Death is Eternal #457 by GIC
The Margins of Power and The Swamp Makes No Pledges
Contents
The Margins of Power (genre: financial thriller)
The Swamp Makes No Pledges (genre: Florida western)
The Margins of Power
Genre: financial thriller
Word count: 500
The appointment came at noon. Not a vote, not a whisper of choice — just a silver seal from the provisional board, etched with three initials that meant nothing to the people but everything to the bankers.
T.H.W.
Thomas Harrow Willett.
He stepped onto the granite steps of City Hall with the confidence of a man who already owned the building — and the vaults beneath it. Behind him, in the shade of the columns, his campaign adviser turned compliance officer, Brenna Kord, scanned the crowd through smoked lenses.
No one cheered. No one shouted. Just polite clapping, as scripted as the ceremony itself. That didn’t bother Willett. Applause couldn’t be taxed.
New Vire was a city stitched from debt. Five districts, once self-governed, are now consolidated into a single corporate borough under the Dominion Charter Act. Centralized banking. Unified code. One mayor. One balance sheet.
Inside, the mayor’s office had no windows — just reinforced walls, a steel door and direct access to the central ledger: a mechanical archive the size of a stove that tracked every public and private transfer within the city’s financial system. It ticked like a clock, fed by copper cables and a dozen data runners in grey coats.
Willet ran a hand along its brass edge like a priest at the altar.
“Starts with Cavan Holdings,” he said, unbuttoning his collar. “Three properties on Dockside are running unlicensed arbitration rings. Seize and liquidate. Quietly.”
Kord nodded, stylus already moving. “What about D’Arlen Notes? They’ve gone cold.”
“Burn them,” he said. “Leak it to the Night Ledger. Say they were a front for Sons of the Crown. That’ll force the Syndicate into a defensive posture. Once they sell their insurance pool, we buy it at a quarter.”
“That could trigger another liquidity revolt in South Finton.”
Willett smiled. “Then it’s time they learned what kind of mayor they’ve got.”
By dusk, five brokers were arrested on conspiracy charges. A single anonymous tip — conveniently filed from the mayor’s desk — fetched $12,000 and a permanent editorial partnership with the Ledger. Newboys were already shouting headlines by the time the city’s eastbound rails closed for “unscheduled maintenance.”
Across the Saltriver Exchange, screens jittered. Assets froze. The pricing board stuttered mid-flash. Traders held their breath as the word “WILLETT” cascaded across the ticker like a system error.
In the vault below City Hall, Kord poured two glasses of St. Genive whisky and handed one over.
“Here’s to the throne,” she said.
Willett raised his glass. “And to knowing where the margin ends — and where the real power begins.”
Kord tilted her head. “And the people?”
He tapped ash into a brass tray. “The people have a mayor.”
That night, the harbour lights flickered once, then steadied. Above City Hall, a golden beacon glowed against the mist — a key, cast in Willett’s initials, turning slowly in the dark.
Not a symbol of hope. A reminder.
Power didn’t rest in laws or votes. Not in New Vire.
Here, it rested in ledgers.
The end
The Swamp Makes No Pledges
Genre: Florida western
Word count: 1,058
Marshal Thomas Graith rode into Sawgrass Bluff like the east wind — hot, still and unwelcome.
The road was white dust and palmetto roots, the kind of trail that tested the bones of a man and the will of his horse. Behind him, two dozen redcoats kicked up a storm of grit and gnats, their uniforms already damp with Celestine sweat. By the time they reached the square, not a soul remained outside.
Doors closed. Curtains twitched. A dog barked, then thought better of it.
Only one man dared step onto the road: Mayor Albie Dorn — a planter who wore silk neckcloths and always shook with the effort of standing tall.
“We weren’t expectin’ you, Marshal,” Dorn said, his voice thin with heat.
Graith dismounted without a word and handed over a sealed parchment. The mayor broke the wax with the tip of a shaking finger. His lips moved as he read, face greying by the line.
“Martial law?” Dorn breathed. “In Sawgrass Bluff?”
“By authority of His Majesty’s garrison in East Celestine,” Graith said. “The rebellion has spread too far for hesitation. We end it now, or we lose the colony.”
The mayor glanced down the empty streets. “Folks here don’t mean harm, Marshal. They just want to live quiet.”
Graith’s eyes stayed fixed on the steeple of the white church at the square’s end. “They can live quiet. Lay down arms, take the oath and no more blood needs spilling.”
Dorn swallowed. “And the terms?”
“Pardon for all who comply. Amnesty for those who renounce treason.”
“And the exceptions?”
