The voices from the listening coin grew sharper, more tense. Lucy sat beside Logos, arms crossed but eyes fixed on the faintly glowing receiver.
"…the debt stands at four hundred and twenty thousand marks," said one of the strangers — a man's voice, clipped, urbane, each word perfectly enunciated. "And interest continues to accrue. The crown's patience has… limits."
Baron Laos's voice followed, heavy with forced politeness. "Surely, Lord Envoy, such matters can be resolved with due consideration. We have assets, trade routes—"
"You have promises," the envoy interrupted. "Your mines are failing, your harvests insufficient. Promises do not pay debts."
Lucy shot Logos a quick look, but he didn't move. His eyes were locked on the coin, unblinking.
The second stranger — a woman this time, her tone cold as wrought iron — spoke next. "The crown requires repayment or reallocation of stewardship. In plain terms: pay, or be replaced."
There was a pause. The faint scrape of a chair leg on stone. Then the Baron spoke again, voice low and urgent. "Six years. I will pay in full in six years. All of it. With interest, if necessary. I beg you — grant me this."
The envoy and the collector exchanged a few hushed words, too muffled for the coin to catch, before the man replied. "Very well. Six years. But failure will not mean mere removal. It will mean forfeiture."
The coin went silent.
Lucy leaned back. "Well," she said dryly, "at least we know what the meeting was about. So—" She smirked faintly. "What's the plan, Your Young Lordship?"
The words were meant as a joke. But Logos didn't laugh.
Instead, his face went pale. His hands clenched on the edge of the table. "He's not going to pay it," he said flatly.
Lucy blinked. "What?"
"My father," Logos said, speaking faster now. "He's going to string them along, make a show of trying, then run when it collapses. And when he runs—"
"Logos—"
"When he runs," the boy pressed on, "it won't just be the title left behind. The debt will transfer to me. I'm his heir. His successor. Which means—"
Lucy sat forward. "You're jumping to—"
"Which means I'll inherit a gutted barony with a ticking execution date," Logos cut in. "Anyone who can actually work will be gone. The steward, the master engineer, the merchants with any actual trade influence — they'll leave before the collapse hits. All that'll be left are the ones too desperate to leave, and they'll do anything for a scrap of security."
He swallowed hard. "And those kinds of people… they're dangerous. They'll listen to whoever offers them the easiest path, and if someone decides I'm in the way—"
Lucy stood abruptly. "Alright. Stop. Breathe."
But Logos didn't stop. His voice was shaking now, faster, louder. "It's not just the debt — it's the whole infrastructure. The mines are already failing. The south road hasn't been maintained in two years. The west granaries have pest infestations. And if trade collapses, the capital will—"
"Logos!"
Her voice cracked like a whip.
The boy froze.
Lucy stepped around the table and knelt in front of him. His hands were trembling, knuckles white. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment before words found him again, weak and stumbling. "I can't fix that. Not all of it. Not in six years. Not without—" He cut himself off, eyes darting as though searching for a calculation he couldn't finish.
For the first time since she'd met him, Lucy saw him not as the unshakable, prematurely grown prodigy who could out-argue a master artificer… but as an eleven-year-old boy who'd just realized the sky could fall on his head.
"Hey," she said softly.
His eyes flicked to hers.
"You're shaking," she said. "You need to stop for a moment."
"I—" He tried to speak, but his voice cracked. He looked away, biting his lip.
Lucy hesitated — then reached up and gently took his wrists, easing his hands away from the edge of the table. "You're not wrong," she said, keeping her tone steady. "Your father's making a promise he can't keep. And yes, if things go bad, you might inherit a mess. But right now, the only thing that's going to happen if you keep spinning like this is that you're going to burn out before you even start."
Logos's breath came in uneven pulls, but he didn't pull away.
"I've seen you plan a machine from a single spark of an idea," she went on. "You break down impossible problems into pieces and solve them one at a time. That's what you need to do here."
"This isn't a machine," he muttered.
"No," Lucy agreed. "It's worse. It's people. Which means it'll be messy. And unpredictable. And it'll still have to be dealt with one piece at a time."
His breathing slowed a little. Not much — but enough that the tremor in his hands eased.
"I can't…" He swallowed. "Six years isn't enough."
"Then we make it enough," she said simply. "Or we make it look like enough until we've bought more time."
He glanced up at her, something in his expression caught between fear and calculation. "That's lying."
"That's politics," she corrected.
He gave a weak, humorless laugh — but it was something.
Lucy stood and patted his shoulder. "You're not alone in this, Logos. And you're not your father. You actually care about fixing the mess you're imagining. That already puts you ahead."
For a long moment, he was silent. Then he reached into his pocket and picked up the listening coin, turning it over in his hands.
"Six years," he murmured.
Lucy raised an eyebrow. "Thinking about running a countdown?"
"Thinking about how to make sure I'm ready in half that time," he said quietly.
Her mouth twitched into a faint smile. "That's the spirit."
But as she watched him — the way his gaze seemed far away, calculating and uneasy — she couldn't shake the image of how pale he'd gone a few minutes earlier.
For all his brilliance, for all his composure… he was still just a boy staring down a future that might eat him alive.
And for the first time, Lucy wasn't sure if even he could outthink that.