Arthur kept his gaze fixed on an indistinct point beyond the fogged windowpane, oblivious to the heat of the fireplace or the rustling of papers in the room. Internally, his mind was a whirlwind of conflicting gears. Is it happening now? he wondered in a silent, incessant dialogue with himself. Or has it already happened and the wind just hasn't brought the smell of blood here yet? In the timeline of the original work, this was the period of shadows. He could visualize, with almost painful clarity, the figure of Gerald Wimbledon. A king who, despite his flaws, tried to keep a kingdom united, but who now, most likely, was facing his final moments.
It is a poetic and cruel injustice, Arthur thought, feeling a weight in his stomach. Gerald is no saint, but to die by his own brother's order... Timothy is a monster that history hasn't yet learned to hate enough. He tried to recall the exact passages, the paragraphs describing the coup, but the physical reality of being "inside" the world clouded the precision of his data. Damn it, why are the dates so fluid here? I know it's near winter, I know the selection decree triggered this madness, but has my presence here sped up or slowed down Timothy's hourglass?
The uncertainty was a form of torture for someone with his intelligence. He felt like a fallen god who had retained the memory of the future but lost control over the present. Should I warn Roland? No... how would I explain it? 'Hey, your brother Timothy is about to commit fratricide hundreds of kilometers away'? It would be madness, and perhaps even useless since there's nothing that can be done. Arthur let out an inaudible sigh, adjusting his posture. He felt isolated in his chronological awareness.
While the other three in the room — Roland, Barov, and William — were immersed in the immediate urgency of the "here and now," Arthur inhabited a different temporal plane, where the past of a fictional world was the inevitable future of his new reality.
To Roland, the silence was a planning hiatus. To Barov, it was the vacuum before financial disaster. To William, it was merely the boredom before the action. But to Arthur, that silence was the anticipated mourning for a king he had never met, but whose death would change everything. Focus on what you can change, Arthur, he reprimanded himself, trying to anchor his mind in the cold stone room. Gerald is a ghost of the future. Duke Ryan is the demon of the present.
The heavy, oppressive silence in the prince's room was broken only by the rhythmic crackling of pine logs in the massive stone fireplace and the dry, harsh sound of ancient scrolls being unrolled. Barov, the administrative director, stood before Roland's desk, holding a thick financial ledger as if it were a shield against an impending storm. The man seemed to have aged ten years in two days; his dark circles were deep grooves, and his hands trembled slightly, making the paper rustle. His face was a mask of pure bureaucratic dejection, the wrinkles around his eyes deepened by a night of frantic calculations that refused to balance.
— "Sit down, Barov," said Roland. His voice didn't carry the spoiled arrogance of a prince, but the practical, incisive urgency of a project manager on a tight deadline. — "Be direct. No courtly flourishes."
— "Your Highness! The situation is worse than we feared!" exclaimed Barov, his voice choked with genuine panic, his pitch rising an octave as he practically threw the reports onto the heavy oak table. The impact of the papers against the wood echoed like a verdict. Roland, Arthur, and William were gathered around a rudimentary regional map, where the borders of Graycastle looked like battle lines ready to bleed. — "The trade agreement brought by the envoy from Longsong Stronghold is nothing more than pure and simple exploitation! Duke Ryan has tightened the noose around our necks. We are trading our high-quality iron ore for mere crumbs of moldy food. At this deplorable exchange rate, our coffers will be completely empty before the first snowfall!"
Roland didn't look at the papers right away. He maintained his calm, a trait Arthur was beginning to admire. Instead, the prince looked at Arthur and William, who were standing near the window, bathed in the pale late-afternoon light. — "Before I sign any withdrawal decree, I want to hear what my 'helpers' have to say about the map in front of us. Arthur, you've been studying the geography. What is your opinion on our 'fiscal black hole'?"
Arthur approached the table slowly, forcing his mind to transition from the drama of the capital to the logistics of the frontier. His eyes traced the crude marks of the North Slope Mine and the winding, silver thread of the Redwater River. His 14 Intelligence — boosted by his prior knowledge of the plot's "meta-history" — allowed him to see the gears of a hidden machine beneath the rudimentary drawings. He didn't just see paper and ink; he saw the flow of power and the planned asphyxiation of a territory.
— "The evacuation is a political trap, Barov," said Arthur, his voice cutting through the minister's panic like a cold blade, devoid of any hesitation. "Duke Ryan doesn't care about the lives of the serfs or the miners. He wants the town abandoned. He wants you to flee so he can swoop in and claim the mines and the territory as 'reclaimed land' as soon as the snow melts and the beasts retreat." Arthur looked up, meeting the Prince's gaze with an intensity that made Barov take a step back. "He is using Border Town as a disposable 'shield' for Longsong Stronghold, draining its resources in the process."
Arthur paused, letting the weight of that statement settle. — "The problem with Border Town is not, and never has been, a lack of resources, Your Highness. Border Town has been systematically economically strangled for decades. Currently, it is a closed loop designed to fail. Our only exports are raw iron and copper ore, while almost 100% of our imports consist of basic foodstuffs — wheat, salted meat, and dried vegetables. Every calorie that enters this town passes through the gates of Longsong Stronghold or comes down the river from Willowleaf Town. We are a colony without autonomy, an ore farm where the workers barely receive enough to not starve to death before their next shift."
William looked at Arthur, a flash of genuine respect mixed with incredulous amusement crossing his face. Damn, bro... did you really memorize all this trade stuff and everything else?? You really are a nerd, huh, HAHAHAHAHA, William said mentally, giving a little smirk as he wondered if Arthur also knew the price of rye in every province.
