Ksaver’s voice, usually a measured cadence, vibrated with an unfamiliar tension. “Mother. What have you done?”
Duchess Zorya, still clutching her meticulously forged accusations, merely lifted her chin. “I have done what is necessary, Ksaver. I have protected Volin from a foreign sorceress and a blasphemer.” Her gaze flicked to me, sharp as a winter’s shard. “She poisons your mind with her strange notions. She corrupts our soldiers with… with *water magic*. She would see this duchy burn, just as her powder did, but from the inside out.”
My retort died on my tongue. The air in the chapel had turned viscous, unbreathable. Ksaver ignored her, his eyes scanning the letters. A tendon twitched along his throat. He took one from her hand, the paper crackling. He read, his face darkening with each line. The snarling wolf mark stamped on the sheepskin, identical to the seal on the dispatch Volkov had supposedly lost in the armory, seemed to bicker in the candlelight.
“These are fabrications,” Ksaver stated, his voice low, a controlled rumble that promised a storm. “Crude ones, at that. You accuse *her* of treason, when you yourself traffic in Raskian lies.”
Zorya scoffed. “I secured these proofs from a loyal servant, a man concerned for Volin’s future, as I am. They expose her for what she is: an agent of our enemies, sent to sow discord and weaken us for invasion. Do you truly believe her absurd claims of ‘germs’ and ‘nitrates’ are anything but coded spells?”
Ksaver crushed the letter in his fist. “I believe in what I see, Mother. I see a duchy on its knees, and I see one person with the wit and will to lift it. And I see another who would rather burn the very ground she stands on than admit her own counsel is failing.” He turned to me, his expression softening almost imperceptibly. “Ivana, come.”
He didn't wait for my response, simply strode past Zorya, who stood frozen in righteous indignation, and out of the chapel. I followed, a sense of dizzying relief washing over me, quickly replaced by gnawing apprehension. Ksaver led me through the castle’s twisting corridors, his boots echoing loudly on the cold stone. We bypassed the ducal audience chambers, the armory, even the great hall, eventually reaching his private quarters. He shoved aside a moth-eaten woolen hanging showing the Svarona Gryphon, revealing a narrow, stone-walled passage hidden behind the stones.
“This way,” he murmured, stepping into the gloom. The passage opened into a small, circular room, utterly unlike the rest of the castle. Shelves carved into the walls held scrolls, maps, and curious metal contraptions. A single, intricately carved desk dominated the center, cluttered with diagrams and what looked like a miniature trebuchet arm, meticulously crafted but clearly a prototype. The air smelled of tallow, filings, and dried sheepskin.
Ksaver lit a small oil lamp, its flame illuminating his weary face. He moved to the desk, clearing away a pile of rolled charts. “This is where I hide the things I cannot show the court, or even my mother.” His gaze held mine, a complex mixture of exhaustion, frustration, and something else – a deep, almost desperate hope.
He spread out a large map of Volin, crisscrossed with lines and annotations in a hand startlingly similar to my own. “For years, I have suspected our technology was dangerously outdated. Our siege engines are clumsy, our fortifications crumbling, our black powder barely better than dried dung. The Kingdom of Rask has been advancing, quietly, steadily. Their captured engineers, those few we managed to take alive from the Skarven Pass skirmish five years ago, spoke of innovations that sounded… impossible. Until you arrived.”
My mind reeled. Ksaver, the stoic Prince Regent, burdened by tradition and a failing duchy, was a secret tinkerer? An innovator? It was a level of foresight and pragmatism I hadn't imagined possible in this medieval world, let alone from a man so constantly beset by political machinations. He pointed to a section of the map. “This is a sketch of an enemy engine. Their torsion springs are far more efficient than our counterweights. This, a new type of arrow fletching. And this…” He tapped a schematic of a crude, corned black powder recipe, identical to the one Volkov had sabotaged. “This came from an enemy infiltrator's satchel, recovered last month. Their foundries have used it for years.”
He looked up at me, his eyes shadowed. “I brought you here not just for your knowledge, Ivana. I brought you because I suspected a high-level traitor was feeding Rask information, and I needed an unpredictable element to flush them out. Someone who would not be swayed by the existing power structures, someone who would think outside the rigid boxes of tradition. Someone like you.”
My chest tightened. He had gambled on me, knowing the risks, knowing the enemies I would make. It wasn't just my competence; it was my very 'otherness' that he had valued. “Volkov,” I said, the name a bitter taste. “He was supposed to be my friend.”
Ksaver nodded grimly. “He was your shadow, Ivana. Every innovation, every experiment, every word you uttered, he funneled to Rask. He painted you as a madwoman, a witch, a foreign spy—all to discredit you and your methods. But he also fed them enough details to allow Rask to improve their own systems, always keeping them a step ahead.”
He pushed a bundle of intelligence reports toward me, official ducal ledgers tied with coded border messages. “Look at the pattern. Every one of your projects, from the nitrate trenches to the charges, was designed to preserve this province. And every one of them was sabotaged, delayed, or outright destroyed.”
We hunched over the sheepskin, the lamp glow picking out the ink notes. The attack on my nitrate beds, ruining the saltpeter. The volatile substitute charge Volkov slipped into my blasting demonstration. The carefully constructed rumors of witchcraft spread through the barracks when I tried to implement hygiene. It wasn’t just about slowing me down. It was about specific, targeted weakening.
I traced a finger across the map, from the capital, Svarona, down towards the riverlands. “The bridge at Ozer’s Crossing… it collapsed last month, supposedly from flood damage. And the storehouses at Vlast, near the Blighted Mire, they burned down three weeks ago, full of winter grain.”
Ksaver’s eyes narrowed. “The official reports blamed poor maintenance and an accidental cooking fire.”
“Coincidence?” I scoffed. “Or convenience? Ozer’s Crossing is the fastest route for supply wagons from the eastern farms. The Blighted Mire is almost impassable in winter, but it’s a direct route for a light, fast raiding party if they can skirt the bog. And those storehouses… that grain was meant to provision the garrisons along the Volkov River.” I looked at him, the pieces clicking into place with a horrifying clarity. “He’s not just leaking information. He’s systematically crippling our defenses in key areas, cutting off supply lines, making invasion routes easier. He’s preparing for a specific invasion.”
Ksaver looked at the map, his face pale in the lamplight. “The Skarven Pass. Our most vulnerable border. Our forces there are already stretched thin, relying on those eastern supply routes.”
He lifted his head, meeting my gaze. His hand, calloused from sword practice and quill, reached out. Gently, he rubbed a fleck of charcoal from my cheekbone with his thumb, the dry rasp of his skin warm against the chill of the vault. His thumb lingered against my skin for a second, solemn and calculating, before dropping away.
A sudden rap at the door jolted us apart. Ksaver pulled his hand back, his expression instantly returning to its usual guarded composure. “Enter,” he called.
The woolen drape swung inward. A young page, barely more than a boy, stood panting in the opening, clutching a messenger badge. “Your Highness! Captain Volkov has arrested the Duchess Zorya for treason!”