Chapter 9

With breakfast out the way, Boyd and Emily got the official tour of some of the property.

They soon learnt that the Marcus clan were very well off. They owned some three thousand, six hundred hectares of land. Boyd knew that there were a hundred hectares in 1km². So, owning 6km² of land was a lot of land to his way of thinking.

He knew cattle properties in Australia could be measured in many 100km². Even so, these people didn’t run cattle in semi-arid conditions. The islands were spread from the tropical to the temperate zones but seemed to get a fair amount of rain.

They also had horses, oxen, pigs, chooks, goats and a queer animal they called a camla. It was found wild on the island and had been hunted by the hyenas. Camla were similar to an angora alpaca in looks and temperament.

The camla have shaggy coats, longish necks and legs, but they had a more bovine mouth structure indicating they preferred grasses to shrubs. They didn’t grow as big as cows, so they didn’t need as much acreage to feed.

The Marcus clan also grew barley and several types of wheat like emmer and millet. Lupin beans were used to refurbish the soils and feed the animals, and to his surprise, they had corn (maise). Apparently, they found it growing on the island and took a liking to it.

They had vineyards, olive groves and orchards with apples, apricots, plums and peaches. They also grew dates and lemons. Oddly, they didn’t grow the other citric versions like oranges, grapefruit and mandarins. They also grew heaps of herbs and other vegetables.

Boyd then learnt that while they had met most of the principal family, they also hired over thirty people all year round. They lived in houses located on different sections of their land, as did some of the family he hadn’t met yet.

Depending on what time of year it was and what they needed doing, whether it was with the animals or what they grew, they then hired at least another thirty to fifty people from the local area.

Since birth rates had dropped over the last two hundred years, they had to become more inventive due to labour shortages and lack of mages. Hence, they discovered better ways to harness electricity. They had apparently known about it for a long time.

Oddly, to Boyd, they didn’t seem inclined to build transport that used electricity or combustion engines. Plus, they didn’t have access to large coal seams or black oil to drive those types of engines.

Hence, they went towards more environmentally friendly ways right from the get-go to produce their electricity. Interestingly they liked building huge windmills. Their long shafts drove gearboxes that turned generators as well as being able to pump water up from a well with the shift of a lever on the gearbox.

They had also put a lot of thought into the storage of electricity. This was when Boyd learnt about the crystal that was in the medallion around his neck. Apparently, it could store a lot of both electric charge and magical energies. They also made great lightbulbs.

Of course, Boyd was fascinated by this discovery.

When they sat down for dinner that night, Julia had news.

She did let Boyd take the edge off his hunger before she told everyone what had happened in the Senate that day. First, she had to give Boyd and Emily a brief rundown of how the Senate worked.

To start with, the newbies learnt that the Islands did, in fact, have a Queen. While Marcella was affiliated with one of the other powerful families, the Sextus clan. She wasn’t a mage or the highest-ranking wizard. That privilege belonged to Catia Marcus.

Each city and the major towns could ask to be considered big enough to have a representative for their area in the Senate. As it stood, they had thirty-two members that represented the people of the Key Islands.

Next, they had a High Senate that was made up of High Mages that represented each of the five largest islands. Since half the population lived on Tye island, it got two representatives. Catia was the Queen’s chief advisor and also a member of the High Senate as the only wizard.

Queen Marcella was the only one who could overrule the High Senate. They generally only saw the major issues that affected the islands as a whole, and they dealt with policing or magical issues. They didn’t have a huge issue with crime, but it wasn’t unheard of.

The Senate did most of the real work but were overseen by the High Senate, who could put in their two bobs worth as they saw fit. An issue could even be bumped up to the High Senate this way.

Julia informed her audience that there was a lot of shock in the Senate when she voiced Boyd’s problem of not making sure the general population also got a fair go at having a child.

They liked the lottery idea and ruled that each earthman would produce one extra child as part of the lottery. They would do that in one year and before they were auctioned off again.

Boyd wasn’t a hundred percent happy, but he was the one who mentioned it, so he would have to pay the penalty. No good deed goes unpunished.