The city had not been lacking in canals before her rule. In a way, that the local rivers discouraged boats meant a lack of contention. The presence of something, though, did not imply good construction nor efficient usage.

She could not rightly say her father or, through writings, her mother had inspired in her how she felt most comfortable with analogies in the form of, in a word, landscapes. It had come early in her life, she knew. That her father's lessons had only been comprehensible to her with this mental aide.

He had been the one to instil in her that the world lacked the clear boundaries others spoke of. He had emphasised how, however others would put weight on a decision, the results stemmed from the implementation. With those two key points, it naturally followed—to her—to view the world, not as cause and effect, but as waves that crashed and blended and followed the landscape. Thus she sought, not to oppose these waves, but to nudge them where she desired them, to direct them with carefully arranged banks no larger than required.

The city had not lacked canals, yet the canals had not followed the landscape of the city.

"I know Ma'am has her reasons. It is my failure that I cannot… consider them," the mayor said, struggling with what word to use.

She did not answer right away, not but for a titter. The two stood atop the city's newest bridge which spanned across a half-dug canal. A busy place, many men working on making it a dug canal. It was, on paper, a trivial task, nothing more than digging up dirt. However, dirt had a habit of becoming anything but trivial once beyond the scale of dust around the house. Not only canals, the roads, too, had shifted much earth.

In the end, it was through doing these trivial tasks well that everything progressed smoothly. There could not be such a thing as a project without issues, she knew, knew well. So she sought to make it such that whatever issues arose could also be trivially solved, even if the scale made the trivial far from trivial.

"Sir should soon resign."

Her words came as if from nowhere, that he seemed to not hear them for a long moment, only to then make it clear he had, his hands on the bridge's side suddenly tense, knuckles white, and unusually still.

"Is my failure truly so great?" he said with a forced levity.

This time, she did laugh, her gentle chuckles falling behind her hand. Once she finished, she returned her hand to the other, resting below her stomach.

"It is not out of dissatisfaction I make this suggestion. Indeed, let us put it to the side for a moment. Pray accept my lecture with good humour however lacking my expertise."

"In all our time together, I have yet to find your expertise lacking," he said, his hands not quite so tense now.

"That is precisely due to my reliance on such experts. This time, I am unfortunately reliant on my own thoughts, neither tempered nor honed by my betters. Still, it is for such thoughts that I am grateful to my betters. That this is, in a very real sense, my attempt to contribute as they once did, to leave those who come after me with another tool for such problems that seem insurmountable at first."

With that said, she chuckled again.

"Not that I am of an education to have such lofty goals. Well, it is not like me to hesitate nor to sound pitiable, so let this lecture begin," she said, a warmth to her voice to match the summer's breeze.

He said nothing, gave a deep nod instead.

"Do you know why I have been pressuring several guilds to send their journeymen out to the smaller towns and villages?" she asked, the warmth gone, yet not cold. The tone she held when speaking of serious matters.

"To be quite honest, my understanding has been that this is but another way to weaken them, even if the particular details elude me."

Her breath came out in a laugh. "Indeed, sir knows me well. To act in spite is not acceptable, though, that any harm is entirely incidental. No, I send those carpenters and metalworkers out because our city is neither coastal nor along a suitable river."

With her pause there, he opened his mouth to respond, only to find no reply forthcoming.

"Your silence speaks loudly," she said lightly, then let out a sigh. "It is like this. The city is, in a very real sense, constrained. If we ignore the matter of food, you might wonder why it is that I would pay so much to import iron from Austria when there likely is much here. That is a reasonable question. It is not as if we have none here who would be willing to work a mine, and we would be able to pay them well while still paying less than we do at present."

As well as she spoke, her words did not come together in his mind. There was a sense of several loose threads ensnaring him which would, at any moment, pull taut. With his own thoughts failing him and her silence continuing, he eventually spoke. "Why, then?" he asked, embarrassed by how simple he sounded asking that.

"We would lack the trees. For all my efforts, there is still much more that could be done if we had more charcoal."

More than any other, he knew her efforts around the city. With those words, though, he now had to think backwards over every such effort, looking for those which touched this topic.

At least, he began to, only to be brought out of his thoughts by her chuckle. "Pray do not miss the forest for the trees, as it were. However much charcoal we had, I would desire more, that it is the case that many important industries rely on such heat. Rather, the matter I would impress is that such things do not appear by some miracle."

