The Tally Master

by J. M. Ney-Grimm

  Carbraes held up one hand. “Gael. No.”

  Gael let his breath go. So. Carbraes would not even hear him. Not beyond the audience that the regenen had already extended.

  Carbraes turned to his castellanum. “You will cease to meddle in my smithies and in the vaults and the tally chamber that supply them.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Theron sounded diligent and reliable, as though thievery lay far below him.

  “You will cease to trouble my Lord Gael in any way.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “You will attend solely and thoroughly to the regulation and the conduct of my citadel.”

  “Of course, my lord.” Theron’s brows both rose in surprise.

  “And if I detect any attempt by you to usurp my privilege –” Carbraes ceased speaking altogether, his face grim. “Your reach to pull the tally chamber and its offices under your control was usurpation, Theron. If you do so again, I will sever your head from your body. Personally.” The regenen’s grimness segued into a flat, emotionless expression that was even scarier. “Is. That. Clear.”

  Theron’s complacency fled. His voice actually wobbled as he answered, “Yes, my Regenen.”

  Carbraes nodded.

  “M – may I go?” asked the castellanum.

  “Go,” said Carbraes curtly. He stayed silent until Theron had disappeared, ascending around the newel post of the stair.

  * * *

  The light outside the arrowslits of the Cliff Stair had grown very golden, contrasting strongly with the increasing dimness within the stairwell. The sun must be nearing the tree tops beyond the meadow at the bailey’s gatehouse. Gael, still standing in the latrine and wishing he were not, felt emptied out, as one might after a long day in the open, picking berries or swimming in the river or riding horseback. Except that the evening following a day of satisfying effort would bring a welcome lassitude. Gael felt hollow rather than replete.

  Now that Theron had departed, would Carbraes permit Gael to speak?

  The regenen gestured him to leave the latrine. Thank Tiamar, since his nose had not habituated to the stench. The air was not much cleaner immediately outside the latrine door, but swapping that close confinement for a sense of the depth to which the stairwell descended, and the equally great height to which it ascended, ushered in a degree of relief.

  Carbraes, Gael noticed, lingered long enough to rinse the ingot he still held – as well as his hand – with water from the bucket located in the latrine’s wall niche. He shut the door as he exited. Nodding for Gael to accompany him, he started up the stairs.

  “This isn’t the first time Theron has betrayed you,” said Gael, putting together the evidence dropped by Carbraes’ dealings with his castellanum.

  “And you wonder why I continue to bear with him,” answered the regenen, climbing steadily.

  “He’s skilled at managing the complexities of a large stronghold,” mused Gael. “But how many times may you threaten to cut his head off – and not deliver, given that his head remains attached – before your authority ceases to have meaning?”

  “Oh, I delivered. Each time,” said Carbraes.

  Gael’s brows twitched.

  The next landing, with its passage to the place of arms, came into sight, a cluster of messengers milling about on it.

  “My first threat was considerably less than beheading, of course, but it kept Theron in line for some time. As did my second, more serious threat. And my third, more serious yet. His next transgression must be his last.”

  They arrived on the landing, and Carbraes sent one messenger to Dreben, another to the prison cells, and three more on various other errands. He directed the rest to precede him up the Regenen Stair. They scampered off through the passage to the place of arms, Carbraes following at a more measured pace and drawing Gael with him.

  Bright stripes of sunlight crossed the stone floor of the warriors’ practice place, casting its high vault into deep shadow. The air was blessedly fresh as Gael breathed it in.

  “I know Theron’s limits,” continued Carbraes, “and I can work with him so long as I do. I intend to receive his full worth.”

  “Until your last punishment brings an end,” said Gael. He quelled a shudder as they entered into the shadow of the passage to the Regenen Stair. The torches were yet unlit, but it was not the dark that provoked the shiver. He knew Carbraes to be supremely practical. He’d seen that quality in action again and again. It was what made him so effective. But this instance of it seemed chillingly cold-blooded.

  “I know Theron’s limits,” Carbraes repeated. “But I no longer feel I know yours. Do you?”

  The question hit Gael like the gust from a stormfront. Not so long ago – the day before he discovered evidence of a theft in his tally room, in fact – he would have answered it with a ‘yes.’ He was loyal to Carbraes and all else must be subsumed to that loyalty. Now . . . if he had to choose between Carbraes and Keir, he did not know who he would choose.

  Cayim’s hells and Gaelan’s virtues!

  “Uh, huh,” responded Carbraes, seeing the reaction in Gael’s face, no doubt.

  Or maybe Gael did know who he would choose. He would choose Keir. Except he could not. Not if he intended to live under Carbraes’ benevolence.

  They emerged from the dark passage into the merely dim stairwell.

  “Who will you choose, Gael?” said Carbraes.

  He had to choose Carbraes.

  “Let this be a test,” said the regenen, starting up the steps. “You will stay far away from the brig, which should be easy if you attend to your duties. You will trust Keir to my justice. And my mercy, in the event that it is required. And you will destroy that evil gong.”

  “But –” Gael couldn’t stem that small sound of protest.

  “And then I will know where you stand,” concluded the regenen.

  Hells! He shouldn’t have been so smug when listening to Carbraes setting forth his requirements for Theron. The regenen had intended Gael to feel that justice would be upheld, and to see that Carbraes could neither be manipulated nor deceitfully swayed, yes. But he’d also intended his secretarius to see the castellanum’s disciplining as a foreshadowing of his own.

