BANG—CRACK!
The iron-rimmed wooden wheel of the carriage slammed straight into a deep pothole in the castle courtyard, throwing the vehicle sideways and making Ambassador Petrov's teeth snap together so hard he nearly bit the tip of his own tongue.
Groaning under his breath, the young envoy from Longsong Stronghold braced a gloved hand against the padded interior wall until the carriage finally lurched to a halt on the uneven flagstones.
When the footman pulled the narrow door open, Petrov stepped down onto the stone, wincing as he straightened his cramped legs and smoothed the wrinkles out of his expensive burgundy velvet doublet with a discreet, irritated sigh.
Looking around the gray, austere walls of the fortress, Petrov curled his upper lip in quiet disdain.
Everything he had heard back in the warm salons of Longsong Stronghold was clearly true: Border Town was the ultimate dead-end trash heap of Graycastle. It was a forgotten backwater of mud, ignorance, and illiterate miners, useful for nothing more than scraping raw iron out of the earth and bleeding copper coins into the pockets of the western nobility.
And yet, as Petrov adjusted the feathered cap on his head and took a breath, his brow furrowed slightly.
Something was off about the town that afternoon.
When his barge had docked at the Redwater River pier twenty minutes earlier, he had expected to find the streets packed with panicked peasants tying bundles to handcarts in preparation for the annual winter flight to Longsong. Instead, the streets near the docks had been eerily quiet, and the few townsfolk he passed walked with a brisk, purposeful stride rather than the hollow shuffle of starving beggars.
Even the smell hanging over the castle hill was different. The thick plumes of smoke rising from the inner courtyard chimneys didn't carry the familiar, resinous scent of burning pine logs; it smelled harsher, hotter, and distinctly metallic — like roasted limestone and burning sulfur.
Before Petrov could dwell on the strange odor, a tall castle guard wearing a polished breastplate and a completely blank expression stepped up to his side, gesturing silently toward the main keep.
Even the guards here looked different from the drunken rabble Petrov's predecessors had described in past reports. The soldier didn't slouch, didn't ask for a copper tip, and marched up the stone steps with a rigid, rhythmic cadence that made Petrov feel less like an honored guest and more like a prisoner being escorted to a tribunal.
Following the silent guard down the drafty, torch-lit corridors of the ground floor, Petrov mentally rehearsed the arrogant opening speech he had prepared during the boat ride.
In Petrov's mind, this mission was supposed to be an easy formality. He would walk into the hall, find the infamous Fourth Prince drowning his misery in cheap wine, toss the new twenty-percent grain tariff onto the table, and watch the boy-prince beg for credit before signing the evacuation papers.
Then the two guards at the end of the corridor pulled open the heavy oak double doors to the main dining hall.
Petrov took one step across the threshold with his chin raised high — and stopped dead in his tracks.
The scene inside the hall looked nothing like the pathetic court of a defeated exile.
At the far end of the long, polished oak banquet table sat Roland Wimbledon, the Fourth Prince of Graycastle. He wasn't slumped over a goblet of wine, nor was he wearing the gaudy, ill-fitting silks of a spoiled teenager. Dressed in a clean, dark-collared royal tunic, Roland sat with one elbow resting casually on the armrest of his high-backed chair, his gray eyes sharp, calm, and terrifyingly focused.
Even more surprising to Petrov was the man sitting immediately to the prince's right.
Hunched slightly over a thick stack of parchment scrolls, studying the columns of ink with clinical, unblinking intensity, was a young man with pale skin and neatly trimmed short black hair. He wore a finely tailored tunic of heavy dark-gray wool accented with silver thread — a cut of clothing that was understated, spotless, and carried none of the loud, puffed-sleeve fashion of Graycastle's local gentry.
And standing just three paces behind the prince's left shoulder, right beside Chief Knight Carter Lannis, was a second stranger: a tall, broad-shouldered young man in a navy-blue doublet whose muscular arms were crossed over his chest, looking at Petrov with the relaxed, predatory grin of a wolf sizing up a fat sheep.
