Severin's knuckles brushed against the door of Enranth's private study.
There were two knocks.
"Enter," Enranth's voice echoed from within.
Severin pushed the door open and stepped into the room. Glowing gemlamps lit the space. Enranth sat behind a desk of polished timber. He wore a high-collared doublet, reading a copy of Fulmen: Roads, Holds and Markets. His signet ring caught the light as his finger traced the parchment pages.
"My lord, we have bad news and good news."
Enranth shut the book with a dull thump. He leaned back in his leather chair and stared at Severin.
"Let me hear it then. Bad news first," Enranth sighed.
"Our window to operate on the information about the new water stations on Bren has passed." Severin bowed, keeping his hands clasped at his waist. "Our agents lacked time to exploit the unrest. The plan we had in mind could not proceed due to Lord Blackfyre's implementation of the sand beds in all the wards. By the time we passed the instructions to our factors, there was no friction left to leverage."
Enranth snorted. His jaw tightened for a fraction of a second. He reached forward and opened the book again, flipping the cover over.
"And the good news?"
"We successfully retrieved a contraption from the delivery to Mirstone."
Enranth stopped opening the book. His gaze froze on Severin. Severin had Enranth's full attention now.
"The contraption is being delivered to the Castle as we speak."
Enranth smiled. The tension left his shoulders. This was the first concrete victory he had seen for a while.
"However, sire." Severin shifted his weight.
"Yes?"
"The Arcanists demand additional compensation for the operation. This is separate from the blood price for a fallen soldier on their side."
Enranth paused. His fingers tapped a slow rhythm against the edge of his desk. "Very well. I understand that this venture was not part of the original contract. But they delivered on their promise. I will allow it."
"We are to pay them in cores again, Your Grace?" Severin looked confused, his brow furrowing.
"Yes. I settled the ledger with our Patron. We can borrow the offset cores. Inform Maester Vollen to set the allocation. He knows the amounts."
"Yes, your grace," Severin nodded. "We also have other news."
Enranth tilted his head, his gaze sharpening. "Still on Bren?"
"Yes, your grace." Severin gripped his hands behind his back. "There are two more structures going up in Bren. Both are fully funded by Castle Blackfyre."
Enranth leaned forward. "What? What are they for? For what purpose?"
"We have no conclusion as of now. The inner ring site is unclear." Severin paused, pulling a folded sheet of parchment from his inner pocket. "According to aerial descriptions and sketches, the structure has the foundations of a secondary keep."
"That massive?" Enranth asked, leaning further over the desk.
Severin scrunched his brows, looking down at the parchment. "Not exactly, your grace. But from reports of workers on the site, it is deep, not wide."
"Are they building a watchtower in the inner ring? That doesn't make sense." Enranth paused, his eyes narrowing as he mentally mapped the city. "Where is it located?"
"In the previous district where reports claim a highborn mage battled the Lady Blackfyre. We aren't sure if the report on the battle is accurate. As you know my lord, after the supposed event there was a purge."
Enranth nodded slowly. The shadows of the lamplight played across his face.
"I am aware. They started to comb through our factors by that time."
He paused, his eyes narrowing as he thought through the shape of the city.
"But a building like that doesn't make sense inside the inner ring, unless it is a bathhouse or an amphitheater."
His lip curled slightly.
"To my knowledge, Reitz never flaunted his wealth. He would rather keep it locked in useless public infrastructure. Stupid in my opinion, unless he is sure his line will maintain Fulmen for millennia."
Enranth's gaze sharpened into something deadly.
"The Aufsteigfrieden spares no line. It is best to keep wealth where challengers can't pry."
Enranth paused and then took a breath.
"Whatever that is, we must actively monitor it. We still do not have factors inside the inner ring?"
"There are none, I am afraid, my lord. But cracks are starting to form. There are threads starting to unwind which we may be able to pull in the future."
Enranth nodded. "What of the other structure? Is that something we understand?"
"Yes, your grace. It is no small secret. Heralds have kept announcing this in all the squares, especially the ones with the most merchants. The structure is what they are calling an Academy."
"That's a made-up word."
Severin nodded.
