The study door opened and Gunther quickly pretended to be deeply engrossed in a different, smaller book on the side table—a history of Feysac heraldry. His parents entered the drawing-room.
Talos Vogler was a man in his late forties, his frame still strong but beginning to lean towards gauntness. His hair, once as dark as Karl's, was heavily silvered at the temples, and his handsome face was etched with lines of care. But his eyes, a flinty grey, still held the fire of a sharp and stubborn intellect. He wore a dark, well-tailored coat that was perhaps a season or two behind the current fashion in the capital, but its quality was undeniable.
Elinalise, beside him, was a study in preserved grace. Her gown was of a deep blue silk, simple in its cut but elegant, and her black hair was coiled in an intricate style that defied the room's faint air of neglect. She carried herself with a poise that seemed to dare the world to suggest she was anything less than the mistress of a prosperous estate.
"Gunther," Talos said, his voice warming several degrees. "Still buried in your laws and precedents? A man should have some vices. Poetry. Dueling. Something with a little more passion."
"I find the inherent logic of the law to be passionate enough, Father," Gunther replied, setting the heraldry book down. "It is a game of immense stakes, where the right word in the right place can build a fortune or ruin a man."
Talos barked a short, sharp laugh. "Spoken like a true Vogler. We have always understood that power rarely resides in the sword itself, but in the hand that guides it, and the legality of its swing." He walked to the fireplace, over which hung a large, somber portrait of Gunther's grandfather, a stern man in military regalia. "Your grandfather… he believed power was in land and title. He was not entirely wrong. But he failed to see certain things. Things that are now making themselves evident."
"It seems okay to me!" Karl announced, marching back into the room with a triumphant smear of chocolate and cake crumbs around his mouth. "Cook says I'm her best customer."
Elinalise's composure broke into a genuine, warm smile. She produced a handkerchief from a hidden pocket. "And a messy one, my little hawk. Come here." She began to wipe his face, a simple, domestic act that for a moment, banished the shadow of the conversation Gunther had overheard.
Dinner was a similarly curated performance of normalcy. The family sat at the long, mahogany dining table, which could comfortably seat twenty but tonight held only four. Hemmel served a course of a clear, amber broth, his movements a study in silent efficiency. The ceramic was fine, translucent bone ceramic with a delicate blue band and the Vogler crest—a stoic hawk, its wings half-spread. The silver was heavy and polished to a soft gleam.
The conversation was light, carefully steered by Elinalise away from any treacherous shores.
"And what did you learn from your history class today, Karl?" she asked, taking a small, precise spoonful of her soup.
"About Emperor Roselle!" Karl said, his voice eager. "He invented the… the…" he scrunched his face, trying to remember the word, "…the steam engine! And he said a lot of funny things that nobody understood. Like 'OK' and 'cool'."
"A revolutionary and a eccentric," Talos mused, swirling his wine. "He saw the levers of the world and dared to pull them. He understood that true power lies in introducing a new element to the equation." His eyes flickered towards Gunther, a silent, weighted message.
"I read a transcription of one of his edicts," Gunther added. "The language was bizarre, but the underlying legal structure for patenting his inventions was… brilliant. It created a framework to protect something that had never existed before. It was an act of creation, of control... Of order"
"Precisely," Talos said, a spark of intensity in his tired eyes. "To not only possess a thing, but to define the very rules by which it is possessed. That is legacy."
After dinner, as Hemmel and a maid cleared the table, Talos placed a hand on Gunther's shoulder. "A word in my study, son. Bring your keen mind."
Gunther followed him, the familiar sense of anticipation and gravity settling upon him. His father's study was the true heart of the house, a room that defied the slow decay elsewhere. It was lined with books, not just law, but history, philosophy, and obscure volumes on geography and natural science. A large, beautifully detailed map of the former Feysac Empire, now the Feysac Kingdom, dominated one wall. A fine layer of dust might lie on a windowsill in the drawing-room, but here, every surface was clean, every book was precisely aligned. This was where his father's energy went.
