The accounting arrived in four days instead of five.Marcus took that as a bad sign. People who delivered early were usually people who had prepared their version of events in advance. Genuinely honest accountings took the full time because honest people gathered everything rather than selecting carefully.He spent the morning reviewing the documents with Lydia and a palace administrator named Sera who Pell had quietly recommended as someone who understood numbers and had survived three administrations by being both competent and invisible.Sera was perhaps fifty, with reading glasses she pushed up her nose constantly and the particular focused energy of someone who genuinely loved finding things that did not add up.She found the first problem within an hour."This allocation here," Sera said, pointing to a column of figures without looking up from the documents. "Agricultural recovery fund. Established fourteen months ago when the dimensional rot began affecting the eastern fields."

The village of Callen's Rest sat four hours east of the capital in a shallow valley between two unremarkable hills.It was a farming community. Perhaps three hundred people. The kind of place that produced food and stayed out of history. The roads leading into it were good but not maintained with any particular care. The houses were solid but not prosperous. Everything about it communicated ordinariness so thoroughly that ordinariness itself began to feel like a choice.Marcus and Lydia rode in without escort. Two guards followed at enough distance to be present without being obvious. Marcus had learned from the city visit that announced arrivals produced performances. He wanted to see Callen's Rest as it actually was.They stopped at the village well in the center. A woman drawing water looked up at them with the mild curiosity of someone accustomed to occasional travelers on the eastern road."We are looking for a man named Cassian," Marcus said. He used only the name. No title. No

Marcus did not sleep.He sat in the chair by the east window with the wildflower on the sill beside the unlit candle and thought about what it meant that his mother had come into his rooms while he was absent and left without waiting.It was not aggression. Helena could have done something aggressive years ago if that was her nature. It was not desperation either. Desperate people announced themselves loudly.It was patience with a message attached. The message was simple. I am here. I know this place. I am not waiting for your permission to be present in your life. But I am also not forcing the conversation.It was exactly the kind of move that a woman who had lived thousands of years and understood human psychology would make. Which made it both genuine and calculated simultaneously. And Marcus found he could not be angry at the calculation because the underlying feeling was probably real.That was the complicated truth about Helena. Her love was real. Her methods were calculated. B

The formal inquiry to the Amber Meridian Company went out three days later.Marcus drafted it himself. Not through palace channels. Not through Diana in the first realm. Through a private courier service that Sera had identified as clean, meaning it had no connection to Voss or the council network.The letter was brief and precise. It acknowledged the Amber Meridian Company by its full registered name and its Ming Empire affiliation. It referenced the trade delegation of twelve years ago by date and delegation composition. It named Advisor Chen specifically. It expressed interest in resuming formal discussions and suggested a meeting in Delven within the month.Every detail was deliberate. Every piece of information included was information the Ming Empire would know Marcus should not have unless he had dismantled their network comprehensively. Helena's advice made precise and practical.The message in the message was clear. We see you completely. The shadow position is gone. Now deci

The documentation was thorough.Marcus spent two hours reading while Yuen Li sat across the table drinking tea with the patience of someone who had learned that silence during review was more productive than filling it.Seventeen border communities. Each one documented individually. Population figures before and after the merger. Trade route maps showing original paths and the altered paths created by dimensional barrier shifts. Income loss calculations. Displacement numbers broken down by family unit.The work was meticulous. Not exaggerated. Marcus had reviewed enough integration reports to recognize the difference between documentation built for negotiating leverage and documentation built from genuine systematic observation. This was the second kind. Someone had spent eighteen months recording real consequences with real precision.Which made it worse in a specific way. Inflated claims could be disputed. Accurate ones required honest response.He reached the final section. A summa