Deadly Enterprise

The Iskanders have been developing their industrial base in Tarnland (Sweden in our world) for three years, but their rate of production is outrunning their ability to find new customers. The solution looks to be attracting the custom of the most powerful bankers on Gaia...the Felger family. But that is a dangerous plan...the Felgers are also the Emperor's bankers. This will take all the skill of their best operatives to achieve...time to send for the Wildcat.

The only place to contact the Felgers looks to be the bank in Lingdon...the country where they have been established longest, but Yakob Felger, the head of the branch reveres the Emperor and brushes their invitations aside. Gisel has a new plan...she will contact the older man's son, recently returned to the city after his studies at the Academy of Heerford. Having one of their noble friends call the father away on business, she lures her quarry out with a mysterious message and takes him to a meeting on an Iskander ship downriver.

The plan works, partly, but the Emperor's spymaster Zagdorf has been watching the Felger mansion and he sends his troopers after Gisel and young Yohan Felger, which results in a couple of firefights disrupting the peace of the city. Yakob Felger is furious when he interrogates his son the next day but he cannot dispute his son's assessment...something as important as the Iskander proposal cannot be dissmissed. Someone must take the information and samples to the head of the bank, Baron Anton Felger in Wasbia.

Father and son devise a secret plan to foil both the Iskanders and Zagdorf of their intention, but neither Gisel nor Zagdorf are fooled. Soon the action moves to the continent where Gisel acts as Yohan's bodyguard and Zagdorf chases them to the city of Lubitz, capital of a country with which Iskander and their ally Tarnland are at war. The little escorting job becomes serious when Gisel's superiors decide she should secretly speak to the city's most important leaders about a possible end to the war while she is there. That would mean a trip to the gallows if one of them should refuse her proposal.

And Baron Felger...where is he? It seems that he has been conducting secret business in the region. Can Gisel and Yohan find him? What will his decision be if they do? It might be too dangerous for him to accept the Iskander proposition...and what will that do to Gisel's vulnerability in Lubitz?