Talos closed the heavy door, the click of the latch sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet room. He walked to his desk, but did not sit. Instead, he leaned against it, facing Gunther.
"You heard your mother and I speaking earlier," he stated. It wasn't a question.
"Some of it," Gunther admitted. "Enough to know Baron Eckhardt is applying pressure."
"Eckhardt is a vulture," Talos said, his voice low and cold. "But he is a vulture with a keen sense of smell. He can smell blood in the water from leagues away. And our… situation… has created a rather significant scent." He paused, his flinty eyes searching Gunther's face. "How would you, with your keen mind, assess our legal options against him?"
Gunther didn't hesitate. He had already considered this. "Limited. If the debt is as you say, and the collateral is the northern tracts, our options are contractual nuance. Delaying tactics. We could challenge the interest rate calculation, or file a nuisance suit over the mineral rights on a neighbouring parcel he owns. It would buy time. Perhaps six months. A year at most. It would not solve the underlying problem."
Talos looked at him for a long moment, a complex expression of pride and profound sadness on his face. "You see it all so clearly. The moves on the board. You are right. The law, as it is currently constituted, is a tool for delaying the inevitable, not preventing it." He pushed himself off the desk and went to a large, locked chest of dark wood banded with iron that sat in a corner behind his chair. From a chain around his neck, he produced a small, intricate key.
"The world your grandfather knew was a farse, Gunther. In this world, it is not land or money that builds order, its power." He unlocked the chest with a solid thunk. "To survive in this world, to reclaim what is ours and build a foundation that cannot be shaken by the whims of bankers or rival nobles… we cannot play by the commoner's rules."
He opened the lid. Inside, nestled amidst packets of documents and ledgers, were two objects that seemed out of place. One was a small, heavy-looking leather bag that clinked softly. The other was a single sheet of vellum, covered in a dense, spidery script that was not quite Feysac, not quite Loenish. It seemed to swim before Gunther's eyes.
"For generations, the Vogler name has stood for something. It is fading now, but it does not have to die." Talos's voice was barely a whisper, charged with a fervent, almost religious intensity. "There are other paths to power, son. Paths not written in law books, but in the very fabric of existence. They are dangerous, whispered about, and more real than anything your grandfather could ever comprehend."
He picked up the bag and the vellum. "I have spent the last of our liquid capital, every Hammer not nailed down to a debt payment, on this. Not on land, or on grovelling, but on a future." He held out the vellum. "These are a Beyonder Potion's ingredients. The foundation of a potion. And this," he tapped the script, "is the formula for the Sequence 9 potion of the Lawyer pathway."
Gunther felt the air leave his lungs. Beyonder. The word was a myth, a rumour spoken in the darkest corners of taverns, a thing for old wives' tales and paranoid manifestos. But his father's face was utterly serious, his eyes burning with a desperate hope.
"This… this is your solution?" Gunther managed, his own logical mind reeling.
"It is our salvation," Talos corrected. "The law you love, Gunther—this will make you its master, not its servant. It will grant you an intuition for loopholes, the ability to find the flaw in any argument, any system, any person. It is the first step on a ladder that leads to power you cannot even imagine." He thrust the items into Gunther's hands. The bag was heavy with gold. The vellum felt unnaturally cold.
"We are out of time for conventional strategies. We must introduce a new element to our equation. You must drink this. For Karl. For your mother. For the Vogler's name."
Gunther looked from the bizarre formula to his father's face, etched with a love and a desperation that was more compelling than any legal argument. The weight of his family's legacy, which had always been an abstract concept, was now a physical, cold weight in his palms. The performance of normalcy was over. The real game, a game with stakes he barely understood, was beginning.
He met his father's gaze, the sharp, analytical mind already working, assessing this new, impossible variable. The flaws in this plan were numerous, terrifying. But the flaw in doing nothing was fatal.
"Tell me what to do," Gunther said, his voice steady, the first true step taken on the path that would lead him to become the Baron.