Borrowed Levels

Chapter 5: The Director's Offer

The Guild Bank rose from the center of Veyra like a pale stone tooth.

Ren had walked past it every day of his life and never gone beyond the front hall. This time the guards led him through a side door, down a corridor lined with portraits of past directors, and up a spiral stair that seemed to go on forever.

The office at the top had walls made of glass. Below the floor, Veyra spread out like a map. Beyond it, in the distance, the great dark mouth of the Gullet breathed steam into the morning sky.

Director Halvane Voss sat behind a desk the size of a small boat.

He was a slim man of about fifty, silver at the temples, with a gentle voice and tired eyes. He didn't look like a villain. He looked like a man who read books before bed.

"Mr. Calder," he said. "Please. Sit."

Ren stayed standing. "What do you want?"

"Directly to business. I appreciate that." Voss folded his hands. "You are Unrated. The crystal found nothing in you. Yet three nights ago, you defeated a young man with a purchased level twenty-one. You did it without a license, a loan, or a registered skill. I find that remarkable."

"I got lucky."

"You did not." Voss smiled faintly. "You have a Ledger."

The word hit Ren like a slap. He kept his face still. It took everything he had.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"No? Then I will tell you a story. Many years ago, a man took out a loan to buy a level. Level twelve. A modest sum. And the man had something in him that the crystal could not read. He called it a ledger." Voss's gaze did not waver. "His name was Aldric Calder."

The room went very quiet.

"My father," Ren said. His voice sounded like somebody else's.

"A good man. A stubborn man. He borrowed too much, as holders always do." Voss spread his hands. "I am sorry for his death. I truly am."

"You knew." Ren's hands were shaking. "You knew he had it. And you let our family drown in his debt."

"I let nothing. The Bank follows its own rules, which are the only thing standing between this city and chaos." Voss leaned forward. "But I can offer you something no one has offered a Calder before. Surrender the Ledger. Let my physicians remove it. I will clear your family's debt in full, and your sister will receive the finest care in the city."

Ren's throat closed.

"Mira," he whispered.

"Your sister is very ill. The treatment is expensive." Voss's voice was kind. "I can make all of it disappear. Today."

It was the best offer he'd ever received. That was the horrible part. Every cell in his body wanted to say yes.

But the Ledger pulsed once at the edge of his vision, a thin silver glow, and Ren thought of the Collector's blank face and the neat handwriting on that page.

What happens to a Ledger when it's removed? he thought. Who gets it?

"I'll think about it," he said.

Voss's smile did not change. But something behind it cooled.

"Of course. Take a few days. Though I should warn you, Mr. Calder, the Collector does not extend deadlines for anyone."

Ren stopped at the door. "You know about the Collector."

"I know about everything that happens in this building," said Voss. "Good morning."

Dara was waiting for him outside, leaning against a lamppost with her arms crossed and a look of grim determination.

"I saw them take you in," she said. "Are you all right?"

"I need to see the Bank's records."

She blinked. "That's insane."

"I need to know where the levels come from."

Dara stared at him for a long time. Then she let out a breath. "I worked in the archives for three years before I got fired. I still have a pass I never gave back. If you get us caught, I'll haunt you."

They went in through the delivery entrance after dark.

The archive was a vault of iron shelves, row after row of ledgers stacked to the ceiling. Dara moved through the stacks like she'd never left, pulling books from the shelves with quick, sure hands.

"Here." She spread a heavy volume across a table. "Annual issuance. Every level the Bank has ever sold."

Ren read the figures. Then he read them again.

"That can't be right."

"I thought so too, when I first saw it." Dara's voice was low. "The Bank has sold over a million levels. But the dungeons produce, at the very most, eighty thousand a year in core energy. The numbers don't match. Not even close."

"So where does the rest come from?"

She turned the page and pointed with a trembling finger at a single line at the bottom of every sheet.

SOURCE: VAULT ZERO. HOLLOW VAULTS, DEPTH UNLISTED.

Ren's pulse thudded in his ears.

"The Hollow Vaults," he said. "The same place where the moonvein root grows."

Dara looked at him oddly. "What does that have to do with anything?"

He didn't answer. He was flipping through another ledger, a thinner one marked HOLDERS. There were only a few dozen names. He found the one he was looking for in the middle of the book, in careful, cramped handwriting.

CALDER, ALDRIC. LEDGER-BEARER. STATUS: COLLECTED.

Beneath it, in smaller script: Reassigned. Collector Unit 7.

Ren read it six times.

Then the lamps in the archive went out, one after another, and in the darkness he heard slow footsteps approaching from the far end of the stacks.