Derek admitted it: there was some showing off in this.

But wealth and rank that were never seen at home were hardly worth having. If he did not display his success a little, what had he worked so hard for?

Was all that hard work meant to end with him admiring it alone in the dark?

The effect was exactly as he had imagined: everyone was stunned speechless.

House Ferreira's finest piece of equipment was a suit of black heavy plate, passed down through the generations.

The kind of armor that sealed a man head to toe, protecting even the eyes.

You saw the world through nothing but narrow slits.

A man could stand in it and endure blows all day without the attacker breaking through.

The first Baron Ferreira had worn it into battle and fought his way to the title through sheer determination.

Generation after generation carried it forward, and out of that came the standing the family held today.

Ordinary men, though, couldn't even move in it.

The current Baron Ferreira had never once worn it into battle himself.

But no one doubted that, should the need ever arise, some Ferreira knight would don it again and charge.

Yet honor handed down through history, weighty as it was, felt somewhat distant.

What Derek had brought was a shock sitting right there in front of them.

Second brother Sergei's eyes had gone round and fixed. The kingdom's own legions treated their men well enough, but nothing on this scale of luxury.

As a junior officer, he'd never even dared hope for gear like this.

Eldest brother Marco, no fighter himself, still knew exactly what it was worth.

Fourth brother Sherif nearly threw himself at it, eager to pick up the whole set and put it on.

Even Baron Ferreira lost his composure for a beat.

Gear like this was never a matter of money.

The baron wasn't a generous man day to day, but set equipment like this in front of him and he'd have paid for it without a second thought.

The more sets he could obtain, the better.

But only so many fine knight's sets ever hit the market in a given year—pay above asking and you still might come away empty-handed.

Connections, standing, even plain luck—that was what it took to land even one.

And then it went straight into storage, waiting for the day it would finally see use.

For a set like this, a knight might well swear you his loyalty outright.

This set made it clear just how much Derek had changed.

The boy had grown quickly, enough to speak with him almost as an equal now.

As head of House Ferreira, though, the baron could never afford to let sentiment alone guide him.

Whether this was the very message Derek meant to send, he couldn't say—but if the boy really had that much sense behind it, then he truly had grown up.

"I'm very pleased with your gift, Derek. We should find a chance to talk properly."

Baron Ferreira's manner toward Derek shifted visibly—of all his sons, this was the first one who'd earned the right to speak with him as an equal.

Having returned in success, Derek wasted no time settling back into the family warmth he had missed for so long.

Nor did he sit idle—he made the rounds of his uncles one by one, a gift in hand for each.

He worked at mending ties with everyone in the household besides, warmly enough that a stranger might have guessed he'd come home to contest the succession.

This was now the third time word had reached Derek that war might be coming.

Second brother Sergei tipped him off first: the Iron Lion Legion had stepped up its training, was even weighing whether to hold back some soldiers past their discharge date, and had started pulling in more recruits.

A standing legion of three thousand might swell to five thousand within the year.

And in the end, the baron confirmed his suspicion outright.

"If you've got the connections for it, the family will need to buy in a shipment of arms too."

Behind closed doors, father and sons talked it through, and the baron laid out what he expected of the coming war.

"The kingdom's strength has come back fast these last few years. A war of vengeance against the barbarians could well be launched soon. We in the Northern Province sit right on the front line—we're bound to be pulled into the fighting up north. Plenty of people are already preparing. The family's decided to expand its private forces. Derek... if you don't go running off again, you may well get your chance soon enough."

This carried a bit of the baron's own quiet self-interest: if House Ferreira acquitted itself well in a war of vengeance, it might come away with a fief or two of its own.

Whether that meant a transferred grant or some small parcel carved out for one of his sons, either was possible.

Passing the estate to the eldest son didn't mean the baron loved the rest any less.

And fortunately, Derek was already proving he could carve out something of his own.

Derek, for his part, took it all calmly, with no second thoughts.

"War is certainly coming. Weapon prices have started climbing back up lately—plenty of people are stockpiling arms and grain. When it comes, I'll take part."

Dealing with as many people as he did, Derek had naturally caught wind of the market's odd behavior himself.

With one more weapons supplier in the market—namely him—prices should have kept falling. Instead they had bottomed out and begun rising again. That alone told him something was changing.

The baron and Derek carried most of the conversation; the eldest and second sons chimed in now and then, while the fourth could only sit and listen.

A noble family's private conversations carried intelligence most commoners could never imagine having access to.

Measured against the whole kingdom, House Ferreira amounted to little more than provincial gentry, a minor local power.