Her words settled as a reassurance to him. That did not mean he now lacked something to ponder, though. "There is a natural reach from which the city can acquire certain resources." Whispered words that, while far from novel, felt intensely unsettling at this moment.

"Rather, there is an unnatural reach. Rome could grow to such a size precisely because of its position along the coast and because the Romans built roads both in Italy and from foreign ports."

A chill ran down his back. Still, she had not exactly said something novel; it was the perspective with which she spoke that continued to unsettle him. A grander perspective than a person should have, as if a bird looking down from up high.

"Once more," she said, "pray let us consider another matter. This one should be most familiar. If we ignore the complexities, one may think of merchants in terms of paying animal feed to increase the price of a good. Would you consider that fair?"

Despite his own past, he had no illusions for the profession. Vilified, yes, many merchants rather deserved it. Of course, he had met many others just as villainous in the same vein, who escaped such scorn by hiding behind their particular profession—as if being a carpenter prevented a person from also being a liar and a cheat.

However, that was not what she had asked nor implied. Her words, instead, gave him a sense of security he knew to be false. "I suppose it is fair, albeit simple."

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She smiled—not that he saw—a gentle upturn of her lips, a slight narrow of her eyes. "I would spare you the criticisms I am sure you know well. Rather, with that established, I would then propose that such feed is as if burned, just as charcoal is burned, both necessary for the task and yet without contribution to the final product. That it is not as simple as more feed makes the price higher, just as using more charcoal does not necessarily make a sword any sharper."

He dared not speak lightly, could not refute her words, intensely anxious as he felt her words already undermine his understandings. "I would agree that is still fair," he whispered.

"Farmland is perhaps the most precious resource a ruler may have, which is why so many go to war for more of it. However, through war, they ruin it and, in their conquering, render those conquered far from cooperative. That perhaps none could possibly match how the Ancient Romans established their empire.

"One reason for that, I surmise, is that kings go to war to enrich themselves. That, through conquest, he wishes to grow his own power, something which invariably invites suspicion from his subjects who may worry such power shall be used to diminish their influence.

"Put another way, power that is centred in a single point must be carefully balanced lest it fall."

Although he followed along well enough, there was a certain break between the first point and the conclusion, which he felt compelled to voice. "I confess, I do not see the relationship between this balance of power and with conquering farmland nor with merchants."

Her hand rose to the bridge's side, white glove on sand-coloured stone, a different smile touching her lips. In the end, as beautiful as brick roads had looked, however smooth the surface and however easy to lay, they already began to show wear. She had used the road south from the city to test this idea of hers, to give her brickmakers much work to practice on. Of course, even back then, it had been awkward to move so many bricks, even if they were merely the top layer. A blessing as her more distant roads had since stuck to sturdy local stone while her bricks went towards buildings.

Even if one could not understand a matter, one could near always defer to those experts who had come before. The Romans had certainly not lacked bricks and yet chose to pave roads with stone.

"I suppose, in the simplest terms, I am saying that those who covet thy neighbour are punished. Not because such is sinful, but, perhaps, because that which we call sins are, in a sense, natural, that they are another word for those behaviours which bring about our own ruin, regardless of what judgement the Lord might bring upon us."

Once more, though he followed her words, he felt himself at a loss as to how to consider it a single topic. "Ma'am…" he softly said.

She tittered, her hand up to cover her mouth. "I do apologise that this lecture is not yet polished."

"I appreciate that Ma'am would think me worthy of hearing it before it is polished," he replied, a lightness to his voice.

She gave a small sigh, this time letting go of his platitudes. "One last point, then, before I shall bring everything together. If sir may, what is nine from ten?"

He took a moment to answer. "That would be one," he said.

"And nine from twenty?"

"Eleven," he said without pause.

For a moment, silence fell, the loud silence of men working, dirt dug out one shovelful at a time. However much this matter was considered, however much effort, however much money put into it, in the end, it came down to a man moving one shovelful of dirt. The secret, then, was in how to ensure that many such men could work without pause.

"I suppose you believe I seek to weaken the guilds to strengthen my own position. That is, in all honesty, entirely beside the point. One need only look at how I have… influenced the textile guild to see how false that thought is," she said, her words quiet, yet loud enough to reach him.

She knew him well, he conceded, and her example certainly contested his thoughts.

"If we should think of merchants burning feed, we may also consider that we, too, burn grain. That we burn wines and beers, and we burn cloth, and all those little things which, even if sturdy, nevertheless wear and tear.