  The scamper of the messengers’ footsteps echoed from above in the stairwell. Gael wasn’t sure where the rest of the normal traffic was. Had the great halls emptied out entirely while he and Theron and Carbraes clashed? Maybe.

  “But if you lose both Keir and myself –” he hadn’t intended to speak the thought aloud.

  “Then Arnoll will become my secretarius,” said Carbraes, unperturbed. Did he measure Gael’s limits even now? Undoubtedly.

  “Arnoll would never –” blurted Gael.

  “How do you think Arnoll’s survived this long?” asked Carbraes gently. “Of course Arnoll will do as I ask him.”

  Gael climbed three twists of the spiral stair in silence, a silence of constriction and disquiet. Carbraes climbed beside him, equally silent, but inhabiting a silence of composure. When they reached the landing – the one right outside the tally room – Carbraes halted, and Gael perforce halted with him.

  “I know you try to be a man of honor,” said the regenen.

  But he wasn’t a man. He was a troll.

  Carbraes shook his head, negating any disagreement he perceived. “You have never accepted your truldemagar, Gael,” he said.

  The statement felt like a blow. It was true, but he’d also never admitted it to himself.

  “I respect you for that,” said Carbraes. “I even honor you for it. Dreas also held to that standard,” he added quietly.

  Gael hardly knew how to respond.

  Carbraes handed him the copper ingot he still carried. The metal had completely dried, its washed surface gleaming softly in the dimness. “You’ll want to return this to its proper place,” he said.

  Gael accepted it, grasping the truncated pyramidal shape firmly and wondering what it was he saw in Carbraes’ face.

 
“There are limits to honor when you dwell in a troll citadel, Gael,” said the regenen. “Choose yours wisely.”

  After Carbraes turned to go, headed for the next flight of spiraling steps, Gael recognized what he’d seen in his regenen’s expression.

  It was sadness.

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  Gael stared a little blankly at the closed door of his tally room and then at the copper ingot in his hand.

  Right. He needed to secure the ingot behind a padlock and then check to see where Keir had left the evening tallies. Had she finished before Dreben’s warriors seized her? Had they found her at her desk, quill poised over parchment? Or did they drag her away from the vaults on the level above? Had they permitted her to secure the vault doors?

  Shaking himself from his dazed numbness, he hurried for the steps up, following in Carbraes’ wake. Carbraes was likely climbing all the way to the regal chambers at the top of Belzetarn. Gael had merely eight twists around the newel post to go.

  Outside the stairwell’s arrowslits, the sky shone a deep luminous blue, but the land below had fallen into dusky shadow. Boys called to one another in the artisans’ yard. The gate guard yelled a verbal salute to a superior officer passing from the yard into the bailey. The long summer evening was winding to its close.

  Gael climbed.

  What exactly had he hoped to achieve by revealing Theron’s thefts to the regenen? A stop to the thievery? He’d succeeded, if that were so. Theron would not be pilfering from the tally chamber again. Or – if the castellanum ignored Carbraes’ prohibition – his head would shortly be forfeit.

  But the collateral damage – the disclosure and broadcasting of Keir’s secret, her imprisonment, Carbraes’ doubt of Gael’s loyalty and his demand for proof – made the entire confrontation a failure.

  Even if Gael followed Carbraes’ requirements to the last tally, what would he win? The regenen himself had said that he honored Gael for his integrity. If Gael subdued the gong, as Carbraes ordered and which Keir opposed – well, Carbraes would entirely approve of that. But if Gael abandoned Keir to Carbraes’ judgment . . .

  How was that different from life in Belzetarn in general? The fate of every troll within the citadel was – in the end – Carbraes’ to determine. Gael knew this, had always known it. Why did it feel so fraught now?

  Because I don’t trust Carbraes. Not with this. Not with Keir, he realized.

  So. The lack of trust ran two ways. And Gael could perceive no way to restore it.

  If he abandoned Keir to Carbraes, then Carbraes would know that Gael put his regenen first, but he would also know that Gael would throw not merely a friend to the wolves, but a trusted underling who depended on Gael for protection.

  The test Carbraes demanded for restoring his trust in Gael would also show Gael to be less trustworthy than before. Gael felt caught between a rock and a hard place.

  The corridor outside the vaults was very dim, no doubt because all four doors were shut. They were also locked fast – good – when Gael checked. He unlocked the copper vault to return the ingot to its proper storage and found all in order there. Which indicated that Keir had at least finished checking in the products from the smithies before Dreben’s warriors came for her.

  Gael re-locked the vault door behind him. Opening each of the other vaults in turn – just to be sure – he determined that Keir had indeed finished her duties here. He returned to the stairs, heading down again, still sorting out his thoughts. He needed to assess the status of the tally room. And he had some decisions to make, but he could not make them until his thinking was clear.

  Regardless of what Carbraes’ test would do to Gael’s integrity or his safety, he could not abandon Keir. That much was a given. For the night, yes. He could trust that Carbraes’ precautions would keep her safe for so long. But for the long term . . . he would make her release a condition for his work on the gong. More than that, he would insist that Carbraes provide her a reliable escort to see her to one of the troll-queens in the northern wastes. She could not stay in Belzetarn. She required some other refuge.

  And if Carbraes refused . . . ? Gael felt his jaw harden. He would free her himself. He’d once been a magus, with all the powers that a magus possessed. He would do whatever was necessary to preserve his notarius from Carbraes’ so-called ‘mercy.’ Since when had Carbraes ever been merciful?

  The image of the beheaded Ghriana youth flashed before his mind’s eye.

  So. He would free Keir