watch who usually sat where, walked which routes, whether the night watch rotated, and which path between the medical tent and the supply tent bottlenecked fastest. She seemed to be measuring the entire place with her eyes alone.

After two days of watching this, I finally couldn't resist asking Olivia.

"What exactly is she doing?" Olivia was reviewing a freshly delivered outer-camp deployment ledger at the time, and didn't so much as look up.

"Redrawing your daily perimeter into a shape that can actually be defended." I blinked.

"... That phrasing is a little terrifying."

"Safety was never meant to be charming," Olivia said, perfectly calm.... Right. Hard to argue with that. Adeline's first real collision with our side came on her third day, right after she formally took over part of the inner-ring traffic routes. Lei Lian was the first to run into her.

I'd just come back from the worksite that day, still holding a materials requisition form the Mages' Guild had shoved into my hands with a "take this to the main tent while you're at it," when I walked into the eastern outer camp and found Lei Lian and Adeline standing beside the narrow path in front of the main tent. Both of them stood very straight. One like a nail. The other like a deadbolt. There was no gunpowder in the air, but this was absolutely not the atmosphere of a relaxed, pleasant first meeting.

My steps slowed by half a beat on the spot. The reason was simple. Lei Lian wasn't the type to warm up to strangers to begin with, and Adeline was visibly not the type to deploy a smile as a social tool either. Put the two of them together, and the scene naturally looked like two freshly honed weapons sizing each other up to see whether the other deserved a place on the same rack. I stood off to the side, doing my best impression of someone simply passing through. Then I heard Adeline speak first.

"The main outer-camp road empties out after the third night watch. If you want to keep the stretch between the main tent and the medical tent passable, it's best not to park the forage wagons here." Lei Lian looked at her.

"That's our night-feed changeover spot."

"I know," Adeline answered, steady.

"Which is why I specified after the third watch — not during the day."

"How many days have you been watching?"

"Three." Lei Lian was quiet for half a second. Then gave a brief, flat nod.

"Thorough." That already counted as high praise. I knew it well. Because Lei Lian's standard praise for most people usually compressed down to a single word: "acceptable." For her to spend an entire "thorough" on someone was practically the equivalent of saying: Fine. You're not here as decoration. Adeline showed no trace of satisfaction. She simply continued, level as before.

"I won't touch your people. My job is to secure the inner ring and the household perimeter first — keep anyone who shouldn't be close from getting close." Lei Lian crossed her arms, voice still flat and hard.

"Then you'd better be clear on one thing."

"Go ahead."

"There's no one here who's completely off-limits, and no one who's completely cleared." She held Adeline's gaze.

"That includes our own people." Adeline didn't answer right away. A short beat later, she gave a low, quiet reply.

"Understood." That was it. No handshake, no pleasantries exchanged. But in those few short lines, each had already shown the other her most important bottom line. Standing to the side, I felt my scalp prickle, thinking that this style of communication was certainly efficient — and devastating to an ordinary person's cardiovascular health. I hadn't even finished processing that before the next one arrived. Jessi. Her collision with Adeline was far more direct than Lei Lian's.

Or rather — someone like Jessi simply doesn't offer anyone a "let's observe each other for two days" grace period. She goes straight for the throat on first contact. That evening, I was crouched by the outer camp fire gnawing on flatbread when Jessi drifted over, wrapped in her cloak, and immediately spotted Adeline organizing the tent-exterior duty rotation a short distance away. Her eyes narrowed first. Then she tilted her head toward me.

Finally, in a voice that unmistakably announced I am about to do something inadvisable, brace yourself accordingly, she asked:"That's the new captain of the guard?" I knew immediately this was going nowhere good.

"Jessi."

"What?"

"Put that expression away first."

"What expression?"

"The one that says you're about to test how sharp a blade is with your teeth." She snorted, didn't put it away at all, and walked straight over. I could only curse silently and follow. Adeline heard the footsteps and turned. Jessi stopped and swept her gaze over her head to toe — quick, and not remotely subtle about it.

"I hear you're Lady Olivia's personal head guard?" Adeline nodded.

"That's correct."

"And in charge of household security on Lord Cedric's side, too?" Here it comes. She'd bitten down hard on "Lord," quite deliberately. Adeline gave no sign of noticing the bait. Her expression stayed level.

"Currently, yes." Jessi raised an eyebrow.

"Currently?"