— "Lord Envoy, please, do not stand on ceremony by the door. Come in and take a seat," — Roland said, his voice polite and cordial on the surface, yet carrying a heavy, unmistakable weight of absolute command that echoed off the stone walls.
Gesturing toward the empty chair halfway down the table, Roland didn't even wait for Petrov to reply before raising his hands and clapping twice.
Clap. Clap.
Before Petrov could finish his formal court bow or figure out who the black-haired advisor was, the side doors leading to the castle kitchen swung open.
One after another, a line of neatly dressed maids marched into the hall carrying large pewter and silver platters piled high with steaming food.
The moment the covers were lifted, a wave of rich, mouthwatering aromas flooded the cold stone room — roasted garlic, melted herb butter, seared game meat, and fresh wheat.
Petrov's stomach let out an embarrassingly loud, hollow growl beneath his velvet doublet.
Right in the center of the table, the maids set down a whole golden-brown roasted chicken, a massive leg of wild boar swimming in a thick reduction of forest mushrooms, two wicker baskets overflowing with hot, soft white bread brushed with melted butter, and a colossal tureen of vegetable soup seasoned with expensive southern spices.
Staring at the steaming feast, Petrov had to swallow a mouthful of saliva by sheer force of will.
The river voyage from Longsong Stronghold up the Redwater River to Border Town had taken two long, miserable days even with a favorable autumn wind behind the sails. Had he traveled on one of the heavy, flat-bottomed ore barges that fought the current loaded with cargo, the trip would have dragged on for four or five days. Because small river vessels couldn't safely carry open cooking hearths below deck, Petrov's entire diet for the past forty-eight hours had consisted of cold, salted beef strips as tough as leather boot soles and dry hardtack biscuits that nearly chipped his molars.
Seeing a banquet of this quality served in a supposedly starving mining town was a slap in the face to everything Petrov had been told before leaving Longsong.
Clearly, the royal brat is emptying his last pantry just to put on a brave front for Duke Ryan, Petrov convinced himself, fighting down his hunger as he walked over and took his seat.
Thanks to years of strict etiquette training in the noble courts of the west, Petrov kept his spine straight and his face neutral as a maid poured watered wine into his goblet.
However, as he looked down at the white linen cloth in front of his plate to reach for his utensils, Petrov froze.
Next to his plate sat a small iron steak knife and a shallow soup spoon.
And right beside the knife, where a noble's two-pronged silver meat fork should have been resting, lay two thin, seven-inch sticks of pale, polished oak wood, tapered slightly at one end.
Petrov blinked twice, wondering if a clumsy kitchen maid had accidentally dropped two pieces of kindling onto the tablecloth.
Curious and slightly bewildered, he raised his eyes toward the head of the table to see how the host was eating.
Roland had just used his small knife to slice off a bite-sized piece of roasted boar leg. Setting the knife down on the edge of his plate, the prince picked up the two thin wooden sticks between the thumb and fingers of his right hand.
With effortless, almost magical dexterity, Roland pinched the slippery piece of meat and a glazed mushroom between the tips of the wooden sticks, lifted them cleanly to his mouth without dripping a single drop of sauce, and ate.
Even more bizarrely, to the prince's right, the pale, black-haired scholar was using an identical pair of wooden sticks with even faster, sharper precision — picking up individual peas and cubes of diced root vegetables from his plate as if he had been born holding those twigs in his hand.
Over to the left, Commander William wasn't bothering with elegance at all, happily using his wooden sticks like high-speed pincers to shovel three pieces of roasted chicken onto his bread at once.
Seeing the envoy staring wide-eyed at the wooden sticks with his hands frozen in his lap, Roland paused mid-chew and pointed the tips of his sticks politely toward Petrov.
— "What do you think of our new dining tools, Ambassador?" — Roland asked, breaking the silence with an easy smile.
— "Eh? Forgive me, Your Highness... what are they called?" — Petrov stammered, caught completely off guard.
