In the split second before the door fully opened, Darion found himself wondering what she would look like. The woman Seren had described. He imagined it in his mind: minor sorceress, morally flexible, used what she had when it suited her. He had built some picture in his head from those details and he was fairly certain the picture was wrong.

The door opened.

She was younger-looking than he had expected. Not too young, there was age in her face if you looked, but the immediate impression was of someone who had held onto something most people let go of.

She had Seren’s face in the way that parents sometimes had their children’s faces, or children had their parents’, the same arrangement of features, different in detail but unmistakably the same source.

She looked at Seren first.

Her face did something complicated. Of course it was not the open warmth of a mother who hadn’t seen her daughter in months and was simply glad to see her, Darion hadn’t expected to see that at all.

Instead it was more contained than that. Surprise actually , but controlled pretty fast. Something underneath the surprise that he couldn’t read clearly.

Then her eyes moved to Darion and stayed there, narrowing slightly.

"Evening, Ma," Seren said.

"Evening," Darion said.

The woman looked at him for another second.

"Who’s the boy," she said.

Darion felt embarrassed in a way with being called boy. Boy? He was a man. A boy certainly couldn’t lead a Barony. The worst in the whole continent at that and was slowly bringing it out its really dire situation.

But then, a beard would have helped to show he was a man, a full beard actually.

"I’ll tell you inside," Seren said.

The house was small and organized in the manner of someone who lived alone and had arranged things exactly how they wanted them and had no interest in adjusting for visitors.

If it wasn’t Seren, Darion was certain she wouldn’t have allowed them inside.

Shelves of containers along one wall, some familiar to Darion from watching Seren work, others entirely different, shapes and colors he didn’t recognize.

A table in the center with two chairs. A fire going low in the hearth. Everything in its place.

Vera ( because Seren had told him her name on the road) sat in one of the chairs and looked at them both standing in her house.

She was going to wait until she had all the information before deciding how to feel about any of it.

Seren sat in the other chair.

Seren sat in the other chair. Darion stood.

Vera looked at Seren.

"So whar brings you here."

Seren glanced at Darion. He took it as his cue.

"She’s here because of me. I’m the bastard son of Emperor Valdris and Current Baron of Percvale," he said. "After my awakening ceremony produced nothing, the orb went dark in front of the entire court, they decided I was classless and sent me to Percvale as Baron. Everyone in that hall knew what that meant. Percvale had been dying for years. It was a posting people were sent to when they had stopped mattering."

Vera said nothing. Listening.

"When I arrived, the knights were starving. There was no food in the castle, no coin and no functioning farmland. The barony owed fifty thousand gold to various territories across the region. The previous Baron had died of disease months earlier and nobody had replaced him in that time." He paused. "That was over a month ago."

"And now?" Vera said.

"The knights eat regularly. We hunt. The farmland is being restored, that’s what Seren is helping me do. We have livestock, goats and cattle, breeding already. We started an archery program. The knight order has grown. Percvale is not what it was when I arrived."

Vera looked at him steadily. She knew Percvale, a dying land known by most people as hopeless. So Darion’s aim for telling her all his achievements was so that she saw that he was changing Percvale and convince her of his seriousness.

"You did all of that in over a month."

"Yes,"he replied.

She turned her eyes to Seren briefly, then back. "Continue."

"Fourteen thousand of the fifty thousand gold is owed to Valdenmoor," Darion said. "Their king, Aldric, sent a letter with a thirty-day deadline. Pay the debt or sign over Percvale’s eastern farmlands as compensation. The eastern farmland is the land Seren has been restoring. It’s where the livestock are. It’s where the crops are going in." He looked at her directly. "I couldn’t sign it over. It’s everything Percvale has to build on."

"So you refused?"

"Yes, I refused. The deadline passed two days ago. Aldric is sending two hundred knights to take the land by force. They’ll arrive within the week."

Vera sat with that for a moment.

"And you came here because you think I can change that outcome," she said.

"Seren told me what you can do," Darion said. "The tools you’ve made for small baronies going into conflicts they don’t have the numbers for. We have a hundred knights against two thousand of Valdenmoor’s. Without something that changes the equation, there’s no version of that fight where Percvale survives."

"Seren told you a great deal," Vera said, without particular inflection.

Seren didn’t respond to that.

Vera looked at Darion again. "Why should I help you?"

"Because if you don’t, everything Seren has spent the last weeks building gets handed to Valdenmoor. Her work, her time, the land she’s restored, it goes to the man who demanded it." He paused. "And she doesn’t get paid. Also Percvale crumbles again, the inhabitants die and the surviving ones go into intense hunger."

Vera thought for some time.

"You’re the bastard son of an Emperor who inherited a dying barony and in two months turned it into something," Vera said. Not a question exactly. More like she was saying it aloud to verify that she had heard it correctly.

"That’s accurate," Darion said.

"How, what ability did you later awaken?"

Darion hesitated for some time then said:

"I’m a Necromancer." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

She looked at him for a long moment. He remembered what Seren had said on the road. Don’t lie to her. She’s better at detecting it than most people.

He hadn’t lied. He didn’t intend to.

"What makes you think Valdenmoor is wrong in this?" she asked. "You owe them fourteen thousand gold. That’s a real debt."

Darion considered that. She was right in a way. Percvale did owe them, he gave them a month deadline to pay.

BUT...!

"Borrowed by a dead man who squandered it," Darion said. "I didn’t borrow it. I didn’t spend it. I inherited the obligation along with everything else. I’ve been in Percvale for about eight weeks and I’ve done more to make it functional than every Baron before me combined, and Aldric wants to take the one piece of land that makes the future possible before I’ve had the chance to build toward paying the debt through actual productivity." He looked at her steadily. "And I did beg him for more time but he refused, I told him Percvale is getting better, with time I’ll be able to pay him."

Vera was quiet.

Then she said: "Five hundred silver coins."

Darion and Seren looked at each other.

Five hundred silver was not a small number. It was not a number he currently had, or that Percvale’s treasury currently had, because Percvale’s treasury was still building itself back from zero and had not gotten far yet.

He thought about what a successful engagement against Valdenmoor would produce. If they pushed back the force Aldric was sending, the situation changed, Aldric would have to reconsider his approach, the farmland would remain in Percvale’s control, the restoration work would continue, the crops would come in, the livestock would multiply.

In six months, a year, Percvale would be generating real income. Five hundred silver was payable from that income.

But that was the hard way.

He could just ’steal’ ’rightfully’ some coins from Valdenmoor using his undeads and boom! Problem solved.

The oath, though.

He thought about what Seren had said. If you break it, you die. Not metaphorically. Actually.

He was not going to break it. He intended to pay. The risk was not that he would choose not to pay but that something outside his control would prevent him from being able to. He could die. Percvale could collapse despite everything. Valdenmoor could win despite Vera’s help and there would be nothing to pay with.

He looked at Vera.

"If we lose despite your help," he said, "I won’t be in a position to pay because I’ll be dead or Percvale will be gone. Is that accounted for in the oath?"

"So Seren also told you about the oath," she said, a smile almost forming on her lips.

"Yes."

Vera looked at him with something that was the closest thing to approval he had seen on her face since the door opened.

"The oath binds to intent and capacity," she said. "If you die, the oath dies with you. If Percvale ceases to exist as a functioning territory, the oath terminates. What it holds is the deliberate choice to not pay when payment is possible." She paused. "Which is the only version of non-payment I care about."