Counter-Pressure
I stared at the ledgers spread across my desk. Three years of falsified entries. Three years of Duke Castor building his case with the patience of a predator who knew the prey was already bleeding.
The silence stretched.
Eledy stood beside the desk, her hands still resting on the ledger where she'd revealed the pattern. She hadn't moved. Hadn't spoken.
Lloyd's hands rested flat on my desk. When he finally spoke, his voice was careful. Clinical.
"The damage is done, my lord."
Not a question. A statement.
"Yes." The word came out hollow.
"Even if the falsification stops today—even if no new entries appear—the treasury is poisoned. The records show incompetence. Mismanagement." Lloyd's jaw tightened. "We can't request crown assistance. Not with these books. We'd look corrupt or incapable."
"Or both," I said quietly.
He nodded.
I looked at the numbers again. The King's decree. Four months to produce five hundred troops. We had two hundred in training. Seventy-five elites who didn't count toward the quota—they were my only real force, and I couldn't add them to fill it.
We needed three hundred more.
The trap was perfect in its simplicity.
Deny Castor and fail the King's requirement. Accept him and hand him control of our military operations. Either way, House Rovaan bled.
"The nobles are already talking," Lloyd said. "About our financial troubles. About the dungeons we haven't cleared. About how other houses manage their territories better."
"Duke Castor makes sure they talk."
"Yes, sir. But that doesn't make them wrong."
The words landed like stones.
I pushed back from the desk and moved to the window. Outside, the training yard was empty in the late afternoon light. Two hundred recruits dismissed for the day. My core unit—once the pillars of my success—now scattered across the territory on missions that felt increasingly futile.
Every path I could see led to Duke Castor.
The thought sat heavy in my chest.
Request crown aid? The falsified ledgers made that impossible.
Borrow from other nobles? They'd demand concessions that gave them influence over our operations.
Fail to meet the King's quota? House Rovaan would look incompetent. Disloyal.
Accept Castor's help? We'd be his in all but name.
I'd been so focused on surviving each day—on managing the immediate crises, on keeping the household running—that I hadn't seen the architecture of the trap until my daughter laid it bare.
Three years.
Three years since Eleanor died, and I'd been stumbling blind while Duke Castor built walls around me one careful lie at a time.
What would you have done, Eleanor? How would you have fought this?
But Eleanor was gone. Had been gone while I drowned in grief and our daughter learned to be invisible and Duke Castor positioned himself as our inevitable savior.
I'd failed.
Failed to see. Failed to protect. Failed to—
"Father?"
Eledy's voice was quiet. Uncertain.
I turned.
She was watching me with those blue eyes that saw too much.
"What if..." She hesitated. Started again. "What if we stop responding to the problems?"
I frowned. "What?"
"The crises. The incidents. The things Duke Castor fixes." Her fingers pressed against the ledger. "What if we... remove their cause? Instead of responding after they happen?"
Lloyd shifted. "We can't remove the falsified records, my lady. The damage is already in the books."
"I know," she said. "But if... if he keeps creating problems, eventually people notice. Don't they? If we solve them first?"
The question hung in the air.
I looked at Lloyd. He was frowning, not quite understanding.
I wasn't sure I understood either.
"Walk me through it," I said to Eledy.
She glanced at the ledgers. "He creates a crisis. Like the bandit suppression that cost too much. Then he waits two weeks. Then he offers border security help."
"Yes."
"But what if..." She swallowed. "What if the border was already secure when he made his offer? What if the problem was already solved?"
Something shifted in my chest. Not hope—I wasn't ready for that. But something like a crack in the suffocation.
Lloyd's eyes narrowed. "Then his offer looks—"
"Late," I said. "Or unnecessary."
"Or presumptuous," Lloyd added, his voice sharpening with understanding.
I moved back to the desk. The idea was forming now, crystallizing.
Eledy is right.
"He's building a narrative," I said. "That House Rovaan is failing. That we need intervention. That absorption is mercy."
"But narratives require events," Lloyd said, catching the thread. "If the events stop matching his story..."
"The story stops working."
Eledy's expression shifted—relief mixed with something that looked like vindication.
"The troop shortage," I said slowly. "He knows we can't afford three hundred recruits. He's probably already preparing his offer to lend us soldiers."
"Which would put his men on our land," Lloyd said. "Under his command."
"So we recruit them anyway." The words came out steady now. Clear. "Before he can make his offer."
Lloyd's expression shifted. "My lord, the treasury—"
"Is poisoned. I know." I pressed my hands flat against the desk. "But if we somehow managed it. If we recruited two hundred seventy, or even all three hundred before his letter arrived..."
"His offer would look suspicious," Lloyd said.
"Exactly." I met his eyes. "It forces him off script. Makes him adjust in ways that might reveal the pattern to others."