— "We call them chopsticks," — Roland replied, twirling the two smooth wooden rods effortlessly between his fingers before holding them up to the candlelight. — "As a man of the court, you know as well as I do that a forged metal fork is an unthinkable luxury for ninety percent of the population in Graycastle, let alone a fork made of silver. Because of that, every miner, farmer, and craftsman in my territory eats by shoving food into their mouths with their bare hands."
Roland's expression turned serious, adopting the tone of a concerned ruler:
— "When a man spends twelve hours digging in muddy shafts or handling raw ore, and then uses those exact same unwashed fingers to tear his bread, it is inevitable that filth goes down his throat along with his supper," — Roland explained smoothly. — "My chief advisor here, Count Arthur, recently demonstrated a fascinating medical principle from his homeland to me: 'Plagues and stomach rots enter the human body directly through the mouth.' Have you ever heard of such a theory in Longsong Stronghold, Petrov?"
Petrov blinked rapidly, his gaze shifting from the prince to the calm, black-haired man sitting beside him, who simply continued eating without breaking rhythm.
The young ambassador opened his mouth, then closed it again, completely at a loss for how to answer. He had no earthly idea what "microscopic plagues entering through the mouth" meant; according to the teachings of the Church and every physician in Longsong, when a peasant died of stomach flux or fever, it was simply the gods punishing them for laziness or bad air, having nothing to do with a bit of honest dirt under their fingernails.
Still, judging by the grim context, Roland seemed to be implying that the high mortality rate of Border Town's workers was caused by eating with dirty hands.
Before Petrov could formulate a polite platitude about the mercy of the gods, the black-haired man set his wooden sticks down neatly across the rim of his plate, picked up a linen napkin to dab the corner of his lips, and spoke.
— "Look at the problem through the lens of economies of scale, Ambassador," — Arthur said, his calm, velvet-smooth voice cutting through the hall and instantly commanding Petrov's full attention. — "How many tens of thousands of these smooth, hygienic wooden sticks do you think our carpenters can turn out by felling a single medium-sized oak tree in the southern forest? They require zero iron ore to forge, they can be boiled in clean water after every meal or thrown into the stove when worn out, and their production cost is practically zero. Starting next week, we are distributing them to every household and worker canteen in Border Town to cut winter sickness in half."
Arthur paused, offering Petrov a polite, razor-thin smile that didn't warm his cold eyes in the slightest:
— "Ah, forgive my lack of courtly introduction," — Arthur added, inclining his head an inch. — "I am Count Arthur. Merchant, scholar, and senior alchemist of the Kingdom of Dawn. My military colleague, Commander William, and I have traveled to Graycastle to place our modest resources and knowledge at His Highness's disposal — and to ensure that when the contest for the succession ends, the royal crown rests squarely upon Prince Roland's head."
Gulp.
Petrov swallowed a half-chewed piece of bread practically whole, feeling it scrape all the way down his esophagus as his eyes widened in genuine alarm.
The Kingdom of Dawn?! A foreign Count and senior alchemist backing the Fourth Prince?!, Petrov's mind raced frantically, every political assumption he had brought onto the boat crashing down around his ears.
He wasn't sitting across from an isolated, penniless teenager who had been abandoned by King Wimbledon III anymore! If Roland had somehow secured the private backing of a wealthy overseas earldom or an alchemy guild — which would explain the rich banquet on the table and the strange industrial smoke outside — then the leverage of the Six Great Families had just been cut in half!
Taking a slow sip of watered wine from his goblet, Roland picked up right where Arthur had left off.
— "Of course, teaching my people to use clean utensils is only the first step toward a productive city," — Roland said conversationally, setting his cup down. — "Right now, the miners and farmers of Border Town survive on a miserable diet. Very few of them ever taste fresh meat, and their winter grain is full of chaff. A man who is half-starved cannot swing a pickaxe or defend a wall. Count Arthur and I are currently finalizing a series of trade and agricultural reforms to turn that bleak reality upside down before the new year."
