She could imagine herself buried deep beneath the earth in a blood wyrm’s cavern. The tin repository seemed more like a monster’s lair than a treasure vault located high in a fortified tower.
It was the very opposite to everything she’d known until two years ago: the flat salt marshes under a wide sky of clear blue, swept by gauzy clouds; the round reed huts clustered on the strand between marsh and ocean; the vast stretch of tossing waves, all the way to the distant horizon. Her home.
But she had a job to do here. Both the immediate one – the re-tallying of tin assigned by Gael – and the more comprehensive, longer term one she’d assigned herself.
Standing before the stone ledge that formed the base of the vault wall, she lifted the peaked lid of the first in a row of wooden caskets. Each casket was square and small – less than a foot in length, width, and height – and its lid echoed the shape of the ingots within it, slanting up on all four sides toward a flat, square top.
The ingots themselves, arranged in four nested stacks, had flat rims around their square bases, and one would fit in the palm of her hand.
There should be sixteen in this casket, four in each of the four stacks. She counted them out onto the ledge, each one weighing sixteen ounces – light individually, heavy when you stacked enough together. Heavy when you considered what they did: forming the weapons with which the troll horde had once – before she was born – assailed her people on their island home of Fiors. Her people, armed only with flint knives and flint-tipped spears, had stood no chance against the bronze-wielding truldemagar.
Without tin, the truldemagar would not have bronze. And tin was rare. So rare that even a small pebble of it was precious, while an entire ingot . . . an entire ingot might make a man – or a troll – wealthy.
Sixteen ingots of tin.
She counted four of them back into the casket. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.
She marked four tallies on her parchment with her quill. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
She counted the next four ingots into the casket, tallied them, and did the same for the next four and the last four.
Sixteen ingots. Sixteen tallies. There was no way error could explain the missing ingot. Keir was surprised Gael had even mentioned the possibility. His control of the tin – and the copper and the bronze – flowing through Belzetarn was absolute. That had been clear from the moment he’d taken her as his assistant and trained her in the systems he’d devised.
Each morning, Keir counted nine ingots of copper from the copper vault into the rucksack of the blade scullion sent to fetch metal for the blade smithy, while Gael tallied them. Then Keir put one tin ingot from the tin vault into that rucksack, and Gael tallied it.
When the scullion delivered the ingots to the blade smith, the blade notary tallied them. And, in the evening, when the scullion delivered the forged blades back to the bronze vault – ready for grinding and polishing the next day – Keir weighed them, and Gael tallied them. Then he tallied the one bronze ingot always poured – from excess metal – after the forging of eight blades, except on days when the blade smithy made arrowheads and spearheads and created no excess.
Similar checks and tallies controlled the metals flowing through the other smithies: the grinding smithy; the annealing smithy; the hilt maker; the armor smithy, where the scales and wire were forged for scale armor, as well as the greaves and helmets; and the privy smithy, where tools for the kitchens and the tannery and all the other offices were made. Every ounce of metal was tallied by Gael and Keir together.
Keir knit her brows.
Gael’s systems were flawless. But the trolls who used them . . .
The blade smith would never make an error, nor would he ever steal. Smithing was his calling, and bladesmithing was sacred. Keir found his obsession a little scary, but it meant he was trustworthy.
The grinding smith was a practical sort, matter-of-fact and phlegmatic. The annealing smith was precise. The armor smith . . . was kind. He and Gael were close friends.
All the smiths were reliable, except the privy smith. Martell was artistic and flamboyant, exploring the ornamental possibilities in household items, especially those used at the regenen’s table and in the regenen’s chambers or the castellanum’s. He tried varying mixtures of copper and tin. And his tallies were always in arrears.
But never by an entire ingot’s worth.
Well, that wasn’t true. Martell had been in arrears by as much as an ingot. Several times. But the tally chamber had always been able to track down the error.
And the privy smith was honest, despite his inexactitude. Martell would not have stolen an ingot, but he might have provided the opportunity for another troll to do so.
Keir locked the first casket of tin. She moved to the next, counting and tallying the ingots.
Sixteen.
Perhaps Gael had been thinking of Martell, when he spoke of error as the reason for the missing ingot. The privy smith had been caught in error before. Keir had caught him just in the last waxing moon. The weight of the ingots going into the privy smith had been less than the weight of implements and ingots coming out, and by more than the usual few ounces.
Why couldn’t Martell simply put the beakers and knives and nails he made on the blasted scale? But, no. He persisted in having his notary write the number of ounces each item should weigh next to that item on the list. Which had undoubtedly worked fine when he adhered to the standard designs. Since he’d begun pursuing his art – soon after Keir arrived at Belzetarn – the weights changed with his changing innovations.
His error last waxing moon?
Keir had noticed a ladle in the carry sack of the privy scullion headed to the kitchens, said ladle failing to appear on the list at all. She’d added it, along with its standard weight, and the privy smithy’s input and output had then matched, as much as they ever did.
If the privy smith had managed to use an entire ingot of tin without recording it – unlikely, given that Martell was experimenting with copper-rich mixtures far more than tin-rich ones – the tally room would never learn where that tin had gone. The products from the privy smithy dispersed too widely.
