TRADES AND TREATIES

  THE GLYPHWRIGHT CHRONICLES

  BOOK THREE

  JEREMY FABIANO

  TRADES & TREATIES

  The Glyphwright Chronicles - Book 3

  JEREMY FABIANO

  Copyright © 2026, by Jeremy Fabiano

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to reality is coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.jeremyfabianoauthor.com

  Cover design by Jacqueline Sweet Design

  Also by Jeremy Fabiano

  The Glyphwright Chronicles

  Ink & Intent

  Wards & Measures

  Trades & Treaties

  Vision & Venture

  The Aetheric Codex

  The Clockwork Heart

  The Lost Pages

  Shadows of Gearford

  The Forgotten City

  The Forbidden Spell

  Foreign Exchange

  The Keepers of Warden’s Rest

  Clean Sweep

  Field Tripped

  Camped Out

  Final Notice

  Bad Wrap

  Formally Crashed

  Parent Trapped

  Class Warfare

  Scholar Shipped

  Graduated Threat

  Spring Breaking

  The Tempest Chronicles

  A Fable of Magic

  Necromancer’s Bane

  The Queen’s Gambit

  Hour of Reckoning

  The Stones of Hygeia

  Trials of the Firstborn

  Risen By War

  Precipice To War

  Bishop’s Gambit Omnibus (Precipice Book 1)

  Omnibus Editions

  The Tempest Chronicles Omnibus 1 (Books 1-3)

  The Tempest Chronicles Omnibus 2 (Books 4-6)

  To my family, my friends, my Inner Circle of author friends and two puppers and two kitties that left us too early.

  Thank you for all of your love and support.

  “The court can take it up with me personally. I’ll explain that I valued fed children over filing deadlines. If that costs me, so be it.”

  — PRINCE ADRIAN OF VALERIE, SON OF RODERICK IV

  Contents

  1. The Fourth Chestplate

  2. The Price Of Good Wine

  3. Too Many Voices

  4. Seating Arrangements

  5. Foreign Considerations

  6. Travel Companions

  7. Gilded And Otherwise

  8. Old Scars

  9. Northern Hospitality

  10. Taking Stock

  11. Pattern Recognition

  12. Waste And Want

  13. Sticks And Carrots

  14. Lines Drawn

  15. Breaking Bread

  16. The Quiet Harbor

  17. The Short List

  18. Fresh Catch

  19. Extra Ink

  20. Around The Table

  21. Scales And Salt

  22. Full Nets

  23. Harbor Watch

  24. Numbers Game

  25. Ink And Distance

  26. Room Service

  27. Loose Threads

  28. Silver And Steel

  29. Distant Voices

  30. The Right Questions

  31. Country Air

  32. Shift Change

  33. Clear Air

  34. Sore Legs

  35. Familiar Faces

  36. Extra Help

  37. Chain Of Command

  38. Honest Answers

  39. House Call

  40. Who Bleeds

  41. Right Now

  42. The Bill

  43. Royal Treatment

  44. Room For Five

  45. Small World

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  The Fourth Chestplate

  Rain hammered Tom’s smithy like it had a personal grudge against the roof. Thunder rolled across Millbrook in waves, and each crack made the forge fire flicker. Lightning split the sky outside the open doors and threw sharp shadows across the workbenches.

  Kyle ducked in through the open doorway with a leather satchel clutched against his chest. Water streamed off his cloak and pooled on the stone floor. He shook himself like a wet dog and spotted Felix and me at the main workbench.

  “Made it,” he said. “Rose’s things are in here. I kept them dry.”

  Tom emerged from the back of the smithy at the same moment and carried a chestplate with both hands like it might shatter if he breathed wrong. He set it on the central workbench and pulled his brother into a one-armed embrace that nearly lifted Kyle off his feet.

  “You’re soaked through,” Tom said.

  “Noticed that.” Kyle thumped him on the back and stepped away. “Good to see you too, little brother.”

  “How was the road?”

  “Wet. Very wet. And for a change of pace, wet some more.” Kyle pulled a smaller bundle from inside his cloak. “Letters from home. Cora wrote you a novel, looks like. Seth’s is shorter but he drew something on the envelope.”

  Tom took the bundle and tucked it into his apron pocket for later. “Mom doing alright?”

  “Same as ever. Sends her love. Wants to know when you’re coming to visit.”

  “When I’m not buried in commission work.” Tom fixed me with a look that could have curdled milk. “Speaking of which…” he nodded toward the chestplate. The metal was dark, almost black, with that distinctive shimmer I’d come to associate with his enhanced metallurgy. Light played across its surface in ways that suggested depth where there shouldn’t be any.

  “This is the last one,” Tom said as he fixed me with a look that could have curdled milk. “I mean it this time, Marcus. I’m out of the alloy blend. You blow this one up and I can’t make another for three months.”

