Petrov Hull, heir to the prestigious Honeysuckle family and reluctant envoy of Longsong Stronghold, had never imagined that he would be forced to return so soon to the muddy, noisy backwater of Border Town.
Truth be told, the young nobleman harbored zero desire to travel up the freezing Redwater River during the brutal storms of winter—much less to abandon the heated salons and military security of Longsong's stone fortress while demonic beasts were actively ravaging the western frontier. However, when Duke Ryan himself had summoned Petrov into his private study three mornings ago and slapped a heavy parchment bearing the royal wax seal of King's City onto the table, personally ordering him to deliver the "urgent missive" directly into the Fourth Prince's hands, Petrov had swallowed every excuse on his tongue. In Longsong Stronghold, one did not say no to the Duke.
Before boarding his barge, Petrov had already learned the explosive contents of the letter tucked inside his leather saddlebag.
In fact, the news was no longer a secret anywhere in the realm; from the marble palaces of the southern aristocracy to the smoky taverns of the river merchants, the entire Kingdom of Graycastle was reeling in shock.
King Wimbledon III—the ruthless, iron-fisted monarch who had ruled the kingdom for decades—was dead.
Even more scandalous than the King's sudden demise was the official story of the regicide: the assassin's blade hadn't been wielded by a foreign spy or a Church inquisitor, but allegedly by the King's own eldest son and natural heir, First Prince Gerald Wimbledon.
According to the dramatic proclamations sung by royal heralds across the capital, the tragedy had unfolded at dizzying speed. Immediately following the discovery of the King's poisoned and stabbed body in the royal bedchamber, the Second Prince, Timothy Wimbledon, had stepped forward under the mantle of filial duty to prevent the kingdom from collapsing into anarchy. With Prince Gerald locked in chains in the palace dungeons and accused of high treason, Timothy—as the second in the line of succession—had immediately declared himself Regent and imminent heir to the throne of Graycastle.
Behind closed doors, however, almost nobody with half a brain in the noble courts actually bought Timothy's heroic narrative.
Every aristocrat who knew how to read between the lines of palace politics noticed how suspiciously convenient—and how blatantly staged—Gerald's swift arrest and trial had been. During the brief public interrogation in the Great Hall, the once-proud First Prince had only been seen from a distance: drugged out of his mind, physically broken, and gagged with iron chains so he couldn't utter a single word in his own defense before being dragged to the block.
When several conservative ministers in the court had nervously requested a formal investigation into the poisoning before placing the crown on Timothy's head, the Second Prince had answered with naked steel. Backed by the corrupt Prime Minister and the bribed commanders of the Royal Guard, Timothy had silenced the dissenters overnight. Across the masquerade balls and merchant halls of the capital, whispered rumors all pointed to the obvious truth: Timothy himself had orchestrated his father's murder, framed his older brother to eliminate his strongest rival, and then wept crocodile tears as he stepped into the still-warm royal boots.
Yet in the game of thrones, whispering about guilt meant nothing against a man who already held the executioner's axe.
The exact hour Timothy seated himself upon the Gray Iron Throne in the Hall of Stars, he had issued his first blood-soaked royal decree—summoning every surviving son and daughter of King Wimbledon III scattered across the borders to return to King's City immediately.
The message was as clear and chilling as a funeral bell: the five-year contest for the crown decreed by the late King was officially over. By ordering his siblings to abandon their territories and ride back to the capital before the winter snows even melted, Timothy was forcing them into a fatal binary trap.
With his sharp merchant's mind, Petrov Hull understood the brilliance of Timothy's gambit immediately.
If Prince Roland, Princess Garcia, and Princess Tilly obeyed the summons, left their fledgling armies behind, and walked into King's City to mourn their father, they would be placing their necks directly under Timothy's guillotine—legitimizing his usurpation before quietly "dying of grief" in a palace bedroom a month later. Conversely, if any of the siblings refused the call and stayed in their frontier domains, Timothy could immediately brand them as unfilial traitors and accessories to Gerald's regicide, giving the crown full legal authority to march the royal armies against them in the spring.
In the western region, every royal courier bound for Border Town had to pass through the river docks of Longsong Stronghold first.
When Duke Ryan had broken the outer dispatch seal and read a copy of Timothy's decree three days ago, the ruler of the western territory had let out a booming laugh that echoed through the fortress.