"Might," Lloyd emphasized.
"Yes. Might." I looked around my study. At the expensive furniture. The decorative pieces. The imported rugs Eleanor had chosen to make us look like proper nobility instead of jumped-up commoners. But what's the alternative? Accept his troops? Let him position his soldiers on our land while I smile and thank him?
The crack widened. Not relief. Not confidence. Just... a direction that wasn't surrender.
"We liquidate," I said. "The luxuries. The status symbols. Anything we can sell."
Lloyd's expression shifted. "The nobles will notice."
"Let them." I gestured at the room. "We've been playing dress-up in Eleanor's vision of legitimacy while Castor built the cage. I'm done pretending furniture makes us safe."
"It won't be enough," Lloyd warned. "Even if we sell everything decorative—"
"Then we lower the entry benefits," I said. "Not the training standards. Not the combat requirements. But the signing bonuses. The immediate privileges."
Lloyd's jaw tightened. "We'd be asking men to serve for less than other houses offer."
"Yes."
"We'd lose the best prospects to better deals."
"Yes." The admission tasted bitter. "But some will still come. The ones who need work more than comfort. The ones who value stable employment over immediate pay."
"The recruits will resent it," Lloyd said. "They'll know they're getting less."
"I know." I met his eyes. "But they'll be ours. Not Castor's. Not borrowed. Not positioned. Ours."
Lloyd studied me for a long moment. Then something shifted in his expression—not agreement exactly, but recognition.
"You're choosing attrition over dependency."
"I'm choosing to control our own forces," I corrected. "Even if those forces are slower to train, harder to equip. Even if we fall twenty or thirty short of full quota."
"Duke Castor will still try to push us in the name of offering help."
"Let him." The words came out harder than I intended. "But if we've recruited two hundred seventy by then—if we're close enough to quota that his help isn't necessary—his offer looks different."
"It looks like interference," Lloyd said slowly.
"Or opportunism." I turned back to the window. "Either way, it forces him to move more openly than he planned. And open movements can be seen. Questioned."
Lloyd was quiet for a moment. Then:
"And if we still fall short of quota?"
"Then we fall short." The words hurt. "But we fall short on our own terms. Not his."
I continued, steady. "Gerson handles the asset liquidation. Mrs. Hanna manages the staff adjustments. And you, Lloyd—expand recruitment with adjusted parameters."
Lloyd nodded slowly, then saluted. "I'll start drafting the adjusted recruitment parameters tonight."
"No." I looked at him—my second-in-command, my oldest friend. "You'll start tomorrow. Tonight, get some rest. We're going to need it."
His expression softened slightly. "Yes, sir."
He left.
The door closed.
Eledy remained, standing beside my desk with that careful posture.
"You should rest," I told her. "Today was..."
I didn't finish. Didn't know how to finish.
"Yes, Father." She moved toward the door. Stopped. "Will it work?"
Honest question. Deserved an honest answer.
"I don't know," I said. "But it's better than doing nothing while Duke Castor closes the cage he built around us."
She nodded and left.
Alone in the dimming study, I stared at the ledgers. At the pattern of falsification that had nearly destroyed us.
We weren't saved. The treasury was still poisoned. The falsified records still existed. Duke Castor's three-year conspiracy was still intact, still working toward our destruction.
But now I could see it.
And seeing meant I could move—even if that movement was imperfect, insufficient, desperate.
I thought about Duke Castor. About the man I'd known years ago during my military service. Ambitious, yes. Calculating, certainly. But not this.
When had he become this?
Not the mockery I'd expected from nobility toward a jumped-up commoner. Not the condescension of someone looking down from a higher position.
This was uglier. Colder.
He'd chosen to stand in the mud with us. To rot beside us quietly while pretending to offer help. To manufacture our failures with the patience of someone who enjoyed watching the trap close.
When did you become this ugly, Castor?
The thought came quiet and venomous.
Not shouted. Not dramatic. Just a cold realization settling into my chest like a blade.
I'd thought he was a predator circling from above.
But he'd been in the mud the whole time. Building walls while standing beside us. Smiling while poisoning the ground beneath our feet.
That was worse somehow.
I gathered the ledgers and locked them in the secure drawer. Tomorrow the work would begin. Tomorrow we'd start dismantling the visible markers of our status to fund a desperate recruitment push that might not even succeed.
Tomorrow Duke Castor would wake up and find us moving.
Not confidently. Not victoriously.
Just... moving.
On the edge of something that might be a way forward or might be another trap we couldn't see yet.
But movement was better than drowning.
I stood and looked around the study one last time. At the furniture we'd sell. At the decorative pieces that had seemed so important. At the trappings of nobility that had meant nothing when it mattered.
Tomorrow, we begin.
***