Before the arrival of the red ships, the primary preoccupations of Thane Llewellyn I had been the buildup of his market quarters and the patronage of artists throughout his demesne. These were “investments,” he had explained to his son and heir, who would need to continue such investments, and his heir afterwards as well, if Recife was ever to challenge Nachtturm’s economic and cultural dominance of Sudholm. Llewellyn’s heir, an eight-year-old whose future regnal name had not yet been chosen, struggled to understand at first how such petty developments over time could add up to a societal engine that could