  Kyle glanced at the corner of the smithy where three other chestplates sat in various states of destruction. One had a hole melted clean through the center and the edges were still slightly glassy from extreme heat. Another was cracked in half along the sternum line and the break revealed crystalline patterns in the metal’s grain. The third looked like someone had twisted it in their hands and warped the entire structure into something that would fit no human torso.

  “What happened to those?” Kyle asked.

  “Ask him.” Tom jerked his thumb at me. “The first one, he tried channeling too much energy through the dispersal network, and it melted straight through. On the second one, something in his ward design created a resonance feedback loop. It cracked clean in half.” He pointed at the warped one. “The third attempt, the magic resistance wards conflicted with my metallurgical enhancements. The whole thing twisted like wet cloth.”

  “But—”

  “Four chestplates, Marcus. Four.” Tom crossed his arms and glared at me. “Do you have any idea how long those took?”

  “That’s my sixty gold in that corner,” Kyle said. “Materials and labor. You’re not out anything but pride.”

  “Pride.” Tom’s jaw tightened. “That was some of my best work. The crystalline alignment on the second one was perfect before he cracked it in half.”

  “And the fifth one will be even better.” Kyle set his satchel on the workbench. “I knew what I was signing up for when I agreed to fund this. Experimental work means failures and iteration. I’d rather pay for failures now than die later because we played it safe.”

  Some of the tension left Tom’s shoulders. “I still don’t enjoy watching my work get melted.”

  “Neither do I, but if this one works, it’ll be worth every copper of those other three.” Kyle looked at me. “I assume you’ve fixed the problems?”

  I nodded. “The dispersal channels are wider now, and the resonance dampeners are in place. I redesigned the resistance wards to complement Tom’s enhancements instead of fighting them.”

  “You said that last time,” Tom muttered.

  “I’ve actually fixed them this time.”

  Kyle opened his satchel and pulled out a smaller leather pouch. “Rose sent these with final instructions.” He set three small metal discs on the workbench, each inscribed with patterns I’d only seen in her correspondence sketches. The artifice work was intricate and precise and showed months of practice under Master Aldwin’s instruction.

  He handed me a folded letter. “She said you’d know what to do with them.”

  I unfolded the paper and skimmed Rose’s neat handwriting. Most of it confirmed what she’d written in previous letters, but a few refinements caught my eye. She’d adjusted the detection sensitivity based on her latest tests.

  “Incapacitation triggers,” I said to Felix, who leaned over my shoulder to read Rose’s notes. “It’s the same design we discussed in her last letter. If the wearer gets trapped or frozen or bound or otherwise immobilized, these activate a counter-response.”

  “What kind of counter-response?” Kyle asked.

  “That depends on what wards we pair them with.” I set the letter aside. Rose had thought this through months ago when we first started planning. The artificed components handled detection and activa
tion. Our job was to provide the actual magical effects they would trigger. “She’s essentially built a contingency system. The armor notices when you’re in trouble and responds automatically with whatever ward spells we inscribe.”

  Felix pulled out his notebook and flipped to the page where we’d outlined the response layers. “First is heat generation for ice effects. Then, binding dissolution for physical restraints. Then, magic dampening for arcane traps.” He tapped the page. “It’s the same plan as before.”

  “All of that?” Kyle’s voice cracked slightly. “On one piece of armor?”

  Thunder crashed overhead, and the forge fire guttered. For a moment the only light came from a sustained lightning flash that turned the smithy white and shadowless. Then the fire recovered, and the warm orange glow returned.

  “Right,” I said. “Felix, you handle the lightening enchantments and corrosion resistance. Use the same procedure as last time.”

  “Agreed.” Felix checked his materials, already laid out on the workbench where they’d been waiting for the past two days. He had specialized inks and brushes fine enough to inscribe on metal and the reference texts he’d copied from Whitmore’s library. “I’ll use the Eastern school method. It’s slower but more stable.”

  “I’ll handle magic resistance.” I adjusted my own supplies next to Felix’s. We’d set everything up as soon as Tom told us he was close to finishing. “I’m using the same dispersal approach as last time, but with the modifications I showed you last night.”

  Kyle looked between us. “Dispersal approach?”

  “Instead of trying to block incoming magic entirely, the wards redirect and disperse it,” I explained. “The design spreads the energy across the whole surface instead of letting it concentrate on one point. The theory is sound. I just had to work out the scaling issues.”

  “The three chestplates in the corner were the scaling issues,” Tom muttered.

  “Which I’ve fixed.” I touched the dark metal and felt Tom’s work humming beneath my fingertips. The metallurgical enhancements were stable and ready to receive our inscriptions. “The surface should be able to handle the energy distribution now. Tom?”

