While Deacon analyzed the financial rot of the House of Cassian, the logistical rot of his alliance with the Widow Elms was beginning to fester. The theft of the pure sulfur had not been forgotten, and the Widow was not a woman to be placated by a textile monopoly alone. She had discovered that her new 'bodyguard,' Balthasar—Staff Sergeant Tate—was far more than a mute beggar. His discipline, his observational skills, and his habit of mapping every room he entered had alerted her to the fact that the Castellan was holding a far deeper deck of cards than she had initially suspected.
Deacon met the Widow in the secluded garden of her estate, a place of frozen fountains and skeletal rosebushes that seemed to mirror her own severe personality. She was waiting for him in a stone gazebo, a silver tea service laid out before her. Tate stood behind her, his face a mask of stolid indifference, but Deacon noticed the slight shift in his posture—a subtle signal that the area was under surveillance.
"You have a very talented 'assistant,' Lord Cassian," the Widow began, her voice as sharp as the winter wind. "Balthasar has a way of seeing things that others miss. He noticed, for instance, that the sulfur stolen from my docks didn't leave the city. He found traces of it near the Alchemist Guild. And he noticed that your Master Elian has been ordering large quantities of high-grade copper and fine-milled iron—materials not typically used for glassmaking."
Deacon did not flinch. He sat across from her, his noble persona perfectly intact. "Master Elian is a man of diverse interests, Widow. As am I. The city requires modernization if it is to survive the coming winter. The Goblins were merely the first frost."
"Do not play the visionary with me, Castellan," she snapped, leaning forward. "You are building weapons. Or something worse. And you used my sulfur to do it. I could have you branded as a rebel before the week is out. The Imperial Crown does not take kindly to local lords developing independent ordnance."
"And the Imperial Crown does not take kindly to textile merchants smuggling anachronistic mechanical devices from the southern ports," Deacon countered, his voice dropping to a dangerous level. "I have the watches, Widow. I have the logs of your shipments through Warehouse Seven. If I fall, you fall with me. We are bound by our mutual illegalities."
The silence that followed was long and heavy. The Widow studied him, her eyes searching for a weakness, but Deacon had spent years in the Army learning how to hold a poker face under fire. He wasn't a lord; he was a Sergeant First Class, and he was currently negotiating a supply line in a hostile territory. .
"What do you want, Cassian?" she finally asked, her tone shifting from accusation to a cold, mercantile pragmatism.
"I want the sulfur you have in Oryn," Deacon stated. "Not a theft this time. A formal purchase, hidden within your textile shipments. I want the fine-milled iron, and I want the optics—the lenses you bring in for the southern scholars. In exchange, I will grant you the rights to the northern timber trade. You get the wood to build your ships, and I get the materials to build my... modernization."
The trade was massive. The northern timber was a lucrative Imperial resource, and by granting it to the Widow, Deacon was effectively privatizing a Crown asset. It was a move that would eventually attract the King's Inquisitors, but for now, it secured the materials Staff Sergeant Blake needed for the next phase of the Shadow Command's evolution: the construction of the first long-range communication telescopes and the refinement of the Thunder Claps.
"The timber for the iron," the Widow agreed, her voice tight. "But I keep Balthasar. He is a useful mirror. He reminds me that you are always watching, which makes me more inclined to be honest. And Lord Cassian? If you ever steal from me again, I won't go to the Inquisitors. I'll simply ensure that the grain you are so desperately trying to grow never reaches the market."
Deacon left the estate, his pulse finally slowing. He had secured the materials, but he had given the Widow a seat at the table of the Shadow Command. He looked at Tate as he walked past, but the Sergeant didn't even blink. He was a soldier on a deep-cover mission, and his silence was his strongest weapon. Deacon had his sulfur, he had his engineer, and he had the Church by the throat. Now, he just had to hope that Blake could turn that iron into something that could outrun the inevitable Imperial intervention.