To the Six Great Families of Longsong, Timothy's seizure of the throne was a gift straight from the heavens. Two weeks ago, right after Petrov had returned from Border Town in disgrace with tales of a twelve-foot concrete wall and an arrogant foreign count, the hot-headed Count Elk had privately bribed eight veteran sleepers inside Border Town's outer patrol to assassinate Roland's guards and burn his winter granaries.
That unauthorized plot had ended in an unmitigated disaster. Not only had the saboteurs been butchered in the dark by Roland's monstrous military commander, but the Fourth Prince had retaliated with icy, unprecedented ruthlessness—marching his musket-armed soldiers out to the border estate of Baronet Dmitry Hill, the minor noble who had acted as Count Elk's middleman for the silver, and hanging the nobleman by the neck from his own gatehouse in broad daylight!
With noble blood spilled on the snow, the cold war between Longsong Stronghold and Border Town had crossed the point of no return.
Originally, the cautious Duke Ryan had been forced to swallow his fury and wait for the four Months of the Demons to end before marching his knights east, since attacking a royal prince during a demonic siege without a mandate from the capital looked too much like open rebellion.
Now, Timothy's royal summons had handed Duke Ryan the ultimate legal weapon on a silver platter!
If Prince Roland obeyed the letter and rode back to King's City, Border Town—along with its new cement walls, its rich iron mines, and its mysterious workshops—would fall straight into Duke Ryan's lap without a single sword being drawn. And far better yet: if Roland refused to leave Border Town during the winter, Duke Ryan had a direct warrant from the new King to brand the Fourth Prince a rebel and crush Border Town by military force under the patriotic banner of the crown!
Remembering the humiliating way Count Arthur and Commander William had mocked him at the concrete wall during his last visit, Petrov Hull should have felt triumphant as his heavy riverboat cut through the icy current of the Redwater River.
Instead, a cold knot of dread sat in the pit of the young envoy's stomach.
On his last trip, he had walked into Roland's castle bringing arrogant trade demands; today, he was walking into the lion's den carrying news of a murdered father, a butchered brother, and a thinly veiled death warrant. If the Fourth Prince had already hanged Baronet Hill for bribing guards, Petrov wasn't entirely certain his own diplomatic title would keep his head attached to his shoulders if Roland lost his temper.
Yet as the three-day voyage upriver neared its end, Petrov's anxiety was gradually overshadowed by sheer, mounting bewilderment.
Because the Redwater River was fed by warm currents from the southern interior, the main channel remained navigable even while blizzards howled across the banks. Seeking relief from the stuffy cabin, Petrov wrapped himself in a heavy sable-lined cloak and stepped out onto the frost-covered bow deck, peering through the portholes and over the wooden railing at the passing landscape.
What he saw—or rather, what he didn't see—made his brow furrow deeply.
The Months of the Demons had already been raging for nearly a week. By every historical precedent Petrov knew, a frontier town that refused to evacuate to Longsong Stronghold before the first snow should already be in its death throes. He had expected to see frozen corpses littering the riverbanks, smoke rising from burned cottages, and ragged mobs of starving peasant refugees fleeing downstream in panic to beg for Longsong's scraps.
There wasn't a single fleeing refugee on the southern road. The riverbanks were quiet, orderly, and completely free of carnage.
Then, as the barge rounded the final bend two miles below Border Town, Petrov's jaw dropped open.
During his first visit in late autumn, when Count Arthur and Commander William had escorted him out to the southern clearing to show off their twelve-foot concrete rampart, the fortifications right along the muddy river docks had still been little more than staked-out ditches and wooden forms.
Now, stretching seamlessly from the main southern wall all the way down to the water's edge stood a brand-new, towering wing of dark-gray hydraulic concrete, complete with angled bastions and covered firing platforms overlooking the river channel!
And before Petrov could even process how they had poured and cured another hundred yards of solid stone in the freezing cold, a second impossibility sailed right past his bow.
Gliding smoothly downriver on the opposite bank, riding low in the black water under the weight of a full cargo hold, was a large, twin-masted merchant barge flying the green-and-gold pennant of the Willow Town Free Merchants' Guild!
Petrov rubbed his stinging eyes with both gloved hands, staring at the passing cargo ship as if he were hallucinating.