But Keir didn’t think it was error.
And she didn’t think Gael thought so either. Why was he pretending he did? Because he wanted to keep Keir out of the ugliness? To protect Keir?
She suspected that was it.
What in the North would Gael do if he learned Keir was not the boy he thought her, but a young woman? Or did he know already? He might. He was subtle enough to penetrate her secret and never let on that he knew it, even to Keir herself. And he was protective enough – claiming Keir’s youth as his reason – that knowing her gender might occasion no change in either his behavior or his demeanor.
In that respect – if in no other – Gael reminded her of her father.
Keir removed the tin ingots from the third casket and swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in her throat. Would she always miss her pater – her father? Their interchange had been such a mix of irritation and affection on her last day at home.
* * *
The sky had been overcast, that summer noon two years ago, but the air moved less wildly than was usual on the island of Fiors, a mere warm breeze ruffling the shore grasses instead of whipping the knee-high strands.
Keiran – she’d been Keiran, not Keir, before she came to Belzetarn – stopped walking, turned her face up with closed eyes, and stretched her arms. The heat of the sun coming through the thin cloud cover felt good, as did the waffling of her light wool tunic against her midriff. Her long blond braid touched gently against her back. The hanging strings of her suede skirt had slapped her thighs as she strode, a happy rhythm lacking in colder seasons. But the soft leather of her right shoe – cut low and secured with two thongs across the bridge of her foot – had rubbed a blister on her smallest toe.
She didn’t care. She felt so free – free of constraint and free of care – on these warm days,
with the salt scent of the sea in her nose and its salt taste on her lips.
“Keiran?” came the amused voice of her pater.
Keiran opened her eyes and grinned at him.
Engis stood some paces ahead of her, a big man with powerful shoulders and a craggy face – formidable in repose, but approachable when his eyes smiled as they did now. He wore an ankle-length robe of green wool, rather than the short tunic and trews preferred by most tribesmen. It camouflaged the peg leg that tended to disturb his neighbors.
“If magery could make me fly,” said Keiran, “I’d leave the ground right now, soaring.”
Pater’s laugh rumbled. “You did good work, back in Gullins, on little Peadar.”
The toddler had been her most complicated use of magery yet. He’d fallen in the estuary and been fished out unbreathing. Keiran had gotten his lungs clear of water, heart beating again, and then nursed him through a waning moon of lung fever, all under her pater’s supervision. He’d insisted she was ready when she’d attempted to hand little Peadar off to him in the crisis. And he’d been right. She’d just told the boy’s mother that Peadar was fully recovered and needed no more of Keiran’s attendance.
“Pater, why have you emphasized healing so much in my training?” she asked. “You spend more time strengthening the warriors’ knives and bucklers than anything else.”
His face hardened a moment, then relaxed. His lips quirked. “Come.” He beckoned. “This afternoon’s lesson will not be midwifery or chirurgery or even herbal preparation.” He turned away to follow the sandy path toward the dunes ahead. Step, thump. Step, thump.
Keiran studied his gait. Was it just a bit more uneven than usual? A little halting?
“Pater!” she called.
He kept walking.
She trotted to catch up to him. “Your stump is bothering you, isn’t it?”
She was close enough to hear his answering sigh. “It’ll keep.”
Keiran nibbled her lip. He wouldn’t thank her for coddling him, but she wished he were less stoic sometimes. She’d never noticed it when she was younger – taking his strength for granted – but all her healing knowledge informed her that he would fare better with more breaks for rest than he generally took.
The path widened, and Engis let her come alongside him.
“Aren’t you curious about what I’ll be teaching you?” he asked.
Keiran nodded.
“You’ll be summoning fishes and then sending them back to the deeps again when they come.”
“Why?” She could imagine such might be useful, if she fished for her living. But for a mage?
“If you can summon a fish and then dismiss it, you can learn to dismiss beings of greater power.” His voice grew edged. “I would have you strong enough to dismiss the afflicted, if need be.”
Keiran swallowed her annoyance and sympathy both. So many things came back to this, but how could they not? Engis had lost his lower leg to the attack of renegade trolls, and his hatred for the truldemagar was a personal thing, far sharper than that felt by the tribe as a whole.
Engis prepared for the next renegade band who would threaten him or his family, while the tribe prepared for the next time the troll horde migrated over the sea, inundating Fiors en route as it had done in Keiran’s grandmother’s youth.
Keiran stayed silent. There was nothing useful she could say that she hadn’t said before.
Her forbearance had its reward.
Engis sighed again. “I suppose we could stop at home first. Rub some goose grease into the scar before we go shoreward.”
The sea breeze, the rustling grasses, and the faint cry of a gull faded.
The shores of Fiors would never be her home again. She stood in the claustrophobic tin vault of Belzetarn, oppressed by its heavy stones, and counting tin.
She’d just tallied the last ingot, and there were eighty-two. Not eighty-three.
Who had stolen that eighty-third? And why? And – more importantly – how could she and Gael catch him, whoever he was?
These were questions currently without answers.
But Keir had an idea for what to do next.
