The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 014: The Roster

The fire took twenty minutes to put out.

By the end of it, the tar shed was a blackened frame, the sky above the yard was brown, and six people stood in the mud by the river with empty buckets. Anselm had stopped shouting. That was worse. He sat on an overturned barrel with his face in his hands, and every few seconds his shoulders shook.

Dorian stood a little way off with his burned arm held against his chest. Livia had wrapped it in a wet scarf. Cade and Piers hovered near the fence, not quite looking at anyone.

"Right," Dorian said. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Right. Listen to me, all of you."

They listened. Dorian had always been good at that. People listened to him.

"We lost him at the river. He jumped in. We looked for an hour. He's dead or he's gone." He looked at each of them in turn. "That's what happened. That's the only thing that happened."

"Dorian," Livia said.

"Two hundred crowns," Piers said, half a plea.

"I don't care about the two hundred crowns."

"You said you wanted your mother a house."

"I do. I'll get it another way." Dorian's jaw worked. "I'm not taking money off a man who just pulled me out of a fire. That'd be tacky."

Cade started to laugh, caught the look on Dorian's face, and stopped.

Dorian turned. He crossed the mud until he was three paces from Ethan, and for a second he just stood there, bald-browed and sooty, glaring like a boy caught crying.

"I don't owe you anything," he said.

"Okay."

"I mean it. This doesn't make us friends."

"I didn't think it did."

"If I see you again, I'm going to pretend I don't." He looked away. "And if I can't pretend, I'll come at you properly. With a plan."

"Fair."

"Good." Dorian nodded once, sharply. Then he walked back to his friends, and the four of them filed out through the gap in the fence without another word.

Ethan watched them go. His hands were blistered. His hair smelled like a burnt hearth. He felt very tired and not at all triumphant.

"That," said a voice behind him, "was the stupidest thing I have ever seen a person do."

Tomas stood at the edge of the hull, black with soot to the elbows, holding the book against his chest like a baby. The salt ring had been kicked to pieces. The quiet box sat unharmed behind him.

"I'd say thank you," Ethan said. "But you don't sound like you want it."

"I want a very large drink," Tomas said. "Anselm, where is the good rum?"

"Under the hull," Anselm said, from behind his hands. "Where I told him not to touch it."

He lowered them. His eyes were red. He looked at the burned shed, then at Ethan, and some of the fury had drained out and left something older and more tired.

"That shed was three months of work," he said. "Plank by plank. Do you know what a barrel of caulking tar costs?"

"I'll pay for it," Ethan said. "I don't have anything now. But I will."

"You'll work it off." Anselm stood, stiff, and picked up a bucket. "Starting tomorrow. At dawn. You can be a hunted man and swing a hammer at the same time."

Rhea came back after dark.

She slipped through the fence in a plain wool cloak, hood up, and by the time she reached the hull Ethan had already counted her pulse from forty meters away. She was walking too fast. When she pulled back the hood her face was white and her eyes were bright.

"You burned the shed," she said.

"I did not. Dorian did."

"I'll ask about Dorian later. Where's Tomas?"

"Here," said Tomas, from the dark. He had a candle lit under the keel and a mug of rum in his hand, and he did not look sorry about either.

Rhea sat down hard on the sawdust. She pulled a folded sheet of grey paper from inside her tunic, flattened it across her knee, and then took another, and another, until three of them lay in a row. They were covered in her handwriting. Thin, fast pencil. On the back of the top one Ethan could see the faint printed outline of a laundry list.

"The tower's different," she said first, to nobody in particular. "Wardens on every landing. They've bricked up the lower corridor. Brandt, the examiner, has a new assistant who doesn't blink. Corin asked after you. I told him you'd gone to your aunt's." She exhaled. "He believed me. Which means he's the only person in that building who hasn't learned to be suspicious."

She smoothed the first sheet flat. "I had two hours. A clerk named Pim went to his lunch and left the Wardens' liaison office unlocked. I walked in with a mop. Nobody looks at a woman with a mop."

"You?" Anselm said. "With a mop?"

"Shut up, Ans." She tapped the first page. "This is the Wardens' duty roster for the Tower, going back four years. Names, postings, shifts. This one," her finger moved, "is the custody log. Every creature collared and kept in the Tower or the Ironkeep. Issue date, authorizing officer, Council countersign."

Ethan leaned over the paper. The handwriting was cramped but readable.

CUSTODY 117. RIFT STALKER (D+). COLLAR ISSUED 4 YEARS PRIOR. KEEPER: INSP. L. VOSS. STORAGE: TOWER SEAL, LEVEL 4. COUNCIL ASSENT: MARIC DORN / ALDRIC WARD / HALBERT CROSS.

Underneath, in smaller letters, a second line.

RELEASE ORDER, WINTER TERM. AUTHORIZED: INSP. L. VOSS.

And underneath that, a date. The date of Ethan's exam.

He stopped breathing.

"It's not an accident," he whispered.

"No."

"It wasn't a rupture. Someone opened it."

"Someone with the key, and a signature, and a license." Rhea's voice was flat as a table. "Voss let the Stalker out. On purpose, on that day, in that corridor."

Tomas set his mug down on the sawdust very carefully. "And the three names at the bottom?"

"Council. Dorn sponsored the null route. Cross sits on the Treasury. And Aldric Ward." Rhea looked at Ethan. "Seraphine's father."

Ethan sat very still. Aldric Ward. The man with the black carriage, who shouted Now! across the plaza and made his daughter's shoulders go rigid.

Stay away from the tower. Please.

Seraphine hadn't been telling him to be safe. She had been trying to tell him something else.

Tomas had gone gray. He turned the old book over in his lap without opening it. "A vessel," he muttered. "The book keeps using that word. A vessel for the Seat. I thought it was a metaphor."

"For what?" Ethan said.

"I don't know yet. But I would very much like it to still be a metaphor."

"There's more," Rhea said. She slid the second page across. It was a list, headed with a single word in neat black lettering that she'd copied in block capitals so she wouldn't mistake it later.

VESSELS.

Ten lines. Nine had names. Each was crossed out with a single stroke, and next to each was a short note. Failed. Failed. Empty. Failed. Rhea's finger stopped on the sixth line and stayed there. KESSEL, T. Deceased: unsuitable. Her hand didn't shake. That was somehow the worst part.

The tenth line was Ethan's name.

VALE, E. Vessel 10. Escaped. Status: retrieve alive.