A commercial merchant vessel... sailing out of Border Town in the dead of the Months of the Demons?! Petrov's mind reeled. Even in the middle of spring, seeing a big Willow Town barge this far west is notable—yet they are actively loading and exporting manufactured goods while demonic beasts are throwing themselves at the walls?! That means Prince Roland didn't even need to pull all his miners and dockworkers off production to hold the ramparts! How in the name of the gods is an isolated mining town fighting a winter war on one side and running a booming export economy on the other?!
Twenty minutes later, when Petrov's vessel bumped against the timber pilings of the Border Town pier, the envoy's unease multiplied tenfold.
The rickety, unguarded wooden dock from his previous visit was gone. Standing at the foot of the pier was a newly constructed stone-and-timber customs guardhouse. The exact second Petrov's gangplank touched the snowy planks, four burly militiamen dressed in identical boiled-leather uniforms and thick gray cloaks—each man carrying a long, oiled iron thunder-tube across his chest—stepped out of the heated shelter in crisp formation, barring the path as their sharp eyes scrutinized every boatman on deck.
Clearly, under the ruthless administrative hand of Count Arthur, Border Town had been locked down under strict martial law: not a single merchant, peasant, or Longsong spy could step off a boat or walk out of the town without presenting identification and submitting to a thorough search.
Stripped of his four personal guards—who were ordered to remain on the boat under the watchful muzzles of the dock sentries—Petrov was escorted up the snow-cleared gravel road toward the castle keep like a prisoner on parole.
Just as on his previous visit, Prince Roland chose not to receive the envoy in a cold council chamber, welcoming him instead inside the heated ground-floor dining hall.
When the heavy oak double doors swung open, however, Petrov paused on the threshold in surprise.
Missing from the long polished oak table were the two terrifying foreign advisors who had dismantled him last month: neither the icy Count Arthur nor the grinning giant Commander William was anywhere in sight, leaving only Chief Knight Carter Lannis standing like a steel statue three paces behind the Prince's chair.
Even more astonishing than their absence was the table itself.
While Longsong Stronghold had already instituted winter meat rationing among its lower retainers—and Petrov himself had spent the last three days on the freezing river chewing salted bacon and hardtack that nearly cracked his molars—Prince Roland's table looked like a midsummer harvest feast in the capital.
Neat kitchen maids were just setting down steaming silver platters of honey-glazed ham grilled in oil, golden fillets of crispy fried river fish, bowls of creamy mashed tubers with melting yellow butter, and—most impossible of all in the middle of a blizzard—a wide ceramic bowl filled with fresh, crisp green lettuce and wild herbs dressed in olive oil, harvested that very morning from some heated glass greenhouse Anna had helped warm in the backyard!
Sitting at the head of the table in his clean dark tunic, Roland took a calm sip of red wine and gestured with his knife toward the empty chair halfway down the wood:
— "Have a seat and warm yourself, Ambassador Petrov. A three-day boat ride against the northern wind is no small ordeal," — the Prince said smoothly.
It was a blatant, devastating display of economic dominance—and Petrov's traitorous stomach surrendered on the spot.
Swallowing his noble pride alongside a mouthful of saliva, the hungry envoy sat down, bowed his head, and dove into the hot roast meat and fresh greens with barely disguised desperation while Roland ate in unhurried silence.
Only after the main platters were cleared away and a dish of preserved autumn fruit was set on the linen cloth did Petrov wipe his mouth, straighten his burgundy velvet doublet, and return to the grim reality of his mission.
Setting his silver fork down neatly, the diplomat reached inside his coat, pulled out the heavy, parchment scroll stamped with the black-and-crimson mourning wax of the Tower of Hermes and the Royal Crown, and held it out across the table with both hands in the formal posture demanded by centuries of court protocol.
At the head of the table, Roland wiped his fingers on a linen napkin, took the scroll, and used the rounded tip of his butter knife to unceremoniously crack the sacred royal wax seal in half—leaning back slightly against his high-backed chair so the candlestick shadows obscured his eyes as he unrolled the parchment.
His gray eyes swept swiftly down the ornate, calligraphed lines.
King Wimbledon III is dead? Murdered by Gerald, and Timothy has seized the regency?