Graith turned his gaze to the swamp before the fields. “Susanna Hart and John Harrow. If captured, they’re to hang.”
At the edge of the Great Sawgrass, where banyan roots kissed the saltwater and the air smelled of lemon vine and rot, Susanna Hart cleaned her rifle in silence. Her fingers were sure and quick, oiled from years of labour and loss.
She had been 17 when redcoats seized her family’s grove over an unpaid levy. Her father died in a Port Calvier prison. Her mother vanished into the salt mines.
Now Susanna led a group of 10, maybe more — farmers, freedmen, swamphands, even the odd preacher — who called themselves the Free Sawgrass Militia. But tonight, she sat alone beside the ruins of an old sugar mill, listening to frogs and planning retreat.
A boy darted from the thickets, panting hard.
“They hung Jebby Grange,” he said. “Hung him at the ferry dock this morning.”
Susanna’s mouth twitched. “Jebby was just a runner.”
“He had cartridges in his pack. Wasn’t even gunpowder — just empty shells.”
From the doorway behind her, a slow voice joined. “Doesn’t matter what he carried. Only that he carried something.”
John Harrow stepped into the light, tall and lean, a lawyer once before the rebellion. Now his ink-stained fingers tied bandages and drew maps on birch bark. The Crown called him the ringleader, though Susanna did most of the fighting.
“They’ve declared martial law,” the boy said. “Offered a pardon to everyone who lays down their arms.”
“Everyone?” Harrow asked.
The boy hesitated. “Everyone but you two. They say if you’re caught, it’s the noose. No trial.”
Susanna set down her rifle. “So that’s it.”
“They’ve named us,” Harrow said. “Means they’re scared.”
“Means they’ll come.”
The square was filled with heat and soldiers the next morning.
Graith stood on the church steps, flanked by his lieutenants. A preacher held a Bible in one hand and a pistol in the other. Between them, a roll of parchment fluttered in the wind.
“All citizens of Sawgrass Bluff,” Graith announced, voice sharp as a sabre, “are granted pardon under the Royal Order of Celestine.”
He held up the paper. “Any who lay down arms, renounce the Sawgrass Militia and swear loyalty to Crown and Epire may return to their homes unmolested.”
He paused. “With two exceptions.”
The townsfolk stirred.
“Susanna Hart and John Harrow are named enemies of the Crown. If captured, they’ll hang. No jury, no reprieve.”
A murmur grew. A figure stepped forward — a barrel-maker named Wicked Denny, known to speak his mind.
“Then maybe the Crown don’t speak for us no more.”
Two musket shots cracked the air.
Denny fell. Another man shouted. Soldiers opened fire. The square dissolved into chaos.
Smoke poured from the church as someone lit the drapes. Flames leapt skyward.
When it cleared, Graith’s coat was singed, his knuckles scraped raw. Three redcoats were dead. No rebels had been caught.
Graith and his lieutenants entered the swamp on horseback, flanked by dragoons and dogs.
But the Sawgrass swallowed them whole.
For three days, they stumbled through muck and mangrove, swarmed by mosquitoes and unseen things. The sun was a hammer. The water rose to their belts. Then their knees. Then their chests.
By the fourth morning, they found the mill.
It stood quiet and empty, half-choked in vines, the windows broken.
Inside, a jug of water rested on a crate. Above it, a note tacked to a beam.
“You bring your law. We bring the land. Let’s see who bleeds first.”
Graith tore it down. “We ride before they vanish again.”
But Susanna and Harrow didn’t run.
They led the dragoons deeper, into the gut of the marsh where maps went blank and echoes carried strangely.
A dozen redcoats drowned in hidden creeks. Three more fell into traps. Two walked into a wall of hornets.
At dusk, the last of the dragoons dropped from fever. Only Graith remained upright — soaked, starving, lost.
He followed broken reeds toward a clearing and stepped into a circle of rifles.
Susanna emerged first. Harrow followed.
“Drop the pistol,” Susanna said.
Graith raised it — then hesitated. His hand shook.
“I serve the law,” he said.
Harrow’s eyes narrowed. “Then the law’s a gallows dressed in velvet.”
Graith spat in the mud. “You’ve no right to rule.”
Susanna lifted her rifle. “And you’ve no land to rule on.”
She fired once.
Fraith sank to his knees, eyes wide, then closed.
Two weeks later, Mayor Dorn read a message that had been nailed to the ferry dock post.
The paper was ragged but legible. Signed by the same two names that still haunted redcoats up the coast.
“The people of Sawgrass Bluff are free. Our law is made under sunlight and guarded in shadow. Step lightly.”