Frozen is the property of Disney. I make no profit off of this.
"I have a proposition that will, with your support, reap rewards the likes of which you have never seen or imagined," said the stranger.
"Dangling before me fruit that I've already tasted will win you no favors, lad." The Weselton banker steepled his fingers and closed his eyes as he considered the young man's story, and the current situation.
In terms of money, very little in the world, except perhaps the fortune of a royal house, could impress this Weselton financier. He was a veritable Plutus, as his clients hailed him. A god of wealth and wisdom who spread happiness to all, seemingly magicking gold and silver out of thin air.
This young stranger had a different sort of magic to offer, though. He spun an enchanting tale of some girl-queen in the north, gifted with the power to summon the soul of winter and to turn men's hearts into ice. He claimed to have seen her creations with his own eyes: ice of such clarity that it sparkled like diamonds, and snowflakes that glittered like sapphires. Like her eyes.
The banker followed the young man's gaze to the snuffbox that sat on his desk, a gift from the Ottoman Sultan. The apple-green chrysoprase, diamonds and gold glinted in the lamplight. He smiled. The lad had a vivid imagination, all right. He would have thought him half in love with this girl. Half in love, only because he was already half in love with himself.
"The Snow Queen is beautiful, but she knows nothing of love," the young man said. She was a cold and cruel woman, in thrall to the icy demons that dwelt in her heart. Out of fear she had frozen her own kingdom. Arendal, or Arendelle, a small but wealthy city-state that had escaped the grasp of Denmark and Sweden-Norway. A shrimp amongst whales, ripe for the picking.
The banker laughed. The stranger's tale of the Snow Queen of Arendelle, though intriguing, was absurd. His proposal, and his confidence therein, even more so. The man had a checkered past and was guilty of attempted usurpation and regicide. Not a year had passed since his fall from grace, and he seemed eager to try his luck at that game again. Far from content with silently letting his schemes for revenge simmer in the dark, he would rise from his ashes like the phoenix, and soar above those who might bring him down.
The banker shook his head in amusement. He admired the young man's ambition, all right, but had to wonder if he was not afflicted with a touch of madness. Who did he think he was, anyway? A stranger in a strange land, he was no aristocrat, no soldier, no banker, even, but a lowly broker's clerk. One with a good head for details and figures, certainly, and a silvery tongue from which words spilled like honey. But a paper-pusher was still a paper-pusher.
And yet the young man had airs about him, as well as a face to rival any prince's. His wide, far-gazing eyes were fringed with long lashes like a girl's, and of a color the merchant had only ever observed in emeralds. His fine features seemed chiseled from marble, and his neatly cropped mane of hair, his noble posture and bearing, and his soft hands, which had startled the financier when he shook them earlier—all these lent credence to this would-be prince's pretensions. But not enough.
"Give me one good reason I should help you," the banker demanded, "before I have you removed from the premises and sent straight to the madhouse." Folding his hands on his desk, he leaned in closer to the young man, who was unfazed by his threat.
"Because," he responded, a wolfish grin slowly spreading across his face, "I know your heart. It is as black and ruthless as mine. It is fired by greed so great as to melt Lucifer's icy prison in Hell."
The banker smiled. This young man was no phoenix rising from its ashes. He was the devil himself.