Borrowed Levels

Chapter 13: The Honest Weights

Calloway was beautiful, and that was the first thing that frightened him.

The harbor opened like a bowl of golden light. Hundreds of ships rode at anchor, lamps swaying, and behind them rose a city of white stone terraces stacked up a hillside like steps. There were bridges. Fountains. Banners in a dozen colors fluttering from every tower. Over the great gate, carved in letters two stories high, were three words.

THE HONEST WEIGHTS.

"Fancy," said Pip, from the rail.

"Too fancy," said Dara.

They came ashore at noon into a market so crowded that Ren lost sight of Hesk twice. Merchants shouted in four languages. Fruit stalls spilled onto the cobbles. There was music, somewhere, and the smell of roasting nuts.

It was Pip who noticed the paper.

"Everyone's paying with these," she said, pointing. "Little slips. Not coins."

Ren watched a woman buy a loaf of bread. She handed the baker a thin slip of cream-colored paper, stamped with a small blue seal. The baker examined it, nodded, and tucked it into a box. On the slip, in neat black ink, was a single line.

One day.

"What is that?" Ren asked a nearby fruit seller, trying to sound casual.

The man looked at him oddly. "A Note. You are new."

"Very new."

"Everyone is given a Note allowance at birth. A hundred thousand days. Pay it out as you need." He grinned, pleased to be helpful. "Honest Weights, friend. Honest city. No loans, no interest. Everyone pays exactly what they owe."

Pay it out as you need.

Ren felt his stomach turn over.

They were using lifespan as currency. Openly. Cheerfully. A loaf of bread cost one day of someone's life, and nobody in the market seemed to find that strange.

"Dara," he whispered.

"I know." Her voice was tight. "Don't say anything."

The Assay Hall stood at the top of the harbor road, a pillared building with a bronze scale hanging over its door. Every foreign visitor had to pass through it. A long line of sailors waited under the sun, and a thin woman in a gray-blue robe stood at the head of it, a stamp in one hand and a ledger in the other.

Her eyes landed on Ren and stayed there.

"Name," she said.

"Ren Calder. Veyran. We're here to trade."

"Sable Marrow, Assessor of the Concord." She wrote slowly. Her handwriting was small and exact. "You carry something."

His pulse spiked. "Sorry?"

"Your aura reads heavy. Old injuries?"

"Fever," Dara cut in smoothly. "We had a bad crossing."

Sable looked at her, then back at Ren. A faint line formed between her brows. "Declare any Ledger," she said, in the flat tone of someone reciting a rule.

The word dropped into Ren's chest like a stone.

She knew. Or she suspected. His fingers curled around the hilt of his sword. In the corner of his eye, the Ledger hung pale and still, dark as an unlit window.

Please, he thought. Please stay quiet.

"I don't know what a Ledger is," he said.

A long silence. A drop of sweat slid down his spine.

Then Sable Marrow stamped his paper, hard, and slid it across the table.

"Welcome to Calloway," she said. "May your weights be honest."

They walked out into the plaza with their hearts hammering. Behind them, in the shadow of the pillars, Sable stood watching, and Ren could feel her stare between his shoulder blades all the way across the square.

"She knows," Dara hissed.

"She guessed."

"Same thing."

They ducked into an alley behind a spice stall, and Ren leaned against the wall to catch his breath. The Ledger flickered, then, a single, urgent line.

[ HOLDER IN PROXIMITY: 600 FEET. ] [ BEARING: NORTH, HIGH GROUND. ]

He looked up.

At the very top of the city, past the terraces and the banners, a single white lighthouse stood on a rocky headland. Its lamp was dark.

"Dara," said Ren. "I think I found who sent the message.