But within the Northern Province, they counted as an established regional force.

Within the Sentinel City area, however, they were an established local power.

Should war break out, they'd be expected to field at least one company of regulars and two or three companies of militia.

If the baron rode out in person, he might well land a commander-of-a-thousand's post besides.

Even Count Perez had reason to court a force like this.

War might be coming, but the baron had long since begun preparing for it.

No one in the family panicked, then—compared to ordinary folk, they simply had more time to get ready.

Derek gave nothing away about his own affairs, though he did let slip a few details that weren't exactly secret.

Baron Ferreira was startled all over again—he'd never expected Derek to build up an operation like this in a single year.

Unofficial as it was, and never something the crown would recognize—

—it could still take off in an instant, given the right opening.

And right now, that opening had arrived.

"Derek, whatever you need right now, the family can advance it to you early—but you'll need to give something back in kind."

Baron Ferreira had finally come around. Backing Derek answered to sentiment—and to plain self-interest, both at once.

Over the years, the baron had built up a store of resources he'd never been able to properly cash in on.

His connections and political capital weren't exactly plentiful.

Since the front door wasn't opening, and Derek had offered a side entrance, of course he meant to use it.

"People. Land. I need both."

Derek asked for a great deal. An opportunity this good did not come every day.

The baron's willingness to bend came from several things stacking up at once.

"The family's manors are yours. But from now on, you'll owe taxes on them."

House Ferreira's two manors were tiny things, together holding no more than a hundred or two souls and just over a thousand acres of land between them.

And on a lord's own fief, manors reclaimed like this normally owed no tax at all.

The difference between a manor and a fief lay right there: fully private, but stripped of every other political right.

Put that way, some might think granting fiefs a poor bargain—why hand your own land over for outsiders to farm?

In truth, though, reclaiming land cost something too.

And so did people.

A freeman breaking new ground on a baron's land paid tax on it—and cost the baron nothing at all to gain.

The subjects even owed labor service on top of it, and their presence fed the local economy besides.

Had they clenched every acre in their own fist instead, House Ferreira might still have only two manors and a few hundred souls today—nowhere near enough to feed a household this size.

...

A manor, by contrast, could be freely bought and sold, taxed just like any freeman's holding.

A concentrated sort of estate, in other words.

Across the kingdom's crown lands, plenty of great merchants and nobles held manors of exactly this kind—reclaiming land for the crown by another name, and swelling its tax rolls in the bargain.

People were power, plain and simple.

The two micro-manors were priced at ten thousand gold together.

A low price at that—it counted only the land, leaving the value of the serfs living on it out of the sum entirely.

This was the baron's own quiet favor to Derek.

The decision drew a flicker of something else across his other sons' faces.

No one could say for certain whether this was some pretext of the baron's—whether the succession itself might now be in question.

The baron, naturally, had no intention of feeding anyone's fantasies on that score.

"Derek. I want to know what you can give the family in return."

"Warhorses, weapons, armor—at the lowest price and first pick before anyone else. And once I've won a fief of my own, the manors go back to the family."

"Not enough. Still not enough."

"Then send eldest brother and his soldiers to train alongside mine. I guarantee I can turn out a batch of real elites."

"Confident in your drilling, are you? Though I'll admit, the men under you are genuinely good."

The baron agreed, using the moment to make his position plain: this was a special arrangement, nothing more.

It wouldn't dissolve every doubt, but it would steady the household all the same.

"Sergei, you'll need to push harder. I'll see about pulling some strings for you—try to get you promoted as soon as I can."

The baron meant to spend some capital pushing his second son up the ladder; a junior officer left where he was would be nothing but cannon fodder once the war came.

"I can help there too. I doubt the Iron Lion Legion would turn down a shipment of cheap arms," Derek cut in.

"Sherif, finish your knight's training as fast as you can, then go find your third brother."

The baron had a plan laid out for the fourth son too.

"Eldest, you'd best prepare to toughen up as well. Even if you're never the one charging into battle, you need to be able to hold the family's foundations steady—go spend some real time training under your third brother."

Generation by generation, House Ferreira had begun shifting away from pure military nobility, and eldest son Marco, this time around, carried himself more like a proper courtly noble.

The family adjusted its strategy quickly, preparing actively for the war ahead.

This was only a glimpse of it—the baron meant to push the adjustments further still in the days ahead.

Pulling soldiers together, tightening up training, laying every contingency they could think of.

House Ferreira had no way of getting the crown's news firsthand, so preparing early was the only option left.

