I stood in the shadow of Castle Highvine, my ribs screaming in agony, my HUD flashing a catastrophic 3.5 million gold deficit.

  I couldn't buy catapults. I couldn't build them out of thin air. But the Crimson Broker did not operate on what was possible; I operated on what was profitable. If I couldn't afford to break the wall, I was going to have to manipulate the market to bend the wall to my will. I had a desperate, utterly insane financial scheme forming in my mind, but to execute it with the Union of Unshakable Wagons, I needed someone who wasn't currently furious with me.

  I needed a mule. And I knew exactly who to use.

  I limped toward the rear of the Vanguard encampment, where the Obsidian Keep the magically reinforced prison carriage rested heavily in the dirt.

  Standing just outside the heavy iron bars, entirely alone in the dying light of the Vineburg sun, was York Bladeblood.

  The young ward of House Falken wasn't a prisoner. He was legally free, dressed in fine Northern leather with a sword at his hip. But as I approached from the side, I realized York looked more trapped than the people inside the cage. He was staring through the thick iron bars, his hands gripping the metal so hard his knuckles were white, his eyes wide with a bitter, consuming obsession.

  I stopped a few feet away, leaning heavily on Cinderbrand, and looked inside the carriage.

  The heat radiating from the cell was suffocating. The massive, mythical dragon was coiled in the center of the reinforced floor, its scales glowing like dying embers in a hearth, exhaling lazy plumes of gray smoke.

  Sitting gracefully against the beast’s massive flank was Helga Bladeblood. She looked exhausted, but her sympathetic, honorable nature remained unbroken.

  And sitting exactly three feet away from her, working his absolute hardest, was Prince Bastian Stormsong.

  The Velvet Strangler was still bound in his aether-suppressing cuffs, his white bandages stained, but his lethal charm was entirely unhindered.

  "It is a tragedy, truly," Bastian murmured softly, his melodic voice drifting through the bars. He leaned slightly closer to Helga, his blue eyes entirely focused on her. "To lock a creature of such magnificent, soaring freedom in a dark box. And I do not just mean the dragon, Lady Helga. Your family forced you into a war you did not want, and now my brother forces you into chains you do not deserve. You have a remarkably kind heart for a world that only knows how to use it."

  Helga offered a small, polite, but deeply guarded smile. She didn't move away, but she didn't lean in either.

  "My heart is not yours to decipher, Prince Bastian," Helga replied gently, her hand resting on the dragon’s warm scales. "I appreciate your flattery. But I know a silken snare when I see one. You do not need to charm me to ensure your survival in this carriage."

  Bastian chuckled softly, an effortless, beautiful sound. "A man can simply admire the view, Lady Helga. Even in a cage."

  Outside the bars, York Bladeblood let out a harsh, bitter scoff.

  "Do not listen to him, Helga," York spat, his voice trembling with a mix of anger and profound insecurity. "He’s a snake. He’ll use you just like the Elders did."

  Helga turned her head. When she saw York standing outside the bars, the guarded mask she wore for Bastian instantly melted into a look of devastating, absolute heartbreak. She stood up, the dragon shifting slightly behind her, and walked to the iron grate.

  "York," Helga whispered, reaching her hand through the bars.

  York didn't take it. He took a half-step back, his jaw tight, his eyes darting away from her face to lock onto the massive, glowing beast behind her.

  "Don't look at me with pity," York sneered, his voice cracking slightly with the unmistakable, fragile pride of the overlooked son. He pointed a shaking finger at the dragon. "That beast... it was meant for me. I am the eldest son. I was supposed to be the heir to the sky. I should be the one riding the ember-wyrm, not the quiet little sister."

  "York, please," Helga pleaded softly, her eyes welling with tears. She didn't pull her hand back. "You know how the blood-magic works. The Elders didn't ask me if I wanted the bond. The dragon chooses the rider's soul. It wasn't about who was strongest, or who deserved it more."

  "Don't lie to me!" York snapped, slamming his hand against the iron bars. The sudden noise made the dragon hiss, a spark of real fire illuminating the carriage. "They thought I was weak! The Elders looked at me, they looked at my blood, and they said I wasn't worthy of the family's legacy! They gave my birthright to you, and they shipped me off to the freezing North to be a glorified hostage for Gutrum Falken!"

  The pain in York’s voice was agonizing. He was a boy drowning in his own inadequacy, entirely consumed by the belief that he had been cheated out of greatness.

  "I never wanted to take it from you, brother," Helga wept, her voice breaking. She pressed her forehead against the cold iron bars. "I would give the beast to you right now if the magic allowed it. I love you, York. I don't care about the dragons. I just want my brother back."

