Of the Various Provinces That Concern Us

The chapters that follow concern every place with a bearing upon Your Grace’s position, whether directly, as neighbours and trading partners, or indirectly, as powers whose arrangements decide Daub’s fortunes from a distance.

A demarcation first. To the Singhapura mind, the North means Wattle, Daub, the Great Northern Waste, and even Ealdorfold beyond: the frontier, the periphery, the place that is always in the process of being managed. To a northern mind, the South means Singhapura entire: the empire, its dominions, its long shadow.

Your Grace is in the unenviable position of inhabiting both at once, answering to Wattle while presiding over a city that the Empire treats as a piece upon a board it controls. It is my hope that by describing these lands and their affairs a little more closely, this work may be of some use in the matter.

I had intended to include a great deal more on geography and historical development. Upon review I have discarded most of it. The arrangement of streams and hills is pertinent, but it does not much describe the present, nor can it be relied upon to augur the future. I have instead endeavoured to furnish Your Grace with an account of political realities: how each place is governed, where its pressures lie, and what its present course means for Daub.

Singhapura is the largest fact in Your Grace’s world, and I have treated it accordingly. It is the condition against which everything else is measured.

Yet I have not treated the western powers as remote. Lusian money is already inside Daub’s commercial life, as it is inside every significant economy in the known world. Rosantic free companies walk Daub’s streets. Both powers offer Your Grace something the Empire cannot easily replace: alternatives, and roundabout ways of getting things done. I have endeavoured to set down the strengths and weaknesses of both.

Ealdorfold is further off and less immediately pressing, but I have included it because it is culturally foundational to the North. Culture is an odd force. It will flee before an army and then, given enough years, bring down the king who sent it; and I would ask Your Grace not to pass over that chapter.

Tangowan I have included as a warning rather than a partner, and Your Grace should read it with Daub in mind throughout.

The Dvorak Elves maintain the most comprehensive geographical and political record available. I have recommended obtaining a copy of the Annales Historici, and I do so again here. For those who prefer a living source to a written one, the Lesser Theoretical University and the Daub Merchants Guild can, between them, produce an expert on almost any subject covered in what follows. Ask both, if possible, and compare notes, since men of great wisdom in one subject are often great fools in others.

Folio IX · The World According to Art

Transcribed by Victor Konara