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"Before I begin," Isabell said as she set aside her meal to retrieve a small leatherbound notebook that contained several pages of notes.

Hugo’s fingers tightened on his own ledger.

The woman hadn’t even glanced in his direction, but somehow he felt like she knew exactly how incomplete his preparations were.

His eyes darted from Isabell to Owain and back again, looking at the calm, collected engineer as she adjusted her spectacles like she could see through to a man’s heart through them.

"I know that you only intended to meat with Master Sebastian today," Isabell said calmly as she considered how hard she should press Owain on this point. From what she had seen so far, he was both fragile and offbalance, as though he’d never considered battles fought in dining halls rather than battlefields.

Since that was the case, she decided to cut directly to the heart of the matter as she doubted he had the skills to manage a more subtle conversation.

"Do you have a chest like that one for each of the guilds you had planned to meet with? "

Thanks to Ashlynn’s letter, she knew that he didn’t, but whether or not he admitted to it, the way he handled her question would tell her much about the Lothian heir and how he intended to proceed.

Thus far, her impression of his understanding of business was.

.. poor. It seemed like Lady Ashlynn had taken his measure quite well and she hadn’t hesitated to lay bare the arrogant nobleman’s shortcomings.

"I wouldn’t dare to bring so many chests of treasures on such a long journey," Owain said casually. "This one was carefully crafted to demonstrate the wealth to be had in our campaign to capture Airgead Mountain and its riches. Of course, a Holy War will do far more than capture a single mountain but you needn’t concern yourself with other objectives. After all, the most interesting gains should be treasures like these, shouldn’t they? "

"You would be surprised at what we would find worth negotiating for, Lord Owain," Isabell said with a smile before she turned to the short, balding Assessor for Blackwell County.

"Assessor Adrian, what price has the crown currently set on a low peerage?

How much land must be secured and held in order to grant a title? "

"The cost is not low, Master Isabell," the assessor said with a heavy sigh. Of course, he’d discussed this matter with Master Isabell in advance but he never expected that the Lothian heir would arrive so hat-in-hand that she would have an opportunity to make this move.

Since he had, however, he saw no reason to go easy on the young man.

"A knight should not be granted less than one thousand acres of land, though some may wish for more, and it must be purchased from the granting lord at a fair price," Adrian said.

"Further, a sum of twenty thousand sovereigns must be paid to the granting lord and a sum of ten thousand sovereigns must be given as tithe to the crown upon creation of the title. This completely ignores the costs of constructing a fortified manor, establishing a village and raising soldiers to serve in the lord’s army during time of war. "

As the man spoke, Hugo’s hands were busy in the margins of his ledger, making careful notes and calculating quick sums. Owain had told him of his intention to recruit ship captains as new knights but he’d never mentioned how much money was involved in conferring a title!

Now, as he stared at the growing sum once he added the cost of the land and everything else involved, his heart began to race in his chest.

Was Owain expecting the Lothian treasury to bear these costs or did he think that he could extract this money from the captains themselves?

Just the few names that Lady Jocelynn had given them would already amount to more than a hundred thousand sovereigns.

.. where was this money going to come from?

"You see? There are other treasures to be had in Lothian March besides the ones to be mined on Airgead Mountain," Isabell said with a smile as she looked at the horrified expressions on Sir Hugo and Sir Rian’s faces.

Both men were the sons of barons. They had soaked in the notion from birth that noblemen were somehow better than commoners.

Their positions were given to them by right of inherent superiority, and yet, the woman before them was talking about buying the same level of privilege they possessed in the same tone she might have used to talk about going to the market to purchase fish.

"Becoming a knight isn’t that easy, Master Isabell," Owain countered.

His voice was calm and even but his hands clenched on the armrests of his chair tightly enough for the wood to creak.

He was already planning to use offers of knighthood to entice ship captains to take up arms with him, and in doing so he expected to gain trained fighting men who were capable leaders.

Yet this woman thought that she could just buy her way into the peerage?

At the opposite end of the table, Sir Rian’s reaction was even more obvious as he momentarily forgot to pay attention to the hands of the Journeyman who was appraising the jewels.

If the person speaking wasn’t a woman he’d have marched down the length of the table to slap them for suggesting that a knighthood was something so petty that it could be bought and sold like sacks of grain.

"Before a title can be granted, a person who wishes to be a knight must render meritorious service to the lord granting the title," Owain pointed out as he held up a hand, gesturing for Sir Rian to back down before the portly knight could cause an incident that would completely derail their negotiations. "Further, the Church must attest to the person’s upright moral standing. These things can’t just be bought. "

"You think that funding your war and arming your soldiers wouldn’t count as ’meritorious service’?

" Master Olver said with a snort. "You’re not just coming to us for arms and armor, my Lord. Battle takes a toll on both even as it takes a toll on fighting men. I imagine that if I brought a few of my journeymen and another master smith or two, I could shorten the time it took to repair a fighting man’s equipment by several days, and that’s just the service I can offer. "

"Everyone here can do more for you in this war than supply materials," the red-haired master of the Brotherhood of Armaments said. "Master Isabell is skilled in the design of fortifications and she’s spent time in the old countries learning the what scholars across the seas have spent decades refining when it comes to siegecraft. She’s too humble to say it, but she knows more of war than many knights who have led men in battle," he said, giving a pointed look at Sir Hugo and the portly Sir Rian.

"The point I wanted to make, my lord," Isabell said, raising a hand before anyone else could pile on. She was well aware of what everyone desired from this, but she had to lay out a bit more rope before she could draw the net closed around Lord Owain. "Is that, while you have brought a chest of treasures, it will take actual expenditures on all of our parts to support your war efforts. I’m afraid that no matter how highly that chest is valued, it won’t be sufficient to meet your demands for all of us. "

"I haven’t demanded anything of you, Master Isabell," Owain pointed out as he rapidly lost patience with this woman and her attempts to diminish and dismiss what he had to offer. "Airgead Mountain has rough terrain and the cat demons that infest the mountain don’t favor the construction of large fortifications. I don’t need a master of siegecraft to take the mountain, much less a woman playing warrior," he said as he finally lost his patience.

Sir Rian’s hand dropped fully to his sword hilt now, and the portly knight shifted to stand directly behind his lord’s chair, looming over the table like a storm about to break.

The subtle sound of steel scraping leather as he loosened his blade in its sheath sounded much louder than it should have, like another log thrown on the fire, increasing the temperature in the room even further.

Beside him, Hugo nearly dropped his fork as blood drained from his face.

This was bad, very, very bad. As a steward, he should speak up.

He should do something, anything to smooth the tensions before his lord’s outburst could derail their negotiations.

And yet, looking at the man’s tightly clenched fists and the way that Sir Rian’s hand had dropped to the hilt of his sword, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

On the opposite side of the table, both Master Tiernan and Master Olver looked like they were ready to treat the young nobleman the same way they treated mouthy apprentices and neither smith looke much like they cared about the consequences of doing so.

Even Master Sebastian looked like he was wishing for the sword he’d worn during his days as a captain at sea and the way he held his steak knife looked far too practiced for Hugo to feel comfortable within arms reach of the white haired guild master.

The room itself seemed ready to erupt like a pot about to boil over and all eyes turned to Master Isabell to see how she would respond to Owain’s insult.