Feeling the ground shifting beneath his feet, Petrov took a deep breath, scrambling to regain his footing on familiar diplomatic turf.
He knew how to play this game. Putting on his most charming, reverent court smile, Petrov bowed his head over the table and launched into a flowery speech — praising His Highness's boundless benevolence, calling his care for the commoners a shining example of royal virtue, and praying that the gods would bless his noble vision.
Inside his own head, however, Petrov was sneering with pure aristocratic contempt.
Letting every filthy ditch-digger and coal miner eat fresh meat and wheat bread every day like a lord?, Petrov scoffed silently behind his polite smile. What a laughable, childish pipe dream! That isn't statecraft; that is the utopian lunacy of a boy who has never managed an estate in his life! Not even the wealthiest earldoms in the central plains of Graycastle waste good meat on common peasants, and this fool wants to try it in the poorest mudhole on the western frontier!
For the next twenty minutes, the rest of the meal proceeded in a tense, polite dance of small talk.
Finally, when Roland gave a small wave of his hand and the maids stepped in to clear away the meat platters, leaving only small silver dishes of sugared dried fruit and hot herbal tea on the table, Petrov straightened his burgundy doublet.
The pleasantries were over; it was time to earn his keep for Duke Ryan.
— "Your Highness, I must thank you again for a truly magnificent meal," — Petrov began, his tone shifting into the formal, clipped cadence of an official trade commissioner. — "Which brings me to the primary duty of my visit today. According to the commercial treaty signed between Border Town and the Merchant Council of Longsong Stronghold, today is the scheduled date for the autumn delivery of raw iron ore and rough gemstones. However, when my vessel docked at the Redwater pier an hour ago, and as my carriage passed the river warehouse yard... I could not help noticing that the loading docks were completely empty. Not a single crate of ore was waiting for our barges."
At the head of the table, Roland slowly laid his wooden chopsticks down across his napkin, his relaxed expression turning heavy and solemn.
— "It is a terrible tragedy, Ambassador Petrov," — Roland said, letting out a long, theatrical sigh that sounded completely genuine. — "Unfortunately, three weeks ago, the main extraction gallery of the North Slope Mine suffered a catastrophic structural collapse. It was an absolute disaster for our operations."
Petrov's eyebrows shot up toward his hairline.
— "A... a collapse, Your Highness?" — Petrov repeated sharply.
— "A massive cave-in along the primary fault line," — Roland nodded gravely. — "For the past month, I have had to pull every single miner off extraction duty just to shore up the timber supports, rescue the trapped equipment, and prevent the entire mountainside from sliding down. Tens of thousands of tons of dead rock are still blocking the lower shafts. Based on the engineering and labor assessments calculated by Count Arthur here, even if we work day and night, we will not be able to clear the rubble and resume normal ore output until early next spring at the absolute earliest."
For two seconds, Petrov's mind raced, wondering if he should demand to ride a horse up to the North Slope right now to inspect the shafts with his own eyes.
Almost immediately, however, he dismissed the idea.
If the Prince and this scheming "Count Arthur" had decided to play the mine-collapse card, riding up the hill would be a waste of time; piling a few hundred cartloads of loose rock and broken beams at the mouth of a dark mine tunnel was the easiest thing in the world to fake, and accusing a royal prince of lying to his face without proof would ruin Longsong's diplomatic cover.
Instead, Petrov narrowed his eyes and went for the secondary angle, choosing his words with extreme care:
— "A mine cave-in is truly a heartbreaking stroke of misfortune, Your Highness," — Petrov said smoothly, leaning forward over his tea. — "However... what happened to the autumn stockpile? Even if the shafts collapsed three weeks ago, the miners worked all through late summer. Where is the iron ore that had already been dug up and stored in the warehouses before the accident occurred?"
Before Roland even needed to open his mouth, Arthur reached out and flipped open a thick, leather-bound accounting ledger on the table with a sharp snap of parchment.
