Late night wrapped the merchant city in a heavy, stifling blanket. On the terrace of Hubert Bothmer’s perfume house, the oil lamps were still burning. The master of the house and Marcus Rosenthal sat opposite each other, emptying what was already their third bottle of Imperial wine, which emanated a floral aroma, yet failing to move a single inch from the dead center of their prolonged dispute.

“You are as stubborn as an Aden donkey, Marcus!” Hubert threw up his hands once more, his face flushed with wine and vexation. “That was easy, clean money from a fool!”

“And I repeat to you, you old fox! That gold smells foul,” Marcus rumbled deeply in response, angrily spinning his family ring with the crossed rose and sword on his finger. “Besides, what kind of man would I be if I did that to my niece?! Never! Do you hear me? Never will I agree to this with you.”

Marcus struck the table, as if putting a final period on the conversation.

At the same time, in her room in the guest wing, Azalea sat at a massive desk, completely immersed in her own thoughts. The light of a single candle caught sheets of thick paper laid out before her from the darkness. The girl was racking her brains over diagrams and calculations that could bring her the necessary money to restore the half-ruined building with the glass dome.

“Not right... And this won't do either... It's too early for this...” she sorted through the ideas she had written down on a piece of paper. She disliked all of them.

Wearily, she tossed the papers aside and lay down on the desk with a heavy sigh.

The situation seemed at a deadlock. She could risk it and sell some of the jewelry, but what if they were caught? Moreover, almost no one knew them in the city, so no one would buy them secretly. And official trading was not yet possible.

She ruffled her hair, as if shaking the useless thoughts out of her head. She drew in air through her nose to calm down.

“Smells like... smoke?”

The girl looked at the half-open window.

A piercing scream, full of wild horror, drifted from the courtyard simultaneously with the ringing of a bell.

“FIRE! WE’RE BURNING! GUARD, OVER HERE!”

Azalea instantly ran to the window. From the direction of the perfume house’s secured warehouses, the first crimson-black tongues of flame soared into the night sky with a roar, illuminating the buildings in the night.

From below came the crash of an overturned chair and the clink of breaking glass. Marcus and Hubert, instantly sobered, rushed for the exit. Azalea threw her travel cloak over her shoulders and hurried after them.

When they ran out into the courtyard, a literal hell reigned there. The massive brick warehouse building was completely engulfed in fire. The flames devoured the wooden ceiling beams with a roar, throwing plumes of sparks into the frightened sky. Servants and the town guards who had run to help bustled about, fruitlessly passing buckets of water down a chain, but the elements were stronger. The heat was such that it was impossible to approach closer than twenty paces.

Hubert paced the courtyard wildly, clutching his head and literally tearing the hair from his curly wig. His face, usually glossy with a sycophantic smile, had now turned white as chalk, and an unfeigned, mortal dread was frozen in his eyes. He was so nervous he could barely breathe.

“Make way! A mage has arrived!” someone shouted in the crowd.

A middle-aged man flew into the courtyard on a horse, hastily jumped down from the saddle, and rushed toward the burning building. Drawing a book on the move, he traced a symbol in the air, and the fire began to die down, not across the entire expanse of the blaze, but only in a few spots.

Azalea had seen mages before, but it was the first time she had observed such work. She wanted to help, but upon hearing that there were no casualties among the people, she did not take the risk.

Hubert Bothmer stood opposite the blazing building. He remembered the warning. He knew clearly. This was arson. And the man knew perfectly well whose handiwork it was.

“I shouldn't have agreed...” he said quietly, watching a large portion of his stocks burn away. He looked at the mage, who was trying, first and foremost, to prevent the fire from spreading. “I shouldn't have...”

By dawn, the fire had finally subsided, leaving behind only the smoking carcass of the building, covered in black ash and fragments of collapsed roof tiles. Hubert, barely dragging his feet from the shock he had endured, trudged to inspect the ruins, expecting to see only the charred embers of his fortune. Marcus walked gloomily behind, jaws clenched. He was certain that all his niece's labor had turned to dust. Elena followed, covering her nose with a handkerchief.

