---
Not useless in the complete sense. Not yet. But useless against difficulty, which often mattered more.
Mihos turned slightly when his butler stepped in from the side and bowed. The old man had served long enough to read temper the way merchants read grain shortages. He did not waste words.
"Young master."
Mihos did not ask if the new message was good. That would have been beneath both of them.
"Say it."
"The western pressure has failed to hold." The butler's voice remained perfectly smooth. "And Dawn House counteraction has spread faster than expected."
Mihos smiled.
Not pleasantly.
"Expected by whom."
The butler, wisely, did not answer that question directly. "Iron House is losing structure."
Yes.
That part Mihos already knew.
He looked past the pavilion line toward the fading horizon. The city lay beyond it, still out of sight from this angle, but close enough that the insult of it felt near.
He did not like losing.
He had never liked losing.