"Wartime inner-ring personnel shift quickly, and duties adjust accordingly," Adeline answered, watertight.

"But for as long as I hold this position, the lines that need holding will be held." Jessi studied her for two seconds. Then, suddenly, she smiled. Not a friendly smile — the particular satisfaction of someone confirming oh, so you're not made of paper after all.

"Fine." She crossed her arms.

"Then I'll just ask outright. Are you going to stop me if I slip out of my tent in the middle of the night for a drink?" I closed my eyes right there. Of course she goes straight for the most obnoxious hypothetical. Adeline didn't get pulled into the trap. She answered, perfectly calm:"If you're only getting a drink — no." Jessi's eyes lit up.

"Oh?"

"But I'll remember where you went, who you saw, and whether you came back with an extra jug — or one knife short." I nearly laughed out loud. Jessi blinked, caught off guard for a second, then let the corner of her mouth stretch slowly wide.

"... I'm starting to like you a little."

"The honor is mine."

"No — that's usually not a good sign." Adeline, of all things, gave a genuinely earnest nod.

"I'm aware." Standing beside them, I finally couldn't hold it in and laughed out loud. Because the scene was simply too good. Someone like Jessi, who tests people by seeing how much venom they can take, had run headfirst into a person who could catch every line without rushing and quietly fold it straight into a rule before Jessi even noticed. And Adeline hadn't won by out-talking her. She'd won through that steady, unshakeable say whatever you like — I'm already keeping track of all of it.

Which was far more troublesome to deal with than trading barbs directly. And far more effective. Jessi clearly knew it too. So she didn't press for a second round. Instead, she tilted her head, as if recalibrating her read on this person entirely.

"One more question, then."

"Go ahead."

"What if someone tries to slip into Cedric's tent in the middle of the night?" I nearly choked to death on my flatbread.

"Jessi!" She didn't so much as glance at me. Adeline, for the first time, let her gaze settle fully and steadily on Jessi's face.

"That depends on whether she's coming to assassinate him, deliver a drink, or talk nonsense." The fire went quiet for half a second. Then Jessi was the first to break, laughing hard enough that her shoulders shook.

"Good. Very good." She wiped at a completely nonexistent tear at the corner of her eye.

"I take back what I said."

"Which part?"

"The 'a little' part." She gestured at Adeline.

"I am now very much looking forward to watching you deal with every mess this camp is about to produce." Adeline offered one flat reply.

"It would go easier if you generated a little less of it." Jessi choked on that one. Standing to the side, my mood improved immensely. Finally. Finally, someone had managed to shove Jessi back into her box without ever raising her voice. It was deeply therapeutic to witness. Yozora and Alvira crossed paths with Adeline in turn afterward.

Yozora's encounter was the smoothest of all — barely any sparks between them, yet they settled "don't let the guard patrol route trample the ritual zone's night traffic lines" in almost no time at all. Alvira was more direct. Her opening line was:"Keep your people off my arrow crates." Adeline replied: "Keep your arrow crates out of my corridors." Then the two of them simply nodded at each other, as if they'd just completed some crisp, efficient transaction.

Watching it, I arrived at a renewed and deeply felt understanding: when a cluster of formidable women occupy the same space, the most time-efficient form of communication really isn't courtesy. It's drawing the lines immediately, in plain sight. And so I kept on — threading my way through Three Rivers Fortress as that endlessly-tugged living line, while watching Olivia and Adeline wire their own order into our side, piece by piece. The friction between the artillery sheds and the dragoon landing lines eased.

The lumber dispute between the worksite and the archer companies got sorted into separate, properly logged allocations. The local quartermasters still eyed us warily, but at least stopped handing out forage like they were surrendering the family inheritance. Adeline, meanwhile, began quietly taking over certain nodes around the main tent, the inner ring, the medical tent, and the night transit routes. And me — I was still running.

Only now, running no longer felt quite so much like a headless fly with nowhere to land. Occasionally, coming back to my tent at night, a strange feeling would surface. Like this entire fortress — which had never really welcomed us — still hadn't decided to call us its own, but had nonetheless been forced, bit by bit, to learn how to function alongside us. Not closeness. Not trust. More like gears that had spent a long while grinding against each other, finally, reluctantly, beginning to catch.

The sound was still ugly. The motion wasn't pretty. But at least, it was actually turning. And that was probably, in the days before a war, the most realistic and most decent kind of good news there was.