Chapter 56: The Forty First Sent Me an Invoice With My Name on It

"It arrived at the west wing this morning. No seal, no sender, and the guard didn’t see who left it."

Zelina set the sheet on the study table with two fingers, the way you set down something you’re not sure bites.

It wasn’t a letter.

It was an account.

Four columns, written by hand, in the fast ugly script. Date, item, charge, balance.

11 January. Host arrives. Integrity 41%.

3 February. Pardons the regicide. Charge 2. Balance 39%.

19 February. Tastes the poison at trial. Charge 3. Balance 34%.

2 March. Honey jar, windowsill. Credit 1. Balance 35%.

Eighty days. Forty seven lines. All of them exact.

I ran my finger down the balance column and stopped three times.

"The nineteenth of February wasn’t a charge of three."

"What?"

"It was two." I went back. "The System charged me two for tasting the poison. This says three."

Zelina leaned over the sheet.

"Are you sure?"

"I’ve spent eighty days looking at that number more than at my own face."

"Then he got it wrong."

"Or he measured something else." I kept going down. "Look at the twenty eighth of May. It says credit one, and there was no credit that day."

"What was there?"

"Nothing. A Tuesday." I shut my eyes a moment. "I took soup up to Saoirse and forgot to mention it to anyone."

Zelina straightened slowly.

"Vaelion, then he did measure."

"He measured, and he was wrong in February." I put my finger on the line. "A man who records forty seven figures and gets one wrong isn’t copying from anywhere. He’s calculating."

Zelina read over my shoulder and said nothing for a long time.

"Vaelion, only you know this."

"The System and I know it."

"Then somebody is reading your window."

I opened my palm without thinking, and the blue window came out in the smallest lettering I’ve seen it use.

[He can’t read me.]

[I’ve checked eighty times since the river house.]

"Then how?"

[He’s measuring from outside.]

[The same way his father measured the boy for seven hours without touching him.]

[HERO, that man has been taking my pulse for twelve years.]

At the foot of the account were four more lines, below a rule.

Current balance: 32%.

Carrier load: 72%.

Sum: 104. Difference: 4.

I have the four.

"He has four points of what?" Zelina said.

"Of me."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It’s the only one I have." I put the sheet down. "The sum ran at a hundred for seventy eight days. It’s been running over ever since the dock. Somebody is holding the difference."

"Can you feel four points?"

"I don’t know what a point feels like." I thought about it properly, because she deserved that. "In January I could look at a room and price every debt in it in about a second. Now it takes me two."

Zelina didn’t say anything for a moment.

"You never told me that."

"I assumed it was sleep."

"You sleep less than I do and I’ve never lost a second on anything." She took the sheet back. "Vaelion, how long has it been two?"

"Since March."

"Can you do anything with this?" I asked.

"I can do two things and you’ll like neither." Zelina measured the sheet with spread fingers. "One, the paper is Chancellery stock, the batch that came in April. Forty offices have it."

"And two?"

"Two, there isn’t a single correction in forty seven lines." She held it to the light. "He copied this from a draft. Somewhere there’s a page with the working crossed out."

"So he works like me."

"He works like you." She lowered the paper. "Which is why I’m about to say this without any enthusiasm. Vaelion, when two men keep the same books, the winner isn’t the one who adds better. It’s the one willing to write down things the other won’t."

Lunara came into the study mid sentence and wasn’t wearing her announcing face.

"Bren Olvar isn’t in his room."

"Since when?"

"The double guard saw him go in at eleven last night." Her hand was on her sword hilt and she didn’t know it. "This morning the breakfast girl went in and the bed is made."

"Was anything forced?"

"Nothing was forced. He walked out." She swallowed. "Vaelion, my two men on that door swear it never opened."

"Do you know them?"

"I trained them."

"And did he train them before you?"

Lunara Marr went very still.

"Say the rest of it," she said.

"There is no rest of it."

"There is, and you’re not saying it because you think it’s kind." She took her hand off the hilt at last. "You want to know whether two men I trained stood outside a door all night and lied to me this morning."

"I want to know whether the door opened."

"Then ask them, and ask them in front of me, and if they lied I’ll know in four words." She was already turning. "And if they didn’t lie, Vaelion, then he walked a sixty one year old man past two of my guards and out of this palace, and that’s worse."

Below the account, along the bottom edge, was a last line I hadn’t seen because the sheet was folded.

The master of arms is with me of his own will.

Ask your wife who taught her the oath of the sword, Majesty.

And ask yourself how many of your guard learned from him.

Zelina picked up the paper and turned it to the light.

"It’s a lie," she said.

"How do you know?"

"I don’t know. I’m saying it." She set it down. "And I’m saying it because I’ve spent five years recognizing poison and this was written with the same hand."

Lunara was still standing in the same place, still holding the hilt.

"I don’t doubt him," she said.

"Nobody said you did."

"You didn’t say it." She looked up. "But you just counted how many men in this house trained under my master, the same as I did, and we’ve both reached the same number."

"What is it?"

"Forty one out of sixty."

Zelina’s head came up so fast she dropped the sheet.

"Forty one."

"Forty one." Lunara didn’t move. "I counted them last night before sleeping, because I couldn’t sleep."

"That’s a coincidence," I said.

"That’s a number he chose." Zelina picked the paper up off the floor. "Vaelion, this man has spent twelve years being line forty one on a payroll of forty. He doesn’t use that number by accident."

"So he knew how many of my guard Bren Olvar trained."

"He knew how many there are today." She looked at the last line. "And he wants you to know it, and he wants you doing the arithmetic in front of your wife."

Lunara finally let go of the hilt.

"I would relieve all forty one tonight," she said.

"You would?"

"I would." It cost her to say and she said it anyway. "I’m captain of this house before I’m anything else, and that is the correct move, and I’m going to hate it all week."