— "There was no surplus stockpile to begin with, Ambassador," — Arthur cut in, his voice dropping to the cold, implacable tone of a corporate tax auditor dissecting a fraudulent company.
Running a pale finger down a column of ink figures, Arthur raised his eyes and pinned Petrov to his chair:
— "I have personally audited every single daily extraction log of the North Slope Mine for the past five years," — Arthur stated flatly. — "Every ounce of ore dug out of that mountain during late summer was immediately loaded onto your August barges just to pay off the compounding interest on last winter's grain debt. Under the crushing quota stipulated by your Six Great Families' 'commercial convention,' the malnourished, poorly equipped workers of this town have never been able to set aside a single pound of reserve ore. When the tunnel roof came down, the warehouse floor was already bare."
As Arthur slammed the ledger shut with a dull thud, Roland leaned forward, resting both forearms on the table as a dark, cold shadow seemed to fall across his face.
— "Ambassador Petrov, since you are an educated man of Longsong's court, I assume your memory is not so short that you have forgotten the catastrophe that hit this very town during the Months of Demons just two winters ago," — Roland said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous rumble.
Petrov felt his stomach tighten into an ice-cold knot.
Of course he remembered it — every noble family in Longsong Stronghold knew the ugly truth of what had happened two winters ago, though nobody spoke of it in polite company.
During that brutal four-month winter, when a freak early blizzard had cut off the river road before the evacuation could begin, Border Town had been left to fend for itself. By the time the snow melted in spring, nearly half of the town's working population had died agonizing deaths from starvation and hypothermia inside their mud shacks.
And the sole cause of that man-made slaughter had been the insatiable greed of the former town governor appointed by Longsong Stronghold, Sir Reynold — a corrupt noble who had embezzled two-thirds of the town's winter grain funds to buy luxury estates in the west.
When the scale of the mass graves had come to light, there had been outrage among the commoners and even a few progressive lords in the capital who demanded Reynold's head for destroying a royal mining town. Yet in the end, not a single hair on Reynold's head had been touched — for the simple reason that Sir Reynold was married to the favorite second daughter of Duke Ryan himself. Family nepotism had quietly buried eight hundred frozen corpses.
Hearing the Fourth Prince drag that filthy skeleton straight out of the closet and drop it right onto the banquet table sent a chill of pure dread down Petrov's spine.
— "I can assure you, Petrov, that if we follow the old trade rules this year, the death toll will make Reynold's winter look like a picnic," — Roland continued, his gray eyes flashing like cold steel. — "Even if I scrape together the tiny handful of low-grade ore lying around the outer pits and hand it over to you at the new extortionate tariff rates your Council just sent me, the grain you give us in return wouldn't feed my people for the first eight weeks of snow."
Roland struck his open palm against the oak table, making the silver dessert dishes jump:
— "I am a Prince of the Wimbledon bloodline, Ambassador! I will move heaven and earth to feed the citizens under my banner before I watch them boil their own leather boots to survive!" — Roland declared, his voice ringing with righteous fury across the hall. — "Under the current terms dictated by Duke Ryan, this town is being sentenced to death! Those archaic, one-sided trade methods must be torn up by the roots and abolished immediately!"
Sitting halfway down the table, Petrov opened his mouth to deliver his rehearsed speech about the sanctity of contracts — only for the words to die completely in his dry throat.
He had been trained since youth by the best tutors in Longsong Stronghold to haggle over shipping tariffs, to play minor merchants against each other, and to use polite noble threats to squeeze profit out of weak vassals.
He had not been trained to sit across from a royal prince and a genius foreign count who combined hard, documented accounting ledgers, a sudden geological disaster, and the moral hammer of eight hundred starved corpses caused by Duke Ryan's own son-in-law!
Caught between Arthur's icy numbers and Roland's righteous anger, Ambassador Petrov sat frozen in his velvet doublet — realizing with rising horror that he had walked straight into an ambush, and the real slaughter hadn't even started yet.