Chapter 301: Finch’s First Report (Part 1)

Chapter 301: Chapter 301: Finch’s First Report (Part 1)

Chapter 301: Finch’s First Report (Part 1)

There was much noise, warmth, and an abundance of unrationed food in the courtyard of the Academy.

The soldiers sat at the long wooden table relishing in the glory of the harvest. Aegon Logcheville was currently attempting to balance a fourth slice of warm bread on top of a massive pile of roasted meat. Reina Frost watched him with a mixture of deep amusement and mild disgust.

"You are going to choke," Reina pointed out smoothly. "And I am not performing medical triage on you just because you do not know how to chew. Are you listening to me?"

"I am. It is a celebration of agricultural victory," Aegon mumbled around a massive bite. "Chewing is a secondary priority."

Lucien Vaelmont sighed softly from across the table. He carefully sliced a single, perfectly portioned piece of meat with his silver knife.

"You eat like a starving dire-wolf," Lucien noted dryly. "It is a miracle you do not accidentally consume your own spear during combat."

Draven sat at the head of the table. He did not join the banter. He was staring at the tightly sealed parchment the shadow-runner had just dropped into his hand.

The seal was a large, elaborate one, displaying the recognizable mark of the Statanham syndicate.

An immediate tightness formed in his chest. He had spent months operating in a state of constant, suffocating crisis. He had fought the Cult in the sewers. He had fought the Capital in the streets.

He instinctively associated sudden couriers with catastrophic emergencies.

CRACK.

The wax seal was broken and he unraveled the parchment.

He read the first line of the message. He took a deep breath and released it slowly. This was not an urgent distress call, nor a request for help. This was precisely what Sirius had told him to expect before leaving the fallen city.

It was a highly detailed, incredibly boring administrative report. The suffocating urgency he had felt was nothing more than his own deeply ingrained paranoia bleeding into a quiet night.

Draven leaned back in his wooden chair. He tuned out the chaotic arguments over butter and roasted boar, focusing entirely on the crisp ink.

The report was authored by Valerius Finch.

Finch did not possess years of experience as a Vanguard warrior. He did not have years of charisma as a politician educated in the lavish confines of the Capital. He was an older man, a cautious logistician whose dreams were all in spreadsheets and logistics. He was everything that Lord Commander Vell was not.

Draven read the precise, unglamorous handwriting.

"For our benefactor," Finch penned clearly. "The reconstruction of the eastern sector is underway with a seventy-four percent efficiency rating. We have managed to remove eighteen tons of debris from the central intersection. Structural soundness of the remaining warehouses has been checked by the masons guilds."

Numbers that were lean and elegant and dry.

"The civilian populace is reestablishing itself quickly," stated the report. "The rationing levels have been formally annulled. The canals have been brought back up to normal capacity by Varn. I tried giving him the formal position of District Overseer. He told me he’d dump me in the water."

Draven allowed a faint smirk to cross his face. Finch was doing the job flawlessly.

"The remaining house guards have all been reorganized," said Finch in minute detail. "They have set up their chain of command and have begun their patrols once more. Morale remains high. The city is alive."

This was a picture of recovery. This was what they had fought for.

Draven kept on reading. As the end of the large piece of paper drew near, there was a subtle change in the neat and confident writing.

More pressure was applied to the pen and the margin lines were slightly irregular. Finch was a man who revered perfect mathematics, and he was obviously upset with something in his own ledger.

"As much as I must sincerely apologize for an administrative oversight on my part," Finch wrote, "I have double checked the temporary housing register list six times. The numbers do not add up correctly to the actual physical count."

Draven narrowed his pitch-black eyes.

"Specifically, there are three people missing," Finch began slowly. "Two of the lower-ranking dockers, and a clerk from the lower ranks of the guild, are all three entirely missing. They have not reported for their labor shifts in four days, and no sign of them can be found in any of the medical tents, nor do the Vanguard know of their death."

The mistake was microscopic. Three missing individuals in a city of thousands following an apocalypse-like siege were just too inconsequential a statistical blip for anyone of lesser mettle to even think twice about.

Finch was not a man who ever breathed without counting his beans. And this accounting mistake was scaring him so badly that he hid it at the end of his official report.

"I cannot locate the physical bodies behind the paper trail," Finch stated. "I will keep searching. My apologies for the mistake."

Draven turned the parchment over.

Pinned to the back of the official report was a small, torn scrap of rough paper. The handwriting on this note was completely different. It was sharp, smooth, and aggressively transactional.

It was a direct message from Sirius Statanham.

"I reviewed the new governor’s mathematics," Sirius wrote plainly. "Finch believes he is losing his mind over three missing people. Finch is not losing his mind. Finch is a genius at addition. The ledger is genuinely bleeding."

The Underworld Don did not sound panicked. He delivered the bad news with the exact same cold, calculated tone he used to discuss shipping routes and smuggling fees.

"I sent my best runners into the eastern quarter to find his missing laborers," Sirius detailed. "My runners know how to check the shadows. The shadows are completely empty. Information has a heavy price in this world. But missing information usually costs significantly more."

Sirius ended the note with a final, chilling observation.