Margins of Growth

Mireya Solen hated caravans.

They were inefficient by design—too slow, too visible, too vulnerable. Every crate was a liability, every guard an expense, every mile a negotiation with chance. If the Free Cities Compact truly valued progress, it would abandon wheels altogether and invest properly in transit circles.

But wheels were cheap. And cheap things survived.

She leaned against the rail of the coastal road, watching the caravan descend toward Lirren Port. From above, the city gleamed as it always did—white stone terraces layered down toward the sea, sails crowding the harbor like fallen leaves. Prosperity, carefully curated.

The messenger beside her shifted nervously. He was young, city-born, still unused to the quiet that came with altitude. “We’ll reach the gates by dusk,” he said, as if reassurance were part of his job.

Mireya did not respond.

She had read the dispatch three times already.

Trade disruptions along the western routes. Unseasonal storms. A failed grain exchange with the central plains—not hostile, merely delayed. Always delayed, lately. Small inefficiencies accumulating into something larger.

No one in the Compact liked to talk about patterns unless they could be monetized.

The road curved, revealing the lower districts—workshops, counting houses, temporary housing for laborers whose contracts renewed monthly. Mireya’s gaze lingered there longer than it did on the marble spires of the Speaker’s Hall.

That was where consequences surfaced first.

“Tell me,” she said at last, “how many ships were lost this quarter?”

The messenger hesitated. “Officially?”

She exhaled through her nose. “Unofficially.”

“Seven,” he admitted. “Possibly nine. Two were never confirmed.”

Mireya nodded. Noted, filed away. “And what explanation are they using?”

“Piracy,” he said quickly. “Or weather.”

“Of course.”

They resumed walking.

Lirren’s gates were open wide, banners snapping overhead in the sea wind. Guards waved them through with barely a glance—Mireya’s seal did that. She passed through streets alive with trade: shouting dockhands, clattering carts, arguments in three languages at once.

This was the Compact at its best. Movement. Choice. Momentum.

And yet.

She stopped near a fountain where workers queued for water, their voices low. A woman glanced up, recognized Mireya, and quickly looked away. Not fear. Something closer to resentment.

Mireya’s mouth tightened.

She continued on alone, dismissing the messenger with a nod. The Speaker’s Hall loomed ahead, its glasswork catching the sun. Inside, debate would already be underway—numbers traded like weapons, futures gambled by consensus.

Before she entered, Mireya paused.

Erynd’s voice surfaced in her memory, uninvited.

Anticipation is how you misjudge.

She scowled. Erynd was wrong about many things. Anticipation was survival. Preparation was mercy. You did not wait for catastrophe to explain itself.

You built ahead of it.

Inside the hall, voices rose and fell in familiar rhythms.

“—temporary disruption—”

“—acceptable losses—”

“—opportunity if managed correctly—”

Mireya took her place without ceremony.

“Expansion,” she said, cutting cleanly through the noise, “is no longer optional.”

Silence followed—not immediate, but spreading, like oil across water.

She met their gazes one by one. “Our margins are shrinking. Our dependencies are growing. Someone—” she emphasized the word “—is preparing for a future that does not include us.”

A Speaker leaned forward. “That is speculation.”

“So was the last war,” Mireya replied.

Murmurs. Resistance. The usual.

She welcomed it.

“If we wait,” she continued, “we will be reacting instead of deciding. And reaction is the most expensive choice of all.”

A pause.

“And if expansion provokes conflict?” someone asked.

Mireya thought of the woman at the fountain. Of lost ships. Of delayed grain. Of the way the world had begun to feel narrower, lately.

“Then we survive it,” she said. “Better wounded than unprepared.”

Far from the coast, across borders and beliefs, a pressure was building. Mireya could not name it yet, but she felt its shape—like a tightening spiral, drawing lines inward.

When the debate resumed, louder than before, she let it wash over her.

Progress had never been clean.

And she had long since accepted the cost.