The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 56 The Name Beneath the Meal Count

The clerk asked Jun to wash her hands before touching the book.

For three days, Jun had imagined locked doors, guards, perhaps a bribe she could not pay. She had not imagined a basin of cold water and a tired woman scolding her for charcoal beneath her nails.

“Old paper tears when you rub it,” Ista said. “And everyone rubs the thing they hope will change.”

Jun washed. Osric waited by the open doorway with his bow unstrung. Pellan stood beside the table, holding Maret's wrapped receipt where both women could see it.

The White Stair market roared outside. Hammers struck mule shoes. Someone argued over a cracked oil jar. Ordinary business continued within shouting distance of the room where Jun might learn what had happened to her brother.

Ista inspected the birch strip against the window.

“Olla's delivery,” she said.

Jun caught her breath. “You knew her?”

“I knew the complaint. She wanted a visit entered beside the meal receipt. The guard wouldn't sign it.”

“Was Tev there?”

“Let me find the delivery first.”

Selka's question, in another woman's mouth. Jun forced herself to sit.

The book was bound with two cords. Ista loosened the upper one and laid a smooth board beneath the pages. She found the date, then the crescent mark. Four bowls issued. Two returned empty. The crossed strokes counted bowls after all.

Jun had been ready for that. Hearing it still felt like losing ground.

“Moving party nineteen,” Ista said. “Six men that week. These two households supplied extra food.”

She named Olla's neighbors. Neither name was Tev's.

Jun asked Ista to wait while she wrote them down. Maret deserved those names, and the families might still be asking questions of their own. A younger version of herself would have hurried past anything that did not lead straight to her brother. She had learned the cost of being the name another person hurried past.

Through the window she could see White Stair's quarry face. Pale ledges climbed into cloud, each cut straight enough to seem deliberate even at that distance. A line of men moved along the lowest shelf with baskets on their backs. She tried to judge their ages and could not. There were no faces from here, only bent shapes and a long distance between one resting place and the next.

“Can they leave the work?” she asked.

Ista followed her gaze. “Some have paid contracts. Some have orders. From this window they look the same.”

Jun took out Selka's copied questions. Her hand shook enough that the paper made a faint sound against the table.

“The transfers through Bellcut Pass. Arvek's split cedar.”

Ista looked at the doorway.

Osric noticed. He moved aside so anyone passing could see the room contained no drawn weapon.

“I keep dispatch copies,” Ista said. “I don't keep the quarry master.”

“We're asking what you have.”

“A family always starts there.”

Then she crossed the room and brought back a thinner book.

Tev's name appeared halfway down a page.

Jun did not touch it. She read the household mark, the age at entry, the name of their father beside the first obligation. Seventeen last winter. The substitution Selka had admitted. It was her brother, held in a few narrow lines by people who had needed room for the next name.

“Read it aloud,” she said.

Ista did. Pellan copied while Osric listened.

An extension. A transfer to Bellcut. An entry four months old: removed from heavy work, right hand scalded, received at the north infirmary.

Jun pressed her palms flat against her knees.

“Received alive?”

“The receiving column carries an attendant's mark. It says he was admitted. That's what I can tell you.”

“Then he wasn't dead when they sent him.”

“According to this entry.”

Jun wanted to hate the qualification. Instead she heard Selka saying there might be another Tev, and recognized the care she had resented.

“What happened after?”

“This is the last return copied here.”

“Where is the next one?”

“If it was made, Bellcut keeps it.”

Four months. Jun imagined him lying beneath a blanket while she planted beans, cut rope, slept. She had wanted the past to open. Now it had opened only far enough to show how much time had passed without her.

Pellan read his copy back. Ista corrected the attendant's name: Neve, not Nere. The injury was a scald, not a crushed hand. They wrote both corrections clearly.

“Can we take proof?” Jun asked.

“You can take what you've copied. I can mark that it matches this page.”

“Will they believe you?”

“Some will. Some won't want to.”

Ista signed beneath the copy and entered the visit in a separate tally. She did not tear out the original page or offer the whole book. Other families needed it, and her office required it to remain.

Jun returned Maret's receipt to its wrapping while Pellan watched. They had honored that promise. She could still carry it home intact.

Outside, a cart struck the weighing-house post. The whole room shook. Ista caught the ink pot before it fell.

A man's voice rose beyond the door.

“Inspection. Close the side room.”

Ista went still.

Osric looked toward Jun. She folded the attested copy into the questions. Pellan tucked his separate notes beneath his coat.

“Are we being stopped?” Jun asked.

“I don't know,” Ista said.

A guard's shadow crossed the threshold. He looked at the open book, then at Jun's wet hands.

“What did she show you?”