* * *
Gael had returned to the tally chamber after talking with the quartermaster, and was preparing to descend to the smithies, when Keir came in. The boy was his usual collected self – unlike his previous entrance – but there seemed a hidden tautness in him.
Gael finished swinging the inner shutters of the casements open, and the golden afternoon light shone in, illuminating the dust in the air and casting circle-patterned rectangles of brightness on the pigeonhole cabinets. He leaned a hip against the stone of the casement sill and gestured for Keir to speak.
“Eighty-two ingots of tin,” Keir said. A hint of trouble shadowed his eyes.
“And . . . ?” said Gael.
“I re-tallied the copper vault and the bronze vault as well.”
Ah. That explained what had taken the boy so long.
Gael lifted an eyebrow.
“Four-hundred-twelve ingots of copper. Ninety-four ingots of bronze.”
Gael noticed his hand clenching into a fist and unclenched it. Ninety-four. Where there should be ninety-five. The bronze vault was not due for tallying until the waxing moon. That was clever of Keir to realize that if the tin count was off, so might the count be off in the other vaults. But not the copper vault. Just precious tin. And precious bronze.
“It is a thief,” Keir said. “Isn’t it?”
Gael nodded, reluctantly. He knew very well that trolls – like men – were not saints, but he’d wanted to believe that their worst lay outside Belzetarn on the battlefields, not within it.
“Should I re-tally the oxhide vault and the pebble vault?” Keir asked. He meant the stores of partially refined metals that came directly from the mines.
“That will need doing, yes,” answered Gael. “But first I want you to talk with the notaries of all the smithies. Take their signed reports from yesterday and the day before, and go over them with each. Ask them about how the smithing went, and determine if something unusual could have caused an error in their tallies.”
Keir moved to the cabinet on the right side of Gael’s desk and started taking the relevant parchments from a pigeonhole.
“Be indirect,” said Gael. “Keep the thief, if there is one” – he knew his hope that there might not be to be a forlorn one – “from hearing we’re onto his theft.”
Keir looked up from his parchments with an expression of slight disdain on his face. “I won’t even let on there’s a problem with the tally,” he said coolly. “As far as they are concerned, we’re looking at efficiency and ways to improve it.”
Gael felt his lip curl. He suspected Keir was better at concealing tally room business than was Gael himself.
“I’m headed for the smithies also, but before we go . . .”
Keir had been stuffing the parchments into his portfolio. His hands stilled.
Gael wasn’t quite sure where to begin.
“My lord Carbraes bade me examine the prize brought in by the Third Cohort.”
Keir’s face grew as still as his hands. Typical of him. Thusly was the boy’s most acute interest marked: by withdrawal rather than drawing nearer.
Gael continued, “I have performed that examination, and it is an evil thing, fashioned such that its resonance drains the energea of all within hearing. I am certain that the regenen will wish me to pursue the matter to some safer outcome, and I . . . wish it, too.” He felt surprise at his stated conclusion. His hatred for that gong, locked in his quarters, had only grown in the brief time since he’d left it. Why would he wish to tinker with it further? “Some method of rendering the thing harmless” – or of destroying it, he would dearly love to destroy it – “must be devised. And I . . . am likely the best choice to do so.”
“The magus?” asked Keir.
“Is not,” answered Gael.
“Because . . . ?”
�
��Because the magus would prefer that Belzetarn’s smithies forge magical blades to match those wielded by the mountain folk, the Ghriana. He forgets – or chooses to ignore – that the trolls who practice magery sink to madness and death that much faster.”
Keir swallowed, his cool demeanor troubled. Gael realized he’d never admitted his own negative opinions of his colleague so frankly before.
Then the boy bore up, lifting his chin. “You’ll require that I carry the tasks of the tally room forward, while you pursue the destruction of the gong.”
That was it in a nutshell.
“Yes.”
Keir flushed, most uncharacteristically. “Will you instruct me now?” he asked. “Or later, after check in?”
“You need no instruction.” That was blunt, but accurate. “You could run the tally chamber entirely without me at need.” Gael nodded. “On the morrow, in the morning, you’ll check the metals out to the smithy scullions and lodge scullions without me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gael admired Keir’s ability to be respectful without a trace of servility. Not all the trolls possessed it.
“But we’ll do the evening checking in together. I want to know if any more ingots go missing.” He couldn’t keep the grim tone out of his voice. It infuriated him that someone had breached his control over the metals flowing through the tower. The thief – if thief it was – would be sorry when Gael found him.
* * *
Chapter 3
In the upper reaches of the Regenen Stair, numerous arrowslits brought in light during the hours when the sun shone. But the tower’s foundations were broader than its heights, which meant the lowest twists of the stair were too far from the outer walls to make arrowslits practical. There, torches burned even by day, black soot stains on the stone vaulting above each.
As Keir and Gael passed the wide archway into the servery for the Regenen’s Kitchen, a shout hailed them.
Gael halted on the landing. “Go ahead of me, boy,” he told Keir. “Best we arrive in the smithies separately anyway, to avoid giving undue importance to your inquiries.”
Keir nodded, quickly disappearing around the newel post.
The Tally Master Page 5