Amid this black, soot-covered chaos, a true shock awaited them.

Right in the center of the completely burnt hall, directly beneath the collapsed ceilings, stood three weighty crates, absolutely safe and unharmed. The wood around them had burned to the point of tinder, but the boxes themselves, secured with sealing wax stamps, were not even charred. Furthermore, they did not smell of burning. A pure, barely perceptible aroma of lavender and pine needles drifted around the crates.

“Gods...” Hubert whispered, falling to his knees straight into the gray ash and touching the cool, smooth surface of the crates with trembling hands. “This... this is a miracle. What magic saved them?! Marcus, is your niece a saint?”

Marcus tensed. A thought flashed through his mind that Azalea had indeed protected the cargo with magic, and if anyone found out, a hunt for her might begin. And then... He looked at Elena, who stood beside him calmly. Then he shifted his gaze to Azalea, who was stepping carefully across the ash-covered floor.

The girl remained deceptively unperturbed. She stepped closer, elegantly bypassing a still-smoking beam, and looked calmly down at the kneeling perfumer.

“No magic, Mr. Bothmer,” Azalea said in an even voice. “Before leaving, I deeply impregnated the wood with a concentrated fire-retardant solution. Under intense heat, this substance reacts and turns into a durable, foamed glass crust, completely isolating the wood from oxygen and fire.”

At that exact second, the stagnant air escaped Marcus’s chest with a loud, raspy gasp. The man’s shoulders, which until then had been tensed like blocks of stone, dropped noticeably. The relief was so powerful that his fingers even trembled slightly. Praise the Gods, it was not magic. An ordinary alchemical composition, his niece's pure calculation, and not a spontaneous release of true power that could draw the bloodhounds of the Inquisition from all over the Empire to their family. Marcus exchanged a brief look with Elena, and she gave a barely perceptible nod, not removing the handkerchief from her face.

Hubert, however, seemed not to hear Azalea’s explanation about the solution at all. He continued to sit on his knees in the ash, staring blankly at the unharmed parchment and sealing wax stamps. His merchant mind, paralyzed by the shock of losing most of his own stocks, simply refused to perceive reality. For him, it all still remained a mystery, beyond understanding.

“A solution...” Bothmer echoed, rising awkwardly and brushing off his fine trousers, which were stained with soot. His hands were still shaking violently. “Yes... Yes, of course. Astonishing.”

Azalea take another step forward, and her voice dropped a tone lower, acquiring a cold, businesslike focus:

“We are fortunate that the crates held out. The same cannot be said for your warehouse, Mr. Bothmer. By the way... while you were coming to your senses, I managed to speak briefly with that mage from the city service who was putting out the fire.”

Hubert snapped his head up, staring at the girl.

“And what... what did the master mage say?” his voice broke into a hoarse whisper.

“He noted the unnatural nature of this fire,” Azalea looked straight and unmoving into the perfumer's panicking eyes. “He said that ordinary flames cannot engulf a brick building from all four corners simultaneously like that. The mage immediately detected the trace of a liquid combustible compound used in intentional arsons. And he has already entered this into his official report for the city guard.”

Hubert seemed to turn even paler, though it felt as if there was nowhere left to pale. His face took on a ghastly, grayish-green tint, and a large bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, washing away a layer of soot. He convulsively clutched the collar of his silk robe, realizing that this was no longer just his personal dispute with the disgruntled islanders. Now, the Imperial bloodhounds were entering the fray. And they would turn his entire past upside down. And they would definitely find something.

“Forgive me... I think I ought to leave for a couple of days...” Hubert’s voice trembled.

The Rosenthals exchanged a look.

“Going far?” The mage was sitting on an intact section of the charred wall.

The gathered people hadn't even noticed how he had ended up there. The man jumped down softly, kicking up soot around him that swirled like black snow. From his pocket, he drew a small badge bearing a crest that depicted two ravens. Upon seeing it, Hubert nearly lost consciousness.

“This will not end well,” Azalea thought.