Inside Cheng Yan's head, the news didn't trigger a single flicker of filial grief or sorrow. To a modern engineer who had woken up inside this body a month ago, the late King was a complete stranger—and even inside the residual memory fragments of the original Fourth Prince, Wimbledon III was remembered only as a cold, distant tyrant who treated his children like venomous scorpions locked in a jar to see which one survived. The old king had merely been the largest piece on the political chessboard, and now that piece had been knocked off the table exactly as Arthur had predicted weeks ago.
Still, sitting across from Duke Ryan's envoy, Roland knew that total silence looks suspicious—yet tearing his hair out or pretending to weep for a father everyone knew he despised would look like a cheap farce.
Keeping his face set in a cold, unreadable mask as he read the second half of the scroll—where Regent Timothy "mercifully" ended the succession contest and ordered Prince Roland to abandon Border Town and report to King's City before the end of winter—Roland raised his left fist to his mouth and let out a dry, muffled cough to cover the calculation spinning behind his eyes.
So this is the trap Timothy and Duke Ryan cooked up between them, Roland thought coldly, lowering his hand and rolling the heavy parchment back up with slow, deliberate movements. Timothy wants me in the capital so he can chop my head off next to Gerald's, and Duke Ryan is grinning in Longsong because he knows I can't leave during the Months of the Demons—which hands him a royal warrant to brand me a traitor and march his armies against my wall the day the snow melts.
Tapping the rolled scroll once against the oak tabletop, Roland raised his calm gray eyes to meet Petrov's nervous, expectant gaze.
— "I have read the decree, Ambassador," — Roland said, his voice completely level and stripped of all emotion, declining to offer a single word of mourning for the dead King in front of Longsong's messenger.
Down the table, Petrov shifted uncomfortably on his wooden chair, deeply unsettled by the Fourth Prince's icy composure in the face of regicide and an impossible ultimatum.
— "I-I offer my deepest condolences for your royal father's passing, Your Highness," — Petrov stammered, clearing his throat carefully. — "Given the urgency of His Majesty Regent Timothy's command that all members of the royal bloodline return to King's City immediately... what answer shall I carry back to Duke Ryan and the capital? When will Your Highness's retinue be packing to depart?"
Reaching out with his right hand, Roland picked up his pewter goblet of spiced red wine, swirling the dark liquid slowly against the candlelight.
— "Depart? In the middle of the Months of the Demons?" — Roland raised one eyebrow, giving a slight, fatalistic shrug as if the question itself were absurd. — "Even if my heart were burning with an uncontrollable desire to rush back to the capital and fall into the warm, loving embrace of my dear brother Timothy, Ambassador... I am bound by my duty as a royal lord. Look out that window. We are at the height of the winter siege, the roads are buried under three feet of snow, and ravenous packs of demonic beasts are throwing themselves at my ramparts every afternoon. Think with me as a fellow nobleman, Petrov: if I pack my bags and ride away on a boat tomorrow morning, what will happen to the two thousand loyal subjects of Border Town who trusted their lives to my walls?"
Across the linen cloth, Petrov swallowed hard against a dry throat.
If he had been sitting across from the old, cowardly Prince Roland two months ago—or any other corrupt aristocrat in the western region—a humanitarian speech like that would have been a laughable excuse that Petrov could easily dismantle with a polite, venomous smile about how a King's edict outweighs the lives of ten thousand mud-diggers.
Sitting inside this warm hall today, however—having just walked past a twelve-foot concrete fortress wall, armed musket patrols, and the shadow of Baronet Hill swinging from a rope—Petrov felt a cold, primal fear of the young man at the head of the table. For the first time in his privileged life, the Honeysuckle heir genuinely hated his job as Duke Ryan's mouthpiece.
Bowing his head low to avoid those sharp gray eyes, Petrov retreated behind strict diplomatic formality:
— "Your Highness's devotion to the common people of the frontier is truly noble," — Petrov said carefully. — "Shall I prepare a formal written explanation of this delay to carry back to the lords at Longsong Stronghold and the royal courier?"
— "There is no need to trouble your clerks; I will write it for you right now," — Roland replied smoothly.
Snapping his fingers once, the Prince summoned a waiting castle scribe from the side door to bring a sheet of fine rag paper, a brass inkwell, and a sharpened goose quill directly to the head of the dining table.
Without a single second of hesitation, Roland dipped the nib into the black ink and wrote out a short, brisk, five-line response in bold, slanting strokes. Folding the paper into a neat square, he dripped a generous pool of melted crimson wax over the seam, slammed the heavy brass signet ring of the Fourth Prince down into the wax, and slid the sealed letter down the polished oak table until it stopped right in front of Petrov's plate.