  York stared at her. For a fraction of a second, the arrogant, bitter shell cracked. He looked at his sister's tears, his hand twitching at his side, desperately wanting to reach through the bars and hold her hand. He was so lonely. He was so incredibly tired of being the outcast.

  "A touching family reunion," I interrupted loudly, stepping out of the shadows. "But I’m on a clock, and I need a pair of hands."

  York spun around, instantly wiping his eyes and throwing his defensive, arrogant mask back on. He glared at me, taking in my bruised jaw and blood-stained coat.

  "What do you want, Bastard?" York spat, puffing out his chest. "I am a ward of House Falken. I am not your errand boy."

  "Right now, York, you are a guy standing outside a cage, crying over a dragon you don't have, while your army starves to death," I said flatly, pulling no punches. "I don't care about your family drama. I don't care what the Bladeblood Elders thought of you. I care that we have twelve hours to breach Castle Highvine, and I am about to pull off the most dangerous, highly illegal financial transaction of my life."

  I stepped closer to him, locking my [Merchant] eyes onto his insecure, desperate soul.

  "You want to prove you aren't weak?" I challenged, my voice dropping to a low, intense hum. "You want to prove to Gutrum Falken, to your sister, and to your entire damned family that you are more than a discarded hostage? Then stop whining by the prison carriage and come with me. I need someone to watch my back. I need a Bladeblood."

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  York stared at me, his chest heaving. He glanced back at the dragon, then at Helga.

  "Go with him, York," Helga whispered softly through the bars, offering him a tearful, encouraging smile. "Show them the strength you have."

  York swallowed hard. The desperate need for validation completely overrode his pride. He turned back to me, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  "Where are we going?" York asked, his voice losing its arrogant edge, replaced by a nervous, genuine determination.

  "To the Union of Unshakable Wagons," I said, turning away from the carriage and limping back toward the merchant camp. "Baron Varkas Woolwright is about to get a visit from the Crimson Broker. We are going to sell something to buy catapults that do not exist."

  I didn't look back. I heard York's boots jogging to catch up with me.

  The siege of Highvine wasn't going to be won with steel. It was going to be won with a ledger. And I was about to bet my entire life on a single transaction.

  We rode for three hours under the cover of the bruised Vineburg twilight. I didn't speak. I just focused on staying upright in the saddle, every step of Coin Biter sending a shockwave of white-hot agony through my fractured ribs.

  Beside me, York Bladeblood rode in tense, nervous silence. He kept glancing at me, trying to figure out what kind of suicidal raid the Crimson Broker was planning.

  He had no idea I wasn't planning a raid. I was planning a liquidation.

  We crested a hill, and the true scale of the Union of Unshakable Wagons revealed itself.

  It wasn't a camp. It was a sprawling, nomadic metropolis. Hundreds of massive, multi-story wagons, some pulled by teams of twenty heavily armored draft horses, were linked together by heavy wooden drawbridges and iron chains. It was a city of pure, unrestricted hyper-capitalism moving across Vineburg. The air was choked with the smell of exotic spices, smelting iron, and the heavy, metallic tang of blood.

  We rode past heavily armed mercenaries guarding the perimeter and made our way to the absolute center of the moving city.

  I stopped my horse in front of a massive, windowless wagon painted entirely in pitch black. The banner hanging above the heavy iron door didn't bear a crest of wool or grain. It bore a pair of silver forceps gripping a human heart.

  "The Biomass Exchange," I muttered, sliding off my horse and nearly collapsing. York quickly stepped forward, grabbing my arm to steady me.

  "Wilhelm, what is this place?" York asked, his arrogant facade completely gone, his eyes wide as he looked at the dark wagon. "It smells like... a slaughterhouse."

  "It's a bank, York," I said, my voice dead and completely devoid of emotion. "Stay close. And don't draw your sword, or they will turn you into spare parts before you can blink."

  I pushed open the heavy iron door.

  Inside, the wagon was blindingly lit by dozens of surgical Aether-lamps. The walls were lined with glass jars filled with glowing, preserved organs, floating in alchemical fluid. In the center of the room was a tilted steel operating table, complete with heavy leather restraints and drainage grooves.

  Standing beside the table, wiping a bloody obsidian scalpel on a pristine white apron, was Baron Varkas Woolwright.

  "Crimson Broker," Varkas greeted smoothly, his handsome face betraying absolutely no surprise. "I heard the King demanded siege engines by dawn. And I see you have brought me a young, healthy Bladeblood. An excellent down payment. His heart alone could buy you three catapults."

