The revised trade terms arrived four days after the ball.

  The Frostmarch delegation had amended the contract to include a clause requesting southern resin—bulk quantities, ongoing supply, embedded as a condition of the broader agreement. The language was careful: preferred material for aura-stabilisation applications, which was accurate enough to pass scrutiny and vague enough to cover everything else.

  Orestis read the clause twice, arranged his expression into something resembling consideration, and accepted.

  Exactly as designed. Although I’ll need to look appropriately reluctant at the next meeting. Merchants who agree too quickly are merchants who wanted to agree all along.

  He drafted a response that conveyed cautious enthusiasm—language his father would recognise as standard, and that Toren’s advisors would interpret as a merchant who had been given a reason to say yes. Eirene reviewed it before he sent it, adjusting two phrases that she said ‘made him sound too eager by half’.

  He did not argue. She was right.

  ***

  The morning they were due to leave for Theramon, Eirene arrived at his room earlier than expected.

  Well, perhaps not early. We did postpone training for the visit.

  She stood in the doorway for a moment, looking around with the expression of someone who had just confirmed a suspicion she’d been holding for weeks.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said, stepping inside. “Your wards. They’re different from anything I’ve seen in the city.”

  “I would be concerned if they weren’t.”

  She continued. “The warding products in Orthessa use a positional scheme. Runes placed at specific points in a room, aligned to the geometry of the space. They’re effective, but dependent on placement. Move the furniture, and the coverage shifts.”

  He raised a brow. She had been studying.

  “Yours don’t work that way,” she pointed out. “Not in my room, and not in here. The effect isn’t anchored to locations—it’s distributed. Uniform. It doesn’t matter where I stand or where the runes are placed; the coverage is the same.”

  Orestis tilted his head, studying her. “You're raising this now, so I assume it's not a request for instruction.”

  “It occurred to me that you’ve removed most of the precision work. That makes it cheaper to install—and far more attractive.”

  He smiled. There it was again. The merchant’s instinct. Pity the market came with witnesses.

  The warding scheme in their rooms used a resonance topology, treating the enclosed space as a single harmonic structure rather than a collection of discrete anchor points. Each rune reinforced the others through sympathetic feedback, creating a self-correcting field that adapted to changes in the room’s contents without manual recalibration.

  It was elegant, efficient, and approximately fifty years ahead of current theory.

  The layering technique compounded the problem. Standard practice stacked enchantments sequentially—one effect per rune, arranged side by side. His method nested them, folding multiple effects into single rune structures that occupied the same physical space. The result was denser, more efficient, and considerably harder to reverse-engineer.

  That technique was further out. Centuries, if memory served.

  “The principles involved would make it inconvenient to sell,” he said, heading off the inquiry. “If a Consortium enchanter examined the structure closely, they would ask questions I’d rather not answer.”

  She fell silent, head slightly tilted. Orestis recognised that expression.

  He waited, and sure enough—

  “… Eleuthera says she’s not surprised,” Eirene said at last. “Apparently you have a tendency to go to unreasonable lengths with your warding schemes.”

  “I prefer the term proportionate.”

  “She used ‘obsessive.’”

  “She is accustomed to miracles. I am not.”

  A corner of her mouth twitched.

  “She has a point, though,” Eirene said. “Your room is noticeably better than mine. And mine is already better than anything I’ve found for sale.”

  “The methodology is the same in both rooms,” he said. “The difference is refinement. I adjust mine when I can’t sleep.”

  Eirene raised an eyebrow. “You adjust your wards instead of sleeping.”

  “It’s more productive than counting sheep.”

  She gave him a look that suggested she was recalculating how many nights that represented. Then shook her head. “Never mind. We should go. Your mother’s waiting.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “She will have started preparing at dawn.”

  Preparation, in her case, was not a casual undertaking.

  Orestis waited.

  She stared at him. He stared back.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to open the gate?” he asked.

  She’d learned the spell several days ago. Since then, she’d insisted on opening the gateway to and from the forest every morning. She enjoyed it. There was no reason she wouldn’t do it now.

  She blinked. “I like your mother. I’d prefer not to arrive inside her kitchen wall.”

  Now it was his turn to pause.

  Oh. Right. I haven’t talked about this yet.

  “The gateway spell does require precise spatial coordinates. However, there are ways to get around that,” he explained. “When you can’t visualise the coordinates, you acquire visuals. Open the gate high above the general area. Then, you can use the aerial perspective to find the exact location you want. Although, don’t open gates above the cloud line.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Visibility, for one. Defeats the purpose if you can’t see the ground.” He paused. “There is also the matter of flight paths.”