— "Deliver that directly to the royal courier waiting at Longsong, Ambassador. You may return to your barge whenever you finish your fruit," — Roland said, dismissing him with a nod.
Standing up from his chair and bowing from the waist, Petrov picked up the warm, wax-sealed square of paper.
As the envoy's eyes instinctively dropped to read the recipient line scrawled in wet black ink across the front of the folded sheet, Petrov froze for half a heartbeat—and a fresh wave of cold sweat broke out beneath his velvet collar.
The formal address written in Roland's hand read simply:
To My Brother, Prince Timothy Wimbledon.
Not His Majesty King Wimbledon IV, and not even His Royal Highness the Prince Regent.
By deliberately stripping every royal title from the address, Prince Roland wasn't just delaying his trip until spring; he was spitting directly onto Timothy's newly seized crown in front of the entire western nobility!
Clutching the radioactive piece of paper inside his coat as if it were a live bomb, Petrov bowed hastily, backed out of the dining hall without touching another grape, and practically fled down the corridor toward the river docks.
The moment the heavy oak double doors thudded shut behind the pale envoy, the calm, diplomatic mask vanished from Roland's face.
Turning toward one of the kitchen maids clearing the side platters, the Prince gave a brisk order:
— "Leave the dishes for a moment and go up to the second-floor administrative study. Tell Count Arthur that the messenger from Longsong just delivered a royal decree from the capital, and ask him to join me down here immediately."
Three minutes later, the unhurried, measured click of leather boot heels echoed down the stone hallway.
Pushing open the dining hall door, Arthur stepped inside, closing the heavy panels behind him and smoothing down the front of his tailored dark-gray wool suit before walking calmly over to the head of the table.
Taking one look at the broken black-and-crimson royal wax seal lying beside Roland's wine goblet and the grim scowl on the Prince's face, Arthur didn't even need to pick up the parchment.
Pulling out the wooden chair three feet to Roland's right—the exact seat Petrov had just vacated—the twenty-four-year-old strategist sat down with his usual effortless composure and crossed one leg over the other.
— "So the courier from King's City finally made it upriver," — Arthur remarked conversationally, resting his clasped hands on his knee. — "Timothy finished poisoning the old man and pinning the knife on your brother Gerald."
Roland's gray eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at his strategist, resting both elbows on the table.
— "You already knew the exact script of the coup down to the framing of Gerald," — Roland said, lowering his voice now that only Carter Lannis stood out of earshot by the far doors. — "Tell me, Arthur: back on that first day when you and William were analyzing our timeline, why didn't you warn me before winter that Timothy was going to murder our father and seize the throne this month?"
— "Because warning you a month ago when we had zero steam engines, zero rifles, and four hundred miles of mud between here and King's City would have accomplished nothing except adding a useless distraction to your plate," — Arthur replied with clinical bluntness. — "King Wimbledon III's death and Gerald's execution are fixed opening moves on the board. Timothy is ruthless, greedy, and deeply paranoid—which makes him dangerous in the capital, yet entirely predictable from a distance. He ended the letter by ordering you to abandon Border Town and report to the palace before the snow melts, didn't he?"
— "Word for word," — Roland growled, rubbing his forehead in frustration as he pushed the scroll across the wood. — "And Duke Ryan made sure his lapdog Petrov delivered it personally so he has witnesses. If I get on a boat and go to the capital, Timothy poisons my wine before I reach the palace steps; if I stay here to defend my people, Duke Ryan uses my 'defiance of the new King' to rally all six noble families of the west and march on Border Town the day the ice thaws. They've painted a legal target right on my chest."
Sitting beside him, Arthur didn't look troubled in the slightest.
— "Relax your shoulders, Your Highness. Timothy believes he just placed all of his siblings in checkmate with that piece of paper, yet he made the classic blunder of every arrogant usurper: he assumed the other players on the board would sit still and play by his rules," — Arthur said, a cold, razor-sharp smile touching the corners of his mouth. — "In reality, that decree just guaranteed that Timothy won't have a single spare soldier to send west against you for the next six months."
Roland paused, raising an eyebrow. — "He won't? Why not?"