  “It’ll hold,” Tom said. “I reinforced the molecular structure specifically for magical stress tolerance. That’s what took so long.”

  Kyle hadn’t moved. He watched us prepare, and his face showed desperate hope that expected disappointment.

  “And Rose’s pieces?” he asked.

  I picked up one of the artificed discs and turned it over in my hand. The craftsmanship was remarkable for someone her age, with clean lines and precise angles and consistent depth throughout. Master Aldwin taught her well.

  “These integrate last,” I said. “After our ward work is complete, we set one over the chest and one on the back and one on the left side. They’ll monitor your vital signs and movement patterns. If something immobilizes you, they detect the sudden loss of mobility and trigger whatever countermeasures we’ve inscribed.”

  “Which are?”

  “A heat burst for ice and cold effects. A dissolution pulse for physical bindings. And a magic purge for anything arcane that’s holding you.” I met his eyes. “If someone traps you, the armor will try to get you free. Automatically. You won’t have to think about it or do anything.”

  Kyle swallowed hard. “That’s... incredible.”

  “Yeah,” Felix said without looking up from his preparation work. “It is. This is probably the most sophisticated enchanted armor in the kingdom. It has multiple integrated systems working together. It has artificed components linked to ward work. It’s all built on enhanced metallurgy that technically shouldn’t exist yet.” He paused and finally met Kyle’s gaze. “You’re wearing our entire combined skill set. Try not to die in it.”

  “Felix,” I said.

  “What? It’s true. If something manages to kill him while he’s wearing this, we should probably retire.”

  Tom snorted. Lightning flashed again, and thunder followed almost instantly. The storm was right on top of us.

  “Can we start?” Tom asked. “The atmospheric energy is actually good for enchantment work. High ambient magic in storm conditions.”

  I looked at Felix. He nodded.

  “Kyle, stand back,” I said. “Don’t touch anything until we tell you.”

  He retreated to the corner near the destroyed chestplates and crossed his arms. His foot tapped an anxious rhythm against the stone floor.

  Felix went first. He worked with methodical precision and inscribed the lightening enchantments along the interior surface where they’d be protected from wear. The ink went on pale and then sank into the metal as it activated. Each stroke was deliberate and unhurried.

  “Weight reduction is stable,” he murmured after completing the first section. “I’m moving to corrosion resistance.”

  The corrosion wards went on the exterior surfaces. Felix used a different ink blend for these, one that bonded with the metal’s surface structure rather than sinking into it. The inscriptions would protect the armor from rust and acid and most forms of chemical degradation.

  Tom watched with intense focus as Felix covered the specialized metallurgy with magical inscriptions. His hands clenched and unclenched like he wanted to grab the chestplate and run.

  “Done,” Felix said finally. He stepped back and examined his work. “The standard applications are complete. The metal accepted everything cleanly.”

  My turn.

  The magic resistance wards were more complex. I’d developed and tested the dispersal approach on smaller items at first. I’d started with a bracer and then moved to a gauntlet and finally a helm that Tom had made for experimentation. Those had worked fine. The problem lay in scaling up to a full chestplate with integrated systems. The three ruined pieces in the corner proved that small-scale success didn’t guarantee anything.

  I dipped my finest brush into the silver-infused ink I’d mixed specifically for this purpose and began.

  The first stroke connected the left shoulder to the sternum guard. The second linked the sternum to the right shoulder. I built a network of channels across the armor’s surface that would catch incoming magic and redirect it along predetermined paths. Each path led to dispersal points I’d designed to bleed energy safely into the environment.

  Rain hammered the roof and thunder rolled. My hand stayed steady.

  “Breathe,” Felix whispered.

  I realized I’d been holding my breath and exhaled slowly. The ward work was delicate, but it proceeded well. The dispersal channels formed cleanly, and the connection points integrated with Felix’s existing inscriptions without interference.

  Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. The storm showed no signs of letting up.

  Finally, I completed the last connection point and stepped back. The chestplate’s surface now showed a web of silver lines that overlapped Felix’s work. The patterns caught the firelight and seemed to pulse faintly with contained energy.

  “Magic resistance is complete,” I said. “I’m ready for the artificed components.”

  Kyle made a small noise that might have been a whimper.

  Tom handed me Rose’s discs. Each one was about the size of a large coin and inscribed on both sides, with detection arrays on the front and activation triggers on the back.

  “Chest position first,” I said. “Then the back. Then the left side.”

  I placed the first disc over the sternum. The metal was warm from our work and hummed with accumulated enchantments. Rose’s artificed component settled into place, and I used a binding inscription to secure it permanently to the surface.

  The disc flared once with pale blue light and then went dormant.

  “Is that normal?” Kyle asked from across the room.

  “Yes.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. “It’s initializing and learning the armor’s magical signature so it can monitor for changes.”