The Clockwork Ledger

Foreword

A surprise for Arcvale...

History is often remembered in different ways, by different people. In Arcvale, for example, the Ashcombe lineage is dotted with the usual assortment of heroes and villains.

Lord Silas Ashcombe is universally regarded as one of the former. His younger brother, however, remains something of an anomaly.

Sir Lucas Ashcombe turned his back on Arcvale close to ten years ago.

He took with him his vast and impressive understanding of financial systems and promptly established his own institution—The Patchikin Banking and Investment Company, named after a beloved tickerkin from his youth.

The small mechanical creature had sadly passed beyond repair as Lucas reached his teenage years, and its loss had left a mark.

The PBIC flourished in Sectorvale, Arcvale’s sister city, and in time, a bank installed the same system in Lucas’s hometown.

An event that both pleased and amused him—but did nothing to encourage his return.

His reasons for leaving were buried firmly in the past, and there he hoped they would remain.

Yet something is afoot in the elegant and sophisticated world of finance. Unsettling anomalies have appeared in the Arcvale bank—irregularities Lucas finds disturbing and impossible to ignore.

So he is faced with what he had long hoped to avoid.

A return to Arcvale…and everything he believed he had left behind for good.