— "Think about your other two competitors in the succession contest, Roland," — Arthur explained, raising two fingers. — "First, look to the south: your third sibling, Princess Garcia Wimbledon, the Lady of the Port of Clearwater—the exact same ambitious sister who planted your late maid Tyre in this castle to poison you. Garcia is ten times prouder and more capable than Gerald or Timothy ever were. Do you honestly think a woman who controls the wealthiest maritime port in the south is going to bow her neck to Timothy's guillotine because of a parchment scroll?"
Roland's eyes lit up as the geopolitical map clicked into place.
— "Of course not," — Arthur answered his own question smoothly. — "The moment Timothy's courier steps off his horse in Clearwater, Garcia will tear that decree in half, declare Timothy an illegitimate regicide, crown herself the rightful Queen of the South, and use her maritime gold to raise a massive rebellion army. Within eight weeks, she will be marching north up the coast—forcing Timothy to commit every single royal legion he has just to keep his own throat from being slit from the south!"
Roland let out a slow breath, his engineer's mind immediately appreciating the strategic buffer. — "A full-scale civil war between the capital and the southern coast... That leaves Timothy completely tied down. What about my fifth sibling—my younger sister Tilly down in Silver City?"
At the mention of the Fifth Princess, Arthur reached up with two fingers to adjust his collar, a faint, enigmatic gleam flickering in his dark eyes.
— "You don't need to worry about Princess Tilly either, Your Highness," — Arthur said mildly. — "Once that decree reaches Silver City today, Tilly won't bow to Timothy, and she won't waste lives marching an army against the capital. She will simply pack her bags and vanish off the map of Graycastle entirely for a while."
Roland blinked, tilting his head in genuine confusion. — "Vanish off the map? What do you mean by 'vanish'? Is Timothy sending royal assassins to Silver City, or is she going into hiding in the eastern kingdoms?"
— "Neither," — Arthur waved a pale hand dismissively through the air, as if swatting away an irrelevant fly. — "Nobody in Timothy's court is capable of laying a finger on Tilly. Her departure is... a much grander logistical relocation that has zero bearing on our western border right now. We have more than enough variables on our own plate without worrying about her shipping schedule."
Recognizing that Arthur was once again locking a piece of future meta-knowledge behind his teeth until it became tactically relevant, Roland let out a dry sigh and let the subject of Tilly drop.
— "Alright, if Garcia is going to keep Timothy's neck in a vise all spring, that leaves only Duke Ryan and Longsong Stronghold in front of us," — Roland said, leaning back in his chair.
Standing up from his seat, Arthur walked two steps over to the head of the table, glanced down at the ink-stained quill resting beside the brass inkwell and the faint smudge of red sealing wax on the wood, and looked down at the Prince with an approving smirk:
— "And judging by the wet ink on that quill, I see Your Highness already sent Petrov back down the river with the exact stalling play I would have recommended," — Arthur noted smoothly. — "What Duke Ryan wanted today was an angry, defiant refusal so he could declare you a traitor before supper. You lied to him and promised to leave in the spring, didn't you?"
— "I wrote a five-line note addressed to 'Prince Timothy' stating that while I acknowledge the call to return, my sacred duty as a Wimbledon lord requires me to remain behind my walls until the last demonic beast of winter is dead and my citizens are secure," — Roland confirmed, a sharp, cold smile matching Arthur's curving across his lips. — "I told him I would set out for the capital the day the spring thaw clears the roads."
— "Textbook bureaucratic procrastination wrapped in noble virtue," — Arthur praised, clasping his hands behind his back as he turned to walk toward the hall doors. — "By promising to obey as soon as the snow melts, you threw the political hot potato straight back into Duke Ryan's lap. He knows perfectly well you have zero intention of going to King's City, yet to maintain his righteous facade in front of the minor western lords, he is now legally forced to sit on his hands until the final day of winter waiting for you to break your promise. And by the time the ice on the Redwater River melts in three months..."
Stopping at the heavy oak doors, Arthur glanced back over his shoulder, his dark eyes cold and absolute in the torchlight:
— "...Our revolving rifles will be mass-produced, our field cannons will be mounted on wheeled carriages, and William and I will have finished our business in the northern peaks," — Arthur finished quietly. — "Don't lose a single hour of sleep over Timothy's throne, Roland. Keep the forges burning—by the time Duke Ryan marches east in the spring, he will be marching straight into his own funeral."