The Great Hall of House Walderose had not seen a fire in its central hearth for three long years. On this morning, Lord Aldous ordered the last of their dry pine split and burned. He refused to receive the envoy of the Golden Falcon in the freezing dark.
The flames roared, casting tall shadows against the faded tapestries, but they provided little warmth against the chill that accompanied the opening of the heavy iron doors.
Julian Castellan entered the hall flanked by six heavily armored guards. He wore a pristine coat of crimson wool tailored perfectly to his lean frame, and the air around him carried the faint scent of expensive rosewater and spiced wine.
Lord Aldous sat in the high-backed wooden chair on the dais. He wore his faded fur mantle, his face a mask of exhausted stone. Lady Elara stood at his right side, her hands clasped tightly before her. Seiyuu sat on a small chair near his mother, his dark eyes taking in the situation.
Sergeant Garrick and Kaelen stood at the base of the dais. They were vastly outnumbered by the Castellan escort, but neither of the Walderose guards showed a flicker of intimidation. Kaelen watched Julian's men with the cold, unblinking focus of a hawk.
"Lord Walderose," Julian called out, his voice echoing loudly off the vaulted ceiling. He stopped at the center of the hall and offered a bow so shallow it bordered on mockery. "My father sends his deepest regards. He heard of the poor harvest in the western valley. He sends six wagons of grain to ease the suffering of his neighbors."
"Darius Castellan has never given a gift without a hook buried underneath it," Aldous replied, his voice rough and dry. "State your business, Julian."
Julian smiled. He gestured to a scribe standing behind him. The man hurried forward, unrolling a heavy piece of crisp parchment upon the long oaken dining table that separated the envoy from the dais. The scribe placed a heavy glass inkwell and a silver quill beside the document.
"My father is a business man, Aldous," Julian said, abandoning the false courtesy. "He has spent the last year purchasing the debts of your outer villages. They owe Sunforge a sum of silver that your treasury cannot produce in several lifetimes."
Julian took a slow, measured step closer to the table.
"The grain outside is yours. We will forgive the debts of your smallfolk. We will even guarantee the safety of your roads against the Abyssal spiders moving down from the Crags." Julian paused, letting the weight of the salvation hang in the air. "In exchange, you will sign this treaty. It transfers the deeds of the western copper mines to House Castellan, and formally recognizes Sunforge as your liege lord."
The silence in the Great Hall was absolute. Only the crackle of the hearth fire dared to make a sound.
To sign the parchment was to erase the independence of House Walderose forever. They would become tenants in their own ancestral home, working the mines to enrich the very man who had starved them into submission.
But Aldous looked past the arrogant boy in the crimson coat. He looked toward the heavy doors, knowing his freezing, starving people were gathered in the courtyard just outside. He remembered the cold rejection of Lord Blackwood. And the monstrous spiders tearing through the southern woods.
Slowly, agonizingly, Aldous stood up from his chair.
Elara let out a choked, muffled sob, pressing her hand over her mouth. Garrick bowed his head, closing his scarred eye. They all knew what was happening. Honor was finally breaking under the weight of survival.
Aldous walked down the steps of the dais. He approached the long oak table, staring blankly at the crisp parchment and the silver quill.
Seiyuu watched his father's hand tremble as it hovered over the table.
Yielding now meant a slow, agonizing death for their house. Darius Castellan would bleed them dry over a decade until there was nothing left to inherit. Seiyuu needed the copper mines to fund his own ascension when his Awakening arrived. He could not allow his father to sign away the capital so he needed to break the negotiation.
Seiyuu slipped off his chair. He arranged his face into wide-eyed, childish curiosity. He walked down the steps of the dais, ignoring his mother's breathless whisper for him to come back. Then playfully ran directly toward the heavy oak table, stopping right beside his father's leg.
Julian looked down at the six-year-old boy, a sneer curling his lip. "Keep the whelp back, Aldous. We are doing men's business."
Aldous looked down, his eyes hollow. "Go back to your mother, Seiyuu."
Seiyuu ignored the command. He reached his hands up toward the table, acting as if he were fascinated by the shiny silver quill and the glass inkwell resting beside the treaty.