"Although the exact amount we would burn is both varied and unknowable, that does not mean such numbers are unreasonable. That, for example, we know about half of all people are girls and women and, if we discount the well-to-do minority, each of them should contribute to their family's clothing, which loosely means that one person should burn half a person's labour in clothesmaking."

Not novel, yet her perspective continued to disorient him. Something about how she presented it making it feel less natural and more like something which… could be controlled.

"Farming families, on the other hand, are even worse in this regard. In making grain, they burn the vast majority. It is certainly the case that our city's people are supported by over ten times as many farmers, not all within the county, that we do import what we may."

He swallowed the lump in his throat, unease growing as she pulled his perspective closer still to hers.

"Of course I am sure I need not spell this out, but, for the sake of polishing this lecture, it would be remiss of me to leave such a gap. If every farming family should produce twice as much grain, rather than support double the population, they could instead support a population ten times the size. That these farming families naturally produce enough to feed themselves, so doubling their production would not mean they eat twice as much.

"Or, more realistically, we need only convince our local farmers to adopt some small changes to double their surplus, which would end our reliance on foreign grain. These farmers, though, have lived this way for centuries. Taxation, while feasible, has the implication of theft, tithes deeply engrained. So then, how should these stubborn farmers be compelled?"

Although it sounded like a rhetorical question, he felt pressured by the silence which followed, a loud silence, louder and louder and louder.

Then she sighed. "From here, it is rather intricate. That, for example, a farmer would first need money to be more productive, whether to buy tools or oxen or such. If we take that for granted, then he would need the opportunity to do so. In the case of tools, that requires certain artisans nearby. Of course, merchants could facilitate this exchange, yet that presses on the first problem of money, and it bleeds into what I spoke of before with burning feed when the goal is to have more grain."

"You would have blacksmiths and carpenters nearby to tempt the farmers," he said, his words coming out unusually slow, careful, his hands still.

Her brief silence was her answer.

"As it is," she said, "we may surmise that towns and cities are, in a very real sense, natural. That, of those peoples we have encountered who do not have them, they are rather disadvantaged. So natural and so advantageous, that a city may burn grain from foreign lands even without conquest.

"However, that does not mean they are, to put it bluntly, without sin. That those common goods like grain and charcoal brought from afar are wasteful, burning feed. That there is no need for a city to be such a size."

There, she paused to catch her breath, not that she had sounded winded, but had spoken with a subtle enthusiasm, that little quicker than when she merely recounted facts.

"To return to the farmers, we may take them as a place to begin, being that most land is farmland and most peoples farmers. If we carefully reason through what it is they burn, we may, in a very real sense, produce a plan for what towns and city they may support and which may support them. That these places would reduce waste in moving common goods, that less charcoal would spoil."

Her hand which rested on the bridge's side now turned over, open, to then slowly close, as if she grasped in her hand something imperceivable.

"In doing so, it is true that, for example, guilds would lose the power their monopoly brings. However, that loss is for the gain of everyone else. That, in truth, I wish to empower all. That this ideal I seek is not one of domination, but a vast and sturdy foundation of selfish cooperation. That I need only align the county's prosperity with the self-interest of each person—and vice versa."

At last, she drew back the curtains, revealing that which she had crafted in all its glory.

And he, he knew her well. She had a habit of giving people good reason to stay on her good side. So this idea, this culmination of her lecture, it was not novel to him that she thought this way. Nothing she had said today had been particularly novel.

No, she never spoke of novel things. Novel things had not yet been tested, refined, thus a waste of effort if they proved to be merely a novelty.

However, all together, presented without hesitation, it left him beyond shaken. It was not what she had spoken of. Rather, it was how she had spoken—as if she truly could reach out and reshape the world with a mere gesture.

Silence, the loud silence of men digging, earth moved one shovelful at a time.

"As enlightening as that lecture was, how should it explain my resignation?"

A soft question, timid, unlike him.

"My trust in you is reflected in the power the mayorship holds. Going forwards, though, I would have such powers split between those talented in each particular area. Rather than take such powers from you, I would prefer that you step down and find such a particular area which would benefit from your experience and talents."

He listened with a small smile, one which, at her conclusion, broadened. "Am I to think Ma'am has such an area already in mind?"

"I thought you might enjoy travelling. There are some towns and cities I would like to encourage trade with, yet, to do so properly, it would be best to negotiate some common grounds. Matters of accounting, scales and measurements, these things which would benefit from a diplomat with particular knowledge of commerce and fluency in Italian."

Laughter filled him, but did not spill, stained his mouth with a rueful smile. "Perhaps I would."

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