The letter from the city arrived a week later.

  Eiran wasn't supposed to see it. Havelock took the mail directly from the coach, as he always did now, sorting through the correspondence before anyone else could read it. But this letter had a seal Eiran recognized, the same symbol that had been on Aldwin's leather case, the patent agent who'd visited weeks ago.

  Aldworth and Associates.

  Havelock read it at his desk, expression carefully neutral. When he finished, he folded the letter and tucked it into his ledger without comment.

  But that evening, after Tommin and Pol had left, Havelock called Eiran to the back room.

  "There's been a development."

  Eiran waited.

  "The paper has attracted significant attention. More than expected." Havelock's tone was professional, businesslike. "Aldworth and Associates has received inquiries from three separate institutions interested in licensing the technology. Two industrial concerns and one academic body."

  "What does that mean in practice?"

  "It means money. Real money." Havelock pulled the letter from his ledger and set it on the desk between them. "They're proposing an initial licensing agreement worth forty royals, with ongoing royalties tied to production and sales."

  Forty royals. The number hung in the air.

  "That's enough to pay off your debts," Eiran said.

  Havelock's expression flickered. "You know about those."

  "Everyone knows about them. Pol's uncle talks. Tommin notices when he's not paid." Eiran kept his voice level. "Forty royals to the patent agents. Maybe more to the suppliers. You've been drowning, and you didn't tell me."

  "My debts are my concern."

  "They're why you stole from me."

  Havelock's jaw tightened.

  "I didn't steal. I-"

  "You took my work and put your name on it. You sold it to a journal without crediting me. You're negotiating a licensing deal worth forty royals based on knowledge that came from my head, and I'm supposed to be grateful for thirty percent." Eiran leaned forward. "That's theft. Dressed up in contracts and explanations, but theft."

  "You signed the agreement."

  "After you'd already published. After the theft was complete. What choice did I have?"

  Silence. Havelock looked at the letter on his desk, then at Eiran, then away.

  "You don't understand," he said finally. His voice was quieter now, some of the professional veneer cracking. "You're young. You think the world should be fair. It's not. It never has been."

  "I know it's not fair. I've known that since I could count coppers." Eiran's anger was cold, controlled. "What I didn't know was that you would be the one to prove it."

  Havelock flinched.

  "I believed in you," Eiran continued. "I came to you with something impossible, knowledge I couldn't explain from a dream I didn't understand, and you said we'd figure it out together. You said it was a partnership."

  "It was. It is."

  "A partnership where you take seventy percent and all the credit?"

  "A partnership where I take the risk and the debt and the burden of making your ideas into something real." Havelock stood, suddenly agitated. "Do you think this is easy? Do you think journals accept papers from provincial workshops because the work is good? I had to beg. Cajole. Call in favors I'd been saving for twenty years. The only reason anyone listened is because my name, my name, carried enough weight to open doors."

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "And my name?"

  "Your name is nothing." The words came harsh and flat.

  Eiran stood too. They faced each other across the desk, the letter with its promise of forty royals lying between them. "My name is nothing. My work is nothing, unless it's attached to someone who matters. That's what you've been telling me all along, isn't it? From the first day you took my notes. From the first trip to the city. You never intended to share credit. You just needed me to keep providing knowledge until you had enough."

  "That's not true."

  "Then put my name on the patent. Right now, tonight, before the deal closes. Add me as co-inventor. Make it real."

  Havelock was silent.

  "You can't," Eiran said. "Or won't. Because the moment my name appears, questions get asked. Where did the ideas really come from? Why is an apprentice claiming credit for a master's work? The whole edifice starts to crumble."

  "The licensing deal is already structured. Changing the patent now would delay everything, possibly kill the agreement entirely."

  "Convenient."

  "True." Havelock's voice hardened again. "I'm trying to build something that benefits us both. Yes, I took more than I should have. Yes, the paper should have carried your name. But we're past that now. The only way forward is to make the deal work, collect the money, use it to fund the next phase of development. Your thirty percent of forty royals is twelve royals, more than you've ever held in your life."

  Twelve royals. One hundred forty-four standards. A year's wages for a skilled apprentice, delivered in a single payment.

  It should have felt like triumph.

  It felt like ashes.

  "My thirty percent of my work," Eiran said. "Paid to me as a reward for being robbed quietly."

  "Paid to you as a partner in a venture that couldn't exist without both of us." Havelock's patience was fraying. "I'm not the villain you want me to be, Eiran. I'm a man trying to survive in a world that doesn't care about fairness. Just like you."

  "No. Not like me." Eiran moved toward the door. "You had a choice. When the journals accepted the paper, you could have written back, added my name, explained the collaboration. You chose not to. That's not survival. That's just selfishness."

  "And what would you have done? In my position? With sixty royals of debt and a workshop about to collapse?"

  The question stopped Eiran at the threshold.

  Would he have done the same? If he were drowning, if he were desperate, if some foundling apprentice handed him a lifeline he could claim as his own?

  He didn't know. He hoped not. But he didn't know.

  "I would like to think," he said slowly, "that I would have found another way. But I've never been tested like that. Maybe you're right. Maybe I would have done exactly what you did."

  "Then-"

  "But I'm not going to pretend it wasn't wrong. And I'm not going to pretend we're still partners." Eiran met Havelock's eyes one last time. "I'll take my twelve royals when the deal closes. I'll continue working here because I have no other options. But don't ask me to trust you again. Don't pretend we're building something together. What you built, you built on my back, and we both know it."

  He left before Havelock could respond.

  ---

  The walk home was long and cold.

  Winter had fully arrived now. The streets of Kettleford were iced over, treacherous underfoot, lit only by the occasional lamp in a window. Eiran walked carefully, one hand against the walls for balance, his breath making clouds in the freezing air.

  Twelve royals. Coming to him eventually, when the deal closed, when the licenses were signed. Twelve royals for knowledge that had come to him in dreams, refined through weeks of work, stolen and sold and now returning as thirty percent of someone else's success.

  It was more money than he'd ever had.

  It was less than he deserved.

  Both things were true, and neither made the other feel better.

  He climbed the stairs to his room and sat on his bed in the darkness. The cold seeped through the walls, through his coat, through the thin blanket he pulled around his shoulders. But he didn't light the candle. Didn't eat the crust of bread he'd saved from earlier.

  He just sat, and thought, and felt the shape of what had happened settle into his bones.

  Havelock had stolen from him. Had justified it with logic that wasn't entirely wrong: the world was unfair, names mattered, an apprentice's ideas were worth less than a master's signature. All of it true. None of it acceptable.

  And somewhere underneath the anger and the hurt, Eiran felt something else taking root.

  More knowledge, he could feel it waiting. Other truths glimpsed in Coren's long years, not yet fully formed. Knowledge he hadn't shared, hadn't written down, hadn't given to anyone.

  If more knowledge came, if the dreams continued, what would he do with it?

  The old answer would have been: share it with Havelock. Trust the partnership. Build something together.

  The new answer was forming, cold and clear in the darkness of his room.

  Keep it. Hide it. Use it to build something that belonged only to him.

  The world didn't care about fairness. Havelock had taught him that.

  Fine.

  He would learn to work within the world as it was.

  And when the opportunity came, when he had something the world wanted, something that carried his name and no one else's, he would not make the same mistake twice.

  Eiran lay down on his narrow bed and closed his eyes.

  The dreams, when they came, would be his.

  Only his.

  Always.