  York’s face drained of all color. He ripped his arm away from me, stumbling backward toward the door, his hand flying to his sword. "You brought me here to sell me?!"

  "Calm down, York," I snapped, leaning heavily on the steel table. I looked directly at Varkas. "The boy is a ward of the Crown. He isn't for sale."

  Varkas sighed, setting the obsidian scalpel down. "A pity. Then why are you in my surgical wagon, Wilhelm? You are three and a half million gold in debt. You have no credit. You have no collateral. You cannot buy the timber and iron to build your siege engines."

  I took a slow, agonizing breath. I reached up and unclasped the heavy silver buckles of my Shadow-Weave Coat, letting it fall to the blood-stained floorboards. I unbuttoned my linen shirt, exposing my bruised, battered torso.

  "I am not here to buy on credit, Varkas," I whispered, the cold, terrifying logic of the Merchant taking complete control of my mind. "I am here to sell a liquid asset."

  Varkas Woolwright froze. His calculating eyes slowly swept over my exposed chest.

  York stared at me, his jaw dropping in absolute horror. "Wilhelm... what are you doing?"

  "A few days ago," I said to Varkas, ignoring the boy, "a reliable source informed me that the title of Bastard is a lie. I am not the product of a tavern wench. Both of my parents were trueborn. I am a pure, uncorrupted Archangel of the Storm."

  Varkas’s breath hitched. In the economy of the Realm, the organs of a true Archangel were the holiest, most powerful alchemical catalysts in existence. They were practically mythic.

  "A pure Archangel's left kidney," Varkas murmured, stepping closer, his merchant eyes gleaming with a terrifying, ravenous greed. "Untouched by the rot of the Clayborn. If I sell that to the Pontificate's High Alchemists, they could fuel a cathedral for a decade."

  "It will cost you exactly enough gold, iron, timber, and mercenary engineers to build six heavy trebuchets outside Castle Highvine by sunrise," I stated flawlessly, not blinking. "And it clears my current debt to the Union."

  "Done," Varkas agreed instantly, the sheer profit margin overriding any moral hesitation.

  "You're insane!" York screamed, grabbing my shoulder and trying to pull me away from the table. "Wilhelm, they don't have healing magic here! They are butchers! If they cut that out of you, you'll die of the shock!"

  "I'm already dead, York!" I roared back, shoving the boy away. "If we don't breach that castle, Two thousand men die tomorrow! Brandan dies! Gutrum dies! Helga dies in that cage! This is the math! This is the only way the ledger balances!"

  I turned my back on the terrified boy and hauled myself up onto the freezing steel operating table.

  There was no anesthesia. There were no gentle words. This was medieval butchery for profit.

  Two heavily modified Union surgeons stepped out of the shadows. They strapped thick, rusted iron cuffs around my wrists and ankles, locking me to the table. I couldn't move an inch.

  Varkas walked over, holding a thick piece of boiled leather.

  "Bite down, Wilhelm," Varkas said softly, a flicker of genuine respect in his cold eyes. "You are the greatest Merchant I have ever met. But this is going to be the longest night of your life."

  I took the leather between my teeth. I looked up at the blinding Aether-lamps, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

  York was weeping by the door, completely paralyzed by the sheer, sacrificial horror of what he was witnessing. The boy who thought he was weak was watching a Bastard tear himself apart to save the Realm.

  Varkas picked up the jagged obsidian scalpel. He didn't hesitate. He didn't count down.

  He pressed the black glass directly against my lower left abdomen, and he pulled.

  The pain was not a sensation. It was an apocalyptic explosion.

  SKRRRRK.

  The obsidian tore through my skin, severing nerve endings in a blinding flash of absolute, unadulterated agony. I screamed a guttural, animalistic shriek that was entirely muffled by the boiled leather. Blood instantly flooded the steel grooves of the table, hot and thick, spilling onto the floorboards.

  Varkas drove a pair of heavy silver retractors into the open, bleeding wound, violently cranking my flesh apart to expose the organs beneath. The sound of my own muscles tearing echoed in my skull. I thrashed violently against the iron restraints, the metal biting into my wrists, my vision tunneling into a violent sea of static and red.

  "Hold him still!" Varkas commanded, his hands buried deep inside my abdomen, searching for the prize. "I have to sever the Aether-vein!"

  He raised the obsidian blade again, aiming deep into the bleeding cavity of my body.

  I bit down on the leather so hard I tasted my own shattered teeth, my body convulsing as the butcher's knife descended into the dark.