"Yes, your grace, but they defined what it is. It is a place where anyone can enter and..." Severin tightened his brows, struggling with the concept. "...apparently, learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic. But it is open to all. Commoners, nobles, bastards. Castle Blackfyre just charges a fee."
"So Reitz is taking his idea of teaching commoner children and spreading it to everyone else?" Enranth laughed. "Has Reitz gone mad?"
Enranth's face turned in color. The amusement drained away entirely when he saw Severin just smiling politely, maintaining his rigid posture. "Looks like there is something else."
"There is more, milord." Severin nodded. "We studied the moves Castle Blackfyre has made. The structure seems to be a response to demand from the merchants."
"From the merchants themselves?" Enranth repeated incredulously, planting his hands flat on the desk.
"Yes. It seems the merchants themselves asked to be taught the techniques of arithmetic the children were learning."
"Why?" Enranth's confusion lined his expression.
"We have no record of the techniques yet. Reports say it is different from what we or the Kanzlei have been taught. They even have a different calculi. It is still unclear, sire, but we may be able to procure one of these books when they are out for public."
"Do so. Monitor this development. This turn of events is peculiar." Enranth didn't hide the distaste on his face, curling his lip. He pushed the thick book aside.
"We have even heard reports of other merchants heading to Bren just for this." Severin tucked the parchment away. "But it is unconfirmed. I heard they were minor merchant houses."
"Not from the Kanzlei, I presume?" Enranth rested his wrists against the timber desk.
"That is a reasonable conjecture, your grace." Severin paused, adjusting his rigid stance. "There is also the matter of the new kiln."
Enranth's eyes narrowed in the lamplight.
"If you recall, you gave me orders to keep an eye on the structure. Since it is in the outer ring, getting information from inside was easy enough. We have a detailed understanding of what it is now. And..."
Enranth's stare grew heavy. He waited in total silence.
"The kiln produces more in a day than what five make in a month."
Enranth's jaw hung open slightly. His fingers gripped the chair arms.
"How?" The word came out flat.
"We aren't entirely sure yet, your grace. But we do know the iron isn't workable yet. It takes smiths down the line for it to be usable. The raw iron their kiln makes breaks easily."
"What are they putting into that kiln? Are the artificers involved?" Enranth asked, leaning forward over the desk, his eyes narrowing into seriousness.
"Reports mention limestone as well, not just ore," Severin said, furrowing his brows tighter. "We need someone to understand its inner workings. I will send one of our top factors over, your grace. We might have some luck."
Enranth nodded. He needed to get to the bottom of whatever was happening in Bren.
Ezra was starting to feel the weight of the Press Office. Thankfully, Dynham and Galwell made it manageable. They were supposed to be guards, but now they functioned more like directors than anything else.
That mattered now. Between the Merchant Academy and the inner ring structure Ezra privately called "The Lab," the amount of coordination required had grown fast.
Right now, the Press Office was handling too many things at once. Truthfully, Ezra wanted Rycharde back just so he would have one more adult subordinate to help manage it all.
Between the leases, the presses, the consumables, the charters, and all the publication and copy requests, there was just too much going on. Ezra was just glad he had staff he could actually rely on. Galwell was a merchant's heir, and Dynham had administrative experience from running his own fief. It had been much smaller than a barony, but the skill translated well enough.
Ezra also had more anecdotal evidence now that magical ability and intelligence had some positive correlation. Not just with Galwell and Dynham, but with all of the Maesters. They absorbed the material from the Fundamentals books far more easily than Ezra had expected. Even Draffen had started using base-ten arithmetic more and more in newer documents.
Truthfully, Ezra had expected more pushback from the Maesters. Instead, it looked like they were hungry for useful knowledge. With the reforms he had pushed and seeded, Ezra thought adoption would take years. Instead, with the press, the academy, and the blast furnace all hitting at once, everything had started becoming too much to handle.
"Galwell."
"M'lord?" Galwell turned.
"How goes our production for the ink and resin stencil sheets?" Ezra asked.
"We're sourcin' it directly from Iron Brand now," Galwell said, crossing his thick arms. "M'father built a whole fabricae just for it. I already struck the bargain with Maester Corvin. We sell exclusively to Blackfyre. M'father's also right pleased about the three presses the Castle leased us."