  Her brow furrowed slightly. “Flight paths?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Dragons use the upper atmosphere for long-distance travel. The chances of opening a gate directly in a dragon’s path are negligible.” He kept his voice even. “But not zero.”

  “You’re joking.” She stared at him.

  Orestis smiled at her. “It’s not zero.”

  I managed to do it once. The dragon was not amused. Neither was I, having to debate midair manners for the rest of the afternoon.

  Eirene gave him a flat stare, then drew on Eleuthera’s divine power and opened a gate in the centre of the room. Space parted cleanly. Beyond the aperture, Theramon lay far below—patchwork fields, winding roads, and the dark fringe of forest along the horizon.

  A bit too far south, in his opinion—she’d need more experience to improve her rough estimates. Still, his house was visible, which was sufficient for their purposes. He considered it a success. As expected, she closed the aerial gate and immediately began constructing a second one. It opened at ground level, his front courtyard on the other side.

  “Nicely done,” he said.

  “Yes. A convenient technique,” she replied.

  They stepped through together and closed the gate behind them.

  ***

  The courtyard was smaller than Eirene remembered.

  Not physically—the dimensions were exactly as she recalled from her previous visits. But something about arriving through a gate, rather than by road, compressed the transition. One moment she was standing in an inn room in Orthessa; the next, there was packed earth underfoot and the smell of herbs from the garden along the south wall.

  Avra appeared the moment they stepped through the main door. She took Eirene’s hands in both of hers and held them—not shaking, just holding, as though confirming she was real.

  “Oh, look at you,” she said, warmth so genuine it was almost physical. “You’ve grown so much. Come inside. Come, come.”

  Eirene let herself be guided. Behind her, Orestis followed at a measured pace—close enough to be present, far enough to avoid the immediate orbit of maternal enthusiasm.

  Petros stood just inside the hall. He inclined his head to Eirene—a merchant’s greeting, respectful and contained—then looked at his son.

  “You’re early.”

  “Eirene opened the gate,” Orestis said. “She was motivated.”

  Petros’s gaze shifted briefly to Eirene, then back. Something in his expression settled—not approval, exactly, but the quiet satisfaction of a man whose calculations had been confirmed.

  Avra was already pulling Eirene toward the sitting room, talking about tea and asking whether she preferred honey or sugar these days, and had she eaten, and the journey must have been exhausting even though it was instantaneous, and—

  “Avra,” Petros said.

  “—oh, and we have the rooms ready, not that you’ll stay overnight of course, but just in case—”

  “Avra.”

  “Yes?”

  “Let her sit down.”

  Avra blinked, looked at Eirene, looked at the chair she had not yet offered, and laughed. “Of course. I’m sorry. Please, sit.”

  Eirene sat. The chair was comfortable. The room was warm—not from a fire, which was unlit, but from the even, pervasive temperature regulation that she now recognised as Orestis’s work. She noticed other things too: the absence of any draught despite the open window; the stillness of the air despite the movement of people; the faint, almost imperceptible sense of being enclosed without being confined.

  He had warded his parents’ house. Of course he had. It was the same distributed, harmonic coverage that bore no resemblance to anything commercially available.

  She noticed, and said nothing—and added it to the pile.

  Tea appeared. Then food. Then more food. Then a selection of things that could not accurately be called a meal because no single term adequately described the volume.

  “This is just a small spread,” Avra assured her, which was technically true only if measured against the output of a professional kitchen.

  “It’s wonderful,” Eirene said. And meant it.

  Orestis sat across from her, eating with the careful restraint of someone who knew that commenting on the quantity would only produce more. Petros ate in methodical silence, occasionally glancing at his wife as though monitoring a weather system.

  “Now,” Avra said, settling into her chair with tea in hand and an expression that Eirene recognised instantly. She had seen it on her own mother’s face. It was the expression of a woman who had been patient long enough. “Tell me everything. When did you arrive in Orthessa? How long have you been there? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  The last question was directed at Orestis, who took a very deliberate sip of tea.

  Eirene could have offered a vague answer—a few months ago, for studies—and moved on. But Avra’s kindness had been unguarded. Returning it with evasiveness would have felt ungenerous.

  “I arrived in time for his birthday,” she said.

  The effect was immediate.

  Avra went still. Not frozen—still, in the way a person goes still when they have just received information that requires careful handling, and are deciding exactly how much joy to express without frightening anyone.

  Orestis set his cup down. “It was a coincidence of scheduling.”

  Avra looked at him. Then at Eirene. Then at him again.

  “You travelled to Orthessa,” she said slowly, as though weighing each word before proceeding, “to see my son. On his birthday.”

  “I also had other business in the city,” Eirene said. Which was true.

  Avra nodded, very seriously, in the manner of someone who had already discarded that information as irrelevant.

  “Petros,” she said.

  “I heard,” Petros replied, without looking up from his plate.

  “She arrived for his birthday.”

  “I heard.”

  Orestis opened his mouth. Closed it. Eirene watched him reach for a response, find nothing structurally sound, and retreat.

  She could help him. She could clarify that the timing had been partly coincidental, that her studies at the Mage Consortium were the primary reason, that the birthday had been a pleasant alignment rather than a purpose.

  At that moment, she heard Eleuthera’s voice through the connection she now shared with the goddess.

  You must not correct her. The consequences would be catastrophic.

  A faint thread of concern slipped through Eirene’s composure.

  In what sense? she asked through the channel.

  You would be depriving me of entertainment! Eleuthera replied. The thought carried with it a sense of amusement, and something that felt remarkably like encouragement.

  Eirene resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Though she had to admit—privately—that it was indeed far more amusing to let him remain flustered.

  “The visit was planned,” Orestis said at last, with the careful dignity of a man constructing a defence out of available materials. “The timing was incidental. The birthday was—”

  “—the reason you were smiling when you called us that evening,” Avra finished.

  Orestis did not deny this. Which, Eirene noted, was itself an answer.

  Petros set down his fork and looked at his son with the expression of a man who understood exactly what was happening, had no intention of intervening, and wished him the best of luck.

  “More tea?” Avra asked brightly, already standing.

  ***

  Later, when the table had been cleared, Eirene reached into the inner pocket of her coat and withdrew a letter.

  “Could I ask a favour?” She held it out to Avra. “For my mother. The next time you send anything toward Axiomera.”

  Avra took the letter gently. “Of course.”

  “I write regularly, but the distance adds days. This would be faster.”

  She did not explain why she couldn’t visit Axiomera herself. She didn’t need to. Avra’s expression shifted—not dramatically, but with the quiet understanding of a woman who had watched her own son leave home for reasons that could not be discussed openly.

  “I’ll see that it reaches her,” Avra said. Then, lighter: “You should be able to talk to her directly. Orestis, couldn’t you make another set of those communication devices? Like the ones you made for us?”

  Orestis, who had been reviewing documents with Petros at the far end of the table, looked up.

  “I could,” he said.

  “Then you should! The poor girl is sending letters.”

  “I’ll look into it,” he said, in the tone of someone who had already identified three separate complications and was choosing not to enumerate them in front of his mother.

  Eirene caught his eye. He held the look for a moment—long enough to communicate we’ll discuss this later—and returned to the documents.

  She understood. A pair of call-nodes linking Orthessa to Axiomera would raise exactly the kind of questions neither of them needed. Range, provenance, capability—any one of those threads, pulled by the wrong person, would unravel into territory that was better left alone.

  He would find a way. He always did. It would simply take longer than his mother preferred.

  Petros, meanwhile, had spread a set of ledgers and inventory sheets across his end of the table. Eirene watched the two of them work—or rather, watched Orestis translate his father’s methodical questioning into answers that were always slightly too ready.

  “The resin stock is confirmed,” Petros said. “Twelve crates, processed and sealed. Storage conditions are within tolerance.”

  “Good. The amended contract specifies ongoing supply, so we’ll need to scale procurement. The initial shipment covers the first two quarters.”

  “That is our total accumulation over the past six months,” Petros replied. “If they expect quarterly shipments at that scale, we’ll need additional sources.”

  She watched the exchange without comment. Petros didn’t seem to find anything amiss. But Eirene was not Petros.

  Orestis had begun stockpiling the resin long before the Frostmarch delegation amended their terms. Before the ball. Before even the trade corridors were viable.

  He had known. Not guessed—known—that Logrion would ask for it.

  She filed it in the same place she kept everything else: the wards, the call-nodes, the ease with gods, the knowledge that belonged to no curriculum.

  The pile was growing. One day it would be tall enough that he could no longer pretend it wasn’t there.

  She was patient. She could wait.

  Avra returned with fresh tea and a plate of honey cakes, and the conversation turned to simpler things.

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