Arthur ignored William's distraction and ran his finger tracing the irregular outline of the North Slope Mine on the map. — "This mine is a geological anomaly, Roland. According to what Anna described during her 'work sessions,' the tunnels are a subterranean labyrinth with no proven bottom. But it's the variety that defies logic: iron, copper, sulfur, and even rock crystal are found in the same geological layers. It's as if the earth itself had concentrated all its wealth here."
Barov let out a heavy, tired sigh, the sound of a man who had already given up fighting the tide. — "And what good is a gold mine if Duke Osmond Ryan dictates the price of every ore?"
— "Exactly, Barov. You hit the nail on the head," Arthur nodded, fixing his gaze on the minister until he stopped looking away. — "The current agreement is not a trade deal; it's a trap. The Duke doesn't pay for our gems and ores with actual gold coins; he pays with 'food rations.' He structured the economy so that the mine's annual production is precisely enough to sustain the town's two thousand inhabitants — no more, no less. There is no surplus. No capital accumulation. As I said yesterday, in the Duke's eyes, Border Town is not part of the kingdom; it's a disposable warning outpost against monsters, kept on the brink of collapse so it never gains the strength to rebel. We are in a state of food debt servitude."
Roland leaned forward, his chin resting on his interlaced fingers. Arthur noticed that the prince's pupils were dilated — the sign of a mind processing revolutionary possibilities. — "What about the hunting? The furs?"
— "Another huge loss of potential revenue," Arthur replied promptly, his voice now carrying a professorial tone. — "The local hunters take their high-quality furs west, selling them directly in the markets of Longsong or Willowleaf. Since these transactions happen outside your direct jurisdiction and without an efficient customs post here, there is no record. No taxes are collected. Border Town is a resource-rich environment being run like a refugee camp where everyone fends for themselves, while the profit flows out like water through a sieve."
Arthur straightened his back, assuming a posture of authority that seemed strangely natural for his age. — "But that cycle ends now. We can no longer pay for iron with moldy bread. The Redwater River is a continental highway, and for now, the traffic isn't blocked. If we stop being the Duke's doormats, we can open new paths. We sell the gems for actual gold in other ports and use that gold to buy grain from the independent merchant fleets of Willow Town. And as for the Months of Demons... we simply build a wall that keeps them out."
Barov turned pale as a ghost, a sickening pallor that seemed to drain all the life from his face. He swayed slightly, as if the word "wall" were a physical blow. — "A wall?! To defend against the demonic beasts? Your Highness, you must be mad! The beasts destroy any wooden palisade as if it were dry straw! They shatter wood with a single charge! We have no master masons, not even enough stones to quarry in record time, nor the time to build a stone fortress before the snow arrives!"
— "Wooden wall? HAHAHAHAHA!" intervened William, finally bursting with his characteristic energy, pushing off from the wall with a sudden movement. He approached the table, his eyes shining with a dangerous mix of battle readiness and the pure adrenaline of impending conflict. — "Rest easy, baldy, this is where the cement we mentioned when we arrived comes into play! Forget conventional masons and years of construction." — He looked at Barov with a predatory smile. — "It will be an alloy of elements, a liquid stone that hardens like a loan shark's heart, unlike anything you have ever seen. We're going to put those demonic beasts to 'sleep forever,' if you catch my drift HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Barov didn't understand the slang, but he understood the dangerous confidence in William's voice, which left him even more terrified. He looked to Roland for sanity, but found only the same gleam in the prince's eyes.
— "Anyway, Barov, did you hear the boys?" said Roland, pointing to Arthur as if he were the compass finally indicating true north. — "Start drafting the decrees right now. We are not evacuating, much less fleeing into the Duke's clutches. We are going to build a wall and we are going to change the rules of the economic game."
The confusion of Roland's first few days in that world had vanished completely, replaced by a cold, technical, and almost ruthless determination. Arthur's analysis confirmed the reality of political and physical engineering: for a machine to work, it needed to be independent of its competitors, or it would end up being cannibalized by them.
Barov paled even further, if that were possible, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, trying to find arguments in a ledger that now seemed obsolete. But before he could stammer a protest about the technical impossibility of fighting fate, Roland signaled with his hand, a royal and definitive gesture, for the meeting to end.
A deep silence hung over the room after the minister's stumbling exit, laden with the incredible weight of the decision that had just been made. It was the silence that precedes the firing of a cannon. Roland looked at his new allies — the cynical strategist who saw the world in capital flows and the impetuous brute who saw the world in force vectors — feeling the cold, terrifying reality of his situation settle onto his shoulders.
The demonic beasts would approach in three months, descending from the mountains like a tide of nightmares, and the political sharks were already circling hungrily in the stronghold to the east, waiting only for the first sign of weakness. The odds were incredibly stacked against them. But, as Roland looked out the window toward the sunset, he felt a warmth that didn't come from the fireplace. He realized something profound that Arthur and William already knew: for the first time in the long, miserable, and forgotten history of Border Town, the light emanating from the castle didn't come solely from the flickering flames of cheap tallow candles. It came from the glowing embers of an industrial revolution that was about to set the old world ablaze.
Arthur, seeing Roland's profile against the twilight, felt a momentary relief. Gerald Wimbledon might be dying in the capital, but here, a new kind of reign was being born. It's a pity for your son or future son. But the old world needs to die, he thought, finally at peace with the silence. We are going to build something that doesn't need crowns to stand tall.