He rested his fingertips against the cold, thick glass of the inkwell.
Seiyuu closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. He used the River's Breath, drawing the air into his belly. Gathering only the faintest thread of mana, pulling it through his pores and into his right arm.
The burning sensation flared instantly in his dormant channels. He clamped down on the pain with iron discipline. He visualized the current flowing down his arm and out through his fingertips directly into the freezing glass.
Glass is highly vulnerable to rapid thermal shock.
Crack.
The sound was sharp and sudden, like a dry branch snapping underfoot.
The thick glass inkwell violently fractured. A miniature explosion of pitch-black ink erupted across the table. The dark liquid splashed in a heavy wave over the crisp parchment, instantly obliterating the careful calligraphy of the treaty. A second wave splashed forward, splattering directly across the front of Julian Castellan's pristine crimson coat.
Julian let out a startled, furious shout. He stumbled backward, desperately swiping at the black stains ruining his expensive wool.
Seiyuu immediately dropped to the floor, landing on his rear. He let out a convincing wail of terror, clutching his hand to his chest as if the breaking glass had frightened him and as if it was an accident.
The hall erupted into chaos.
Julian's guards instantly stepped forward, their hands dropping to the pommels of their swords.
The scraping of metal against leather hissed through the air. Kaelen was suddenly standing in front of Seiyuu. Her short thigh-blade was drawn, the steel leveled directly at the throat of the lead Castellan guard. She had crossed the distance in a blur, her pale eyes wide and utterly devoid of hesitation. Sergeant Garrick stepped up beside her a heartbeat later, his heavy shield raised.
"Draw that steel an inch further," Kaelen rasped, her voice like grinding glass, "and I will open your veins on this floor."
Julian stopped dabbing at his ruined coat, his face flushing an angry, mottled purple. He looked at the ruined treaty, then at the drawn weapons of the Walderose guards.
Aldous seemed to snap out of his defeated trance. The sight of foreign steel bared near his weeping son ignited a sudden, desperate fire in his hollow eyes.
"Sheathe your weapons in my hall!" Aldous roared, his voice carrying the commanding thunder of his ancestors. He stepped past the ruined table, putting his own body between the Castellan guards and his family. "You come into my home, you insult my blood, and your men threaten my son over a spilled pot of ink?"
"Your brat ruined the contract!" Julian spat, pointing a shaking, ink-stained finger at Seiyuu.
"Then your scribes will have to draft another one," Aldous shot back, standing taller than he had in months. The absolute certainty of surrender had been shattered by the sudden violence. "And they will do it in the guest quarters. This audience is over for the day. Take your men and leave my hall, Julian. Before my patience runs dry."
Julian glared at Aldous. He looked at the heavy blade in Garrick's hand and the terrifying, coiled stillness of Kaelen. He realized he had lost control of the room. He looked like a fool screaming at a crying child over a ruined coat.
"You are testing the limits of my father's mercy, Aldous," Julian sneered, wiping his hands on a linen kerchief handed to him by his terrified scribe. "We will draft a new document tonight. You will sign it tomorrow morning. Or the grain wagons return to Sunforge, and the debt collectors will follow."
Julian spun on his heel and marched out of the Great Hall, his guards falling in tightly behind him.
As the heavy iron doors slammed shut, Elara rushed forward. She raised Seiyuu off the floor, crushing him to her chest, whispering soothing words to calm him.
Aldous stood by the ruined table for a long time. He looked down at the black ink soaking into the ancient oak wood. The tension slowly drained from his shoulders, replaced by a profound, shuddering exhaustion. He looked at Seiyuu, offering a weak, trembling smile.
"Its ok, my son," Aldous murmured, reaching out to stroke Seiyuu's hair. "It was just an accident."
Seiyuu buried his face in his mother's shoulder, allowing his fake cries to subside into quiet hiccups. He kept his right hand tucked against his stomach, hiding the angry red flush of the skin where the Aether had burned him.
He had successfully derailed the negotiation. He had saved the copper mines for the day.
But as his mother carried him away toward the safety of the nursery, Seiyuu knew he had only bought them a single night. Julian would return tomorrow with a fresh piece of parchment, and his father's brief spark of defiance would likely fade.