As soon as the new year passed, Derek moved quickly to take control of the family's manors.

The first thing he did was recruit.

Then came a wave of construction, expanding the manors outward.

Facility after facility went up, and with his father's blessing he even fenced off a stretch of land for raising horses.

He even walked away from the serf-labor model that maximized profit, recruiting freemen openly instead, in a straightforward push to swell the population.

On the other side of things, he pulled some of his people back to build out a new base.

Stockpiling supplies, people, equipment.

Derek hardly stopped for breath—handling affairs with one hand, drilling soldiers with the other.

Fortunately, the squires he'd trained up were finally earning their keep.

They could take over training duty in his place, run errands out in the field.

With Baron Ferreira's backing behind him now, the resources at his disposal had grown considerably.

Two months slid by, and then word suddenly reached Derek from Lloyd: a large slaving party was about to pass through the North.

The slavers meant to cross by the mountain trail, sending men ahead to scout the route first—and that gave Derek his opening.

Derek mustered nearly every soldier he had and rushed to the mountain base.

Lloyd was already there waiting.

"My friend. Walk me through it."

"This slaving party's come through here five times now, bigger every time. Nobody's said it outright, but the brothers who dealt with them swear they caught a Holy Cross accent. I've been taking a toll off them, sure, but this route's also the safest around, which is why they've all switched to running through us lately. This time they even sent word ahead, said they'd be passing through."

Five trips in under a year meant these people were conducting a large operation.

"Any chance of buying the whole lot off them, if the price is right?"

"No good. Word is it's some great figure's goods—the slavers look to be the buyer's own men, and they're careful as anything."

"A great figure? Tied to Holy Cross, no less. Seems they've forgotten the Sundering War already—the shame of the barbarians still unwashed, the lost land nowhere near reclaimed."

Derek gave a cold smile. This was a business that could not withstand scrutiny.

Slave trading was legal enough, but this shipment reeked of trouble nine times out of ten.

Whatever ended up in Holy Cross's hands was never going to be anything good.

Back in the Sundering War, the Holy United Kingdom had split three ways—the continent's southern hegemon torn apart, its pieces grinding each other down, its strength gutted in the process.

That was exactly when the barbarians of the north had come pouring in, seizing great stretches of land they still held to this day.

Holy Cross bordered the Northern Province directly, and shared the same enemy in the barbarians besides.

But ever since the Sundering War, each side would sooner see the other dead than not.

They'd gone at each other's throats more often than they'd ever fought the barbarians.

Only in the last few years had things quieted down enough that anyone dared traffic people into Holy Cross at all.

Plainly, none of these people had come by honest means.

Having thought it through, Derek wasn't the least bit worried about the other side coming after him for it.

Some noble sitting off in the Central region, or further south still—what could he possibly do to him? And that was assuming he ever traced it back this far at all.

"This prize is ours."

Derek made up his mind fast.

Lloyd felt a stab of regret. Close as the two of them were—everything he had today owed to Derek's backing—

—breaking the rules this recklessly, swallowing a bite this fat, was bound to hurt his name.

If he lost his reputation, his business would go with it.

And if whoever stood behind these slavers held a grudge, that could turn into serious trouble down the road, whenever it chose to surface.

"Derek, maybe we should try talking to them again first—there's a chance we could still buy the lot."

Derek fixed him with a look until Lloyd couldn't quite hold it, rolling his neck to break the moment.

Only then did Derek speak. "I won't be making my move here. Follow this mountain road through, and it leads straight into... right into Holy Cross territory. That's where I'll do it."

He tapped a point on the map, well inside Holy Cross's own borders.

Why did so many take this mountain road? Partly to dodge the checkpoints—and partly because the range itself straddled both kingdoms, easy enough to slip across.

Did anyone truly think every trader out here dealt honestly? Smuggling was where the real money lay.

The Church held the greatest power in Holy Cross, corrupt and hidebound as it ran, and plenty of goods out of Locke counted as hot commodities there. Its senior clergy, for their part, were never short on gold.

Lloyd let out a breath, then flushed with something like embarrassment. "Let me send men to help you out, at least."

"No need. I can handle this myself."

Derek turned him down flat. Lloyd could know about it—but he couldn't be part of it.

That would create an unnecessary liability.

Lloyd, thinking he'd misjudged the moment, hurried to explain himself. "It's not that I don't trust you—it's just, you know how it is. My name matters to me more than almost anything."

"I understand. We're friends. I won't have a friend take a hit to his own interests doing my work for me."

Derek smoothed things over, and only after Lloyd had gone did he turn to making real preparations.