— Twelve years earlier, German–Italian border, mountain ridge
Night wind cut the face. Dog‑whistles pressed closer from the back of the trail.
Ada Wenroe shoved the baby into a travel trunk. The gold‑red oath‑seal on the back of her hand burned hot. Theo Hartmann tightened his coat and glanced at the torches coming up behind.
"Still time to regret it?" Ada whispered.
"Either we take him away today, or tomorrow we identify him on the public board," Theo said.
The baby gave a cry. A fine streak of red‑gold lit the cave roof, as if someone had drawn a line across a ledger. Ada pressed the seal to the child's chest. The mark dimmed at once.
"Twelve years," she bit out. "Someone will fetch him then."
They snapped the trunk shut and went down the mountain. The wind erased their prints, leaving only the cold of the stone.
— Twelve years later, England, the Morton residence
The pendulum ticked loudly. Elias Morton tossed his coat over the chair without checking whether the chair approved.
"Piers, did they really leave me alone on my birthday?" he asked.
Butler Piers Wainwright used a cough as the safest punctuation and handed over a black letter case. "The masters were delayed, but the gift is ready. And there's a letter."
The envelope was heavy, the wax stamped with a three‑petaled iris. When Elias tore it open, his fingertips looked pale with cold.
Inside were only two lines and a small copper stamp:
— Activate before midnight.
— If the bearer gives the name Archibald Greenwell, you may speak with him.
"Who is this?" Elias frowned.
"I wouldn't presume to say," Piers answered, "but someone went through the old accounts last night. Along the garden rim—fresh marks from hobnails."
Elias was about to ask more when the doorbell rang three times. Not the courteous kind—the cadence of business.
The door opened. A silver‑haired old man stood in the morning light, his robe creased like a smoothed‑out file. He didn't introduce himself first; he offered a grayish sheet of paper.
"A Reclamation Order," he said. "If you refuse to sign with our side, the other side will activate your oath‑seal at midnight. The process is lawful, but not dignified."
"Your side? The other side?" Elias pinched the paper between his fingers. "I'm a schoolboy."
"In the oath‑seal system, you're an IOU." The old man smiled slightly. "Archibald Greenwell, of the Night‑Oath Countinghouse."
Piers cleared his throat at the door—both reminder and prayer.
"There are three pacts," Archibald raised a hand. At his fingertip, three faint sigils surfaced in the air.
Gear Pact: strength purchased with apparatus and calculus; everything is cost and yield.
Aether Pact: unseen threads that touch thought and memory.
Frostsong Pact: anchoring the world with sound and cold; slower to build, steady in return.
"Which one you sign is up to you. Whether you sign at all is up to you. The price is also up to you."
A slight crack sounded outside the window. Piers's eyes tightened. "Someone in the garden."
Elias tucked the paper into his pocket; his gaze sharpened. He had never liked daylight, yet he saw well at night—as if a small, cold flame lived behind his eyes. It flickered now.
"How many did you bring?" he asked Archibald.
"Just me. Countinghouses don't travel with noise," the old man replied.
"What about them?"
Something rustled behind the hedges. A heartbeat later, a tiny metal tack darted through the window gap with a thin whistle.
Archibald lifted his hand. A silver‑white filament slid from his cuff and made a light hook. The tack slowed in midair, as if a hidden account had deducted it, and pinged into his palm.
"Aether thread," he explained. "The Black Oak Society. Fond of stealing lines from other people's ledgers."
Before he finished, another cold draft squeezed through the sash. Elias stepped back, fingers brushing the desk edge—then a sound entered his ears, like a distant saw being pulled.
He turned his head toward it. On the mantel, the little bronze deer's ear quivered.
"There are gears inside that deer," he blurted.
Archibald paused, then smiled deeper. "You can hear it? Good. The Gear Pact isn't foreign to you."
Footsteps outside stopped and moved again; the visitors were testing as well. Piers silently lit the two lamps in the room, wicks turned low so the light lay like a tamed cat.
"Time is short," Archibald checked his watch. "At nineteen hundred we must be at the oath dais; at twenty‑three fifty‑nine, you must decide."
Elias stared at the Reclamation Order for three seconds, folded it once, then again, and slipped it into his breast pocket.
"Who is this 'other side'?"
"The one who signed your parents' IOU," Archibald said evenly. "They staked your name on the night you were born."
"Are they still alive?"
"For that answer, ask at the dais." He gave an address. "Broken Bell Street. The Old Ledger Hall."
The yard went suddenly quiet. Then the gate creaked open. Someone walked in with leisure. A very light female voice drifted through the house: "Master Morton, see you at midnight—or… now will do."
Piers's fingers tightened. Archibald drew the silver thread back into his sleeve and nodded to Elias. "Your first lesson: choosing a teacher."
Elias took a long breath. His fingers felt as if they had just touched snow, but his pulse stayed steady. He looked at Piers. "My black coat."
Piers handed it over and pressed an old badge into Elias's palm—left at the countinghouse twelve years ago, with tiny letters on the back: E.M.
"Let's go," Elias said to Archibald as he shrugged into the coat. "I don't like being reclaimed."
"The countinghouse prefers signatures," the old man smiled.
They stepped out one after the other. Fence shadows lay like crowded ledger pages. The woman's voice leaned from behind a plane‑tree: "See you tonight, Master Morton. The Black Oak Society has never lacked patience."
Archibald didn't look back; he only lifted his cane. The streetlamp at the corner flared whiter, light like a giant blank page pushing the shadows to the margins. The two of them walked along the light and away.