Ezra nodded. "You should have the charter. I told my father not to charge the lease, and just assume the material cost as payment for the sheets."
"Aye, but we still gotta haul 'em up here for stampin' before we can use 'em," Galwell noted.
"I know it is inconvenient, since your house makes them," Ezra said. "But it is the only way we can track the resin sheets. The stamping must happen inside Castle Blackfyre."
"S'all good, m'lord," Galwell chuckled. "M'father ain't complainin'. He says it's the best bargain he's struck in his life. A wealthy ledger beats a short haul any day."
"What about the presses?"
"Well, since we reached an agreement that the final assembly would be in the inner ring, Iron Brand still makes all the other parts," Galwell said. He folded his thick arms across his chest.
He grinned.
"For m'father it was a proper head-scratcher. He didn't understand how we could've done somethin' like this. Those standard measures definitely helped."
Galwell rolled one shoulder and let out a short chuckle.
"And because of it, m'father is tryna look at different ways to make coin out of the concept." He shook his head, still amused. "Right now we can make around three or four presses a week."
Ezra nodded, then turned to Dynham. He was glad the utility of the standard units was starting to become obvious.
"How goes managing the leases?"
"It's simple enough, M'lord. We just check if they are who they say they are and stamp 'em. What's harder is verifying things for the new publication of Fulmen: Roads, Holds and Markets." Dynham shook his head. "It's a good thing I have a decent relationship with the Keeper of the Peace, else it would've been harder on my end. When patrols are sent near the claimant, I get them to check."
"Sorry about that," Ezra said, lowering his head a little.
"All good. What happens happens." Dynham shrugged.
Finally Ezra turned to Extos. His nose was in a book again.
"Extos," Ezra said.
"My lord."
"How goes the copying?"
"Everything that was vouched by Ser Dynham, we already have a queue for. I set up a system so we can check the sheets and count the paper at the end of the day..." Extos paused and tilted his head, as if he had forgotten something. "My lord," he added.
Ezra nodded.
"I also stationed some junior scribes at the new press points in the inner ring. They can handle direction for the laborers."
Extos huffed like it was a burden. Ezra saw him like this often. Extos did his work well enough as chief steward of the Press Office, but most of the time he would rather read than do anything else. Still, once tasked with something, he made sure it was done so he could go back to reading.
"I've also assigned some of the senior scribes to check the content of the books that are to be copied and make sure there are no errors in the binding and that the pages are in order."
"That's great," Ezra said.
Before the shortage of literate people became obvious, some senior scribes had already been assigned to the Press Office. At first Ezra hadn't wanted to take them. He knew they were too entrenched in their old system and would likely resist the reforms he was pushing. But Reitz had insisted, so Ezra accepted them.
The Kanzlei were a caste, and because of that they thought in ranks. Ezra had come to exploit that. Within their own order, seniority mattered first. Outside it, magic and office could override age. To them, people with magic stood above the ordinary sort. Because of that, even though the senior scribes were older, they did not really object to taking orders from Extos. He was sixteen, which to them was already the age of adulthood, and he stood above them in the structure of the office.
"Okay." Ezra clapped his hands once, then used mana to raise his voice a little. "I am going to make an announcement."
Everyone in the room turned to him immediately.
"Lord Father has officially given us fiscal independence."
Extos tilted his head. He didn't really understand what that meant yet. The two knights did. They grinned from ear to ear.
"This means we will have our own budget and will not have to ask Maester Corvin anymore for every little thing. It means that Castle Blackfyre is acknowledging the Press Office as its own Castle Office."
Galwell and Dynham, Hearth and Caspian clapped, and everyone else in the room followed suit.
"Also, Lord Father has allowed some of the children we have taught in helio inside the castle to help with our procedures here. I know a lot of you are tired because of the things I insist that you read. With the added manpower, they can help us with operations here."
Ezra's retinue and even Extos clapped when they heard this.
Hugo, Louis, and Delmon also clapped with broad smiles on their faces. The other junior scribes who had started teaching the children during helio followed with much the same enthusiasm.
The senior scribes clapped as well, but their eyes did not share the sentiment. Ezra could see the fake smiles on their faces.
He had expected this. It was hard to erase centuries of culture from a people. He just sincerely hoped they wouldn't sabotage the newcomers.