There was no sign of Eleuthera when Eirene rejoined him. That was good. He preferred his gods intermittent. Or not at all.

  Glad they wouldn’t have to entertain her anymore, Orestis introduced Eirene to the envoy, Toren Kaldvyr. “Lord Kaldvyr. May I present Lady Eirene Aretaios.”

  “Eirene Aretaios,” Toren greeted. “Your family’s name carries further north than you might expect. Mage and merchant both, from what I’ve heard.”

  She inclined her head. “They tend to overlap more than people assume.”

  Toren’s gaze was direct—measuring without pretending otherwise. “Your family is known for caution. This venture is not cautious.”

  “The remaining variables are political, not environmental,” Eirene replied. “The northern trade corridors have improved significantly in the past year. Seasonal reliability alone makes the route viable. Our offer reflects that—better terms than most competitors would risk.”

  As expected, Orestis didn’t need to fill her in on the details for her to correctly deduce the main points.

  “And him?” Toren asked, glancing toward Orestis. “You are comfortable allowing him to structure the northern leg of the agreement?”

  “I trust his judgment,” Eirene said simply. “On this and on most things.”

  Toren studied her for a moment, then nodded. “That carries weight. I’ll review the terms with my principals. If the terms hold under scrutiny, we will schedule a formal discussion. Such details are best handled without music.”

  They concluded shortly after. Orestis shook the envoy’s hand—a firm, brief gesture—and Toren returned to the far wall with the same unhurried ease he had maintained all evening.

  They mingled for another half hour, long enough to satisfy expectation. Eirene handled the social choreography; Orestis handled the pastries.

  When they finally stepped into the carriage, the night air was cool and the streets were quiet.

  Apart from the unexpected goddess, nothing of note happened. No stabbings. No chandeliers. Not even a young lord tripping over his own feet for my amusement.

  Eirene had made that last part sound so likely. He felt cheated.

  ***

  The carriage rattled over cobblestones as Orestis sighed and leaned back. At last, the socialising was over. He was capable of it, but that did not mean he enjoyed it.

  Still, the evening had not been a waste.

  Toren Kaldvyr. The king’s nephew. A fortuitous encounter. Originally, he had been planning to establish contact with the Frostmarch Guild through routine merchant correspondence—letters, intermediaries, and the slow accretion of trust that trade demanded. That would have worked. Eventually.

  This was faster.

  Toren’s royal proximity reduced distortion. Fewer hands between the information and the decision-maker. Fewer errors. Fewer opportunities for someone ambitious to intercept, interpret, or delay. Anything Orestis communicated to him could reach the King of Logrion without passing through a chain of clerks who might decide to be clever.

  That eliminates at least two contingencies I had been planning for. Which is convenient.

  Efficiency rarely came without cost, but in this case, the cost was simply speed—the timeline had advanced, and he needed to advance with it. The trade agreement would proceed on its own merits. Toren would review the terms, consult his principals, and respond through proper channels. That was the public layer—legitimate, traceable, boring.

  The private layer required a different approach entirely.

  Logrion did not know it was about to be invaded. The Temple and Crown were still in the preparation phase—recruiting, training, building capacity. By the time Kallistrate’s intentions became public, the advantage would already be insurmountable. Unless someone told Logrion first.

  Someone conveniently anonymous and inconveniently well-informed.

  He would need to set up the meeting via letter. It would be simple enough: go to the Frostmarch compound after hours and slide the letter through the slot in the outer gate. No fuss, no witnesses.

  In the morning, it would be screened by security, passed to a clerk, and placed on Toren’s desk. Routine correspondence from an unknown source—the kind of thing a competent envoy would read, evaluate, and either act on or discard.

  That last bit was something he could not control, sadly. Orestis would have preferred to have the message carry more weight—as well as capability and a hint of threat—by delivering it straight to Toren’s quarters.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Unfortunately, like every structure in Orthessa that wished to avoid becoming a cautionary tale, the Frostmarch compound was warded. Thoroughly. And—in a twist he could only describe as professionally inconvenient—several of those wards incorporated improvements he had personally helped standardise through the Consortium.

  Locked out by my own standards of excellence. There’s a lesson in that, somewhere. Probably something about being too good at one’s job.

  Breaking the wards was not, in itself, impossible. It would just require more mana than he had to work with.

  Mana crystals were an option in theory. In practice, he would bankrupt himself long before he assembled the quantity required, and that assumed he could purchase such volumes without attracting attention. As for using divine power—that problem remained unchanged. So, the letter slot it was.

  I’ll suggest meeting mid-afternoon, in three days. I have free time then.

  “Orestis,” Eirene said, pulling him from his calculations.

  He turned. “Hm?”

  “Before she left, Eleuthera offered me another blessing. One for direct communication.”

  “And you accepted?” He stared at her. “You do realise she’s going to use it?”

  Eirene frowned slightly. “That’s the point.”

  “No, I mean she will use it. Frequently. At length. At inconvenient hours.” He settled back in his seat. “You have given a bored goddess a direct line to your thoughts. She will treat it the way a scholar treats a new correspondence partner—with enthusiasm, persistence, and no regard for whether you are sleeping.”

  He spoke from experience. During his immortal years, Eleuthera had appeared at the most inconvenient moments—mid-research, mid-experiment, mid-thought—to bother him with questions, observations, or the simple desire for conversation. Half the reason he had become so proficient with wards was because he had spent decades trying to build something that could keep her out.

  She had, of course, ignored all of it.

  Eirene opened her mouth—then paused. Her expression shifted. The slight tilt of her head, the momentary focus on something internal. He didn’t even need to guess what it was.

  “Eleuthera says,” Eirene reported, with the careful neutrality of a diplomat relaying an insult, “that she has more than enough sense not to disturb me while I sleep. And that she is offended you think otherwise.”

  “And has just proved my point by interrupting our conversation to say so,” he pointed out.

  “She says that doesn’t count.”

  “Obviously not,” he retorted blandly. If he continued to oppose her, this would never end. “If she begins offering commentary on your social choices, you are not to complain to me.”

  “If she begins offering commentary on my social choices,” Eirene said evenly, “it will likely involve you.”

  “That is precisely what concerns me.”

  Eirene looked almost pleased by that. “And don’t you dare suggest that I try to bother her instead.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied.

  As if any mortal could hope to outlast a god in sheer persistence. Eirene would exhaust herself in a week. Eleuthera would not even notice the attempt.

  Well, it was her problem now. He allowed himself a faint smile and looked out the window. Speaking of problems—

  “When we visit my parents,” he said, “please do not mention that you’ve been blessed by a god.”

  Eirene laughed. “You think your mother will take it as a sign?”

  “She already thinks it’s a sign that you’re here. If she learns of the blessing, she will bypass courtship entirely and proceed straight to wedding arrangements.”

  “That is fair,” she agreed.

  The carriage continued into the night.

  ***

  He began preparations the following morning.

  The meeting with Toren required a different face. Not literally—he simply could not afford to be recognised. The information he intended to deliver was the kind that turned merchants into targets and allies into liabilities. If anyone connected the anonymous source to Orestis Stathis, the entire architecture of his plan would collapse.

  So. A mask. Plain, covering the full face, with no ornamentation that might serve as identification. He enchanted it to suppress facial features beneath the surface. Not an illusion—those could be dispelled. He chose to apply a distortion field that made the eyes slide away from detail. Even someone standing directly in front of him would retain only a vague impression.

  Voice came next. A small matrix woven into the interior of the mask, calibrated to shift pitch and cadence without sounding artificial. The goal was not disguise so much as unfamiliarity—he needed to sound like someone Toren had never met, not like someone concealing his voice behind enchantments.

  The body was trickier. Height and build were the most immediately identifiable markers after face and voice. He layered a spatial shift into the outer garments—subtle enough to add two inches of height and broaden the shoulders without creating visible distortion. The clothes themselves were unremarkable: dark, practical, well-made but unadorned. The kind of thing someone might wear when conducting business they preferred not to discuss.

  Nothing excessive. Nothing theatrical. A reasonably mundane person hiding his features for reasonably obvious reasons.

  Under the cosmetic enchantments, he layered his usual defensive matrices, adapted from his earlier outdoor configuration and recalibrated to sit cleanly beneath the disguise.

  And finally, there was the advantage the meeting location provided. The stone bridge was east of Orthessa, well outside the city wards and the Consortium’s detection grid. Which meant he could use divine power.

  Not that he would lead with it, obviously. The point was to appear credible, not threatening. But if the meeting turned hostile—if someone panicked, if the information was received as provocation rather than warning—he needed options beyond his enchantments alone. It was unlikely—but preparing for every outcome was never a mistake.

  And if it comes to that, giving the impression I’m a Chosen of some god would add credibility to the intelligence while drawing attention away from me.

  But that would have to be an absolute last resort. The potential problems it would cause far outweighed the benefits of such misdirection.

  Orestis set the completed outfit on his desk and examined each piece one last time. They were exactly what they needed to be—plain, unremarkable, and capable of surviving the collapse of the meeting, the bridge, or both.

  The letter was already composed in his mind. Short. Direct. The kind of message that a pragmatist like Toren would not be able to ignore—not because it was persuasive, but because the cost of ignoring it was higher than the cost of attending.

  He reached for a quill and a sheet of unmarked paper. He began with words that had been waiting for months to be put on paper: Kallistrate is preparing to invade Logrion.

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