The morning began long before the first bleak rays of the winter sun touched the frozen shutters of the old mansion. A hollow, pre-dawn silence hung over the house.

Marcus rose from bed quietly, taking care not to make the floorboards creak. Elena awoke instantly. Years of a nomadic life had trained her to react closely to the slightest movement. She asked no unnecessary questions. She merely propped herself up on her elbows, watching her husband with a gaze full of lingering anxiety. Marcus approached her, sat on the edge of the bed, and gently kissed her forehead.

“Azalea is still asleep, don’t wake her,” he whispered softly, drawing back. “Let her sleep off the journey. I’ll be back by evening. I’ll bring something from that Imperial baker’s shop.”

Elena merely nodded in silence.

Fifteen minutes later, Gaston, snorting resentfully into the frosty air, was galloping away from the estate. The journey to the local administrative center, a small but bustling border town, took about two hours. The snow on the main highway was packed to a mirror-like shine, and Marcus had to keep a close eye on the reins.

The administrative center greeted Marcus with the familiar grayness of the borderlands. Squat stone buildings roofed with darkened tiles lined the streets, and rare passersby wrapped themselves tightly in woolen scarves. The town lived on logging and small-scale carting, so Marcus quickly found what he was looking for at the construction storehouses near the town hall.

Haggling with the stingy local overseer, he purchased pine boards, dry tow, and barrels of heavy, forged nails. In the square before the town hall, where seasonal laborers usually gathered in search of work, Marcus hired three stout men. Grim, tight-lipped carpenters from among the locals, they quickly agreed to head to the Rosenthal estate the very next day upon seeing the gold. The roof repairs could not brook any delay before the true January blizzards set in.

Having arranged the delivery of materials and advanced the workers their pay, Marcus felt his document valise grow heavy, while his purse, conversely, grew light. The money was melting away.

He crossed the market square. On the opposite side, wedged between the judicial chancellery and the merchant warehouses, loomed a building made of dark stone, blackened by dampness. Above its massive oak doors hung the heavy, wrought-iron coat of arms of the kingdom. The local branch of the bank.

Inside the banking house, a stifling, oppressive atmosphere reigned. It smelled of cheap sealing wax, stagnant stove smoke, ink, dampness, and old ledger books. In the establishments of Aden, ruined noblemen were treated like carrion, and Marcus knew this all too well. He took a place at the very end of a long, silent queue stretching along the blank stone wall.

Time dragged on excruciatingly slowly. The clock on the wall behind the clerks' backs ticked rhythmically and irritatingly, counting down the minutes of humiliation. Marcus was openly and brazenly ignored. Petty shopkeepers, wealthy farmers, and bailiffs entered the coveted oak doors of the office and returned, rustling papers. The clerks at the counters exchanged glances from time to time, sliding indifferent eyes over Marcus’s old, though expensive, doublet. To them, a ruined Rosenthal was merely a blank line in the debt ledgers. A full citizen of Aden, deserving of respect, was considered here only to be one whose pockets burst with gold.

Marcus gripped the handle of his valise until his knuckles cracked. The muscles in his jaw worked beneath his skin, but he forced himself to breathe deeply and endure. For Elena’s sake. For the sake of Azalea, who was now sleeping in his house, having entrusted her life to them. He had no right to lose his temper and cause a scene.

When the town hall bell tolled noon, the last petitioner finally emerged from the office. The clerk at the entrance, without even looking at Marcus, gave a careless nod toward the door.

“Go on in. Mr. Holtz will see you.”

Marcus straightened his spine, mentally donned the mask of a polite businessman, and stepped inside.

The branch manager, Mr. Holtz, proved to be a stout man with a receding hairline and thin, perpetually displeased lips. He didn't even raise his head when Marcus took a seat opposite his massive desk. While Rosenthal laid out the core of the matter, placing the documents for the border estate on the desk and clearly outlining the plan for future trade turnover with the Empire, Holtz listened with utter negligence. He was constantly distracted. He noisily leafed through completely different papers, trimmed his nails with a small silver knife, and yawned lazily, showing by his entire demeanor just how tedious this man's problems were to him.

When Marcus finished and silence fell over the office, Holtz finally set the knife aside. He leaned back lazily against the back of his leather chair, interlacing his plump fingers over his stomach, and measured Marcus with a heavy, slimy gaze.

“Well, Mr. Rosenthal...” the manager drawled, a slippery, barely perceptible smirk appearing on his lips. “Your credit history, to put it mildly, leaves much to be desired. A collateral in the form of a half-ruined estate at the edge of the map is a massive risk for our bank. By the law of Aden, I should refuse you right now, without so much as signing the petition.”

Holtz made a theatrical pause, leaning slightly forward, and his voice dropped to a confidential whisper.

“However... we are business people, you and I. I could close my eyes to certain formalities and personally approve your loan. For a small consideration, of course. Purely to cover my... personal risks. You take my meaning, Marcus?”

Marcus felt his throat tighten with anger at this blatant extortion. This petty border official was demanding a bribe just for Rosenthal to mortgage his very last piece of property. And Marcus hadn't even asked for a grand sum!

Marcus walked from the stable toward the house, his boots sinking into the fresh snow, breathing the frosty air deeply in an attempt to force the suffocating rage from his chest by sheer will. He had not agreed to Holtz's terms. To look at the smug, sleek face of that border bureaucrat, who openly extorted a bribe for their last estate, had been beyond his endurance. Marcus hadn't merely refused. He had told the vulture exactly what he thought of his establishment, of the border laws, and of him personally, utterly forgetting his restraint. In response, Holtz had turned purple, promising Rosenthal the kind of trouble after which he wouldn't be able to borrow a copper penny in all of Aden, and threatened an official ban on conducting any commercial affairs in the district.

Yet, Marcus was firmly resolved to leave all this anger, resentment, and the breaking despair from within outside the threshold. Forcing a familiar, warm smile onto his face, he patted his chest. There, beneath his heavy travel doublet, tenderly wrapped in his scarf, lay a paper parcel. Marcus had urged Gaston back so swiftly that the pastries from the bakery were still pleasantly warm.

He pushed open the heavy oak door, stepped into the hallway, and called out loudly, trying to keep his voice from sounding too forced and weary.

“I’m home! Darling, I brought those flaky pastries, they’re still hot...”

He didn't have time to finish. From the depths of the corridor, Elena practically ran out to meet him. Her face was beaming, her breath came in short gasps, and in her wide-open eyes swirled such a cocktail of shock, disbelief, and ecstasy as Marcus hadn't seen in his wife for a very long time.

“Marcus...” she breathed, grabbing his sleeve and literally pulling him along the corridor. “Drop the package, leave your coat, you have to see this. Quickly, come!”

“What on earth happened? Are we under attack? The guard? Did one of our clients report us to the tax collectors?” Marcus could barely move his feet fast enough along the way, clutching the bundle of pastries tighter to himself.

Elena didn't answer. She threw open the door to his old, dusty office, where Marcus hadn't even managed to properly unpack his things since their arrival. For a fraction of a second, Marcus thought they had forgotten to snuff out a magical lamp in the room, because the space was flooded with a pure, cold, sparkling light.

But the lamp had nothing to do with it.

The entire surface of the old oak desk was strewn with dozens of precious stones. A scattering of the purest diamonds, some of which already shimmered with flawless, even facets, while others lay in the form of raw, transparent monoliths resembling cut rock crystal. They caught the meager winter light from the window and fractured it into thousands of azure, icy, and diamond splinters, making the walls of the office gleam. By the desk, her head lowered guiltily as she hid fingers stained with charcoal soot, stood Azalea.

Marcus froze on the threshold. The air trapped itself in his chest with a sharp hiss. His fingers loosened, and the paper parcel containing Elena’s favorite pastries nearly slipped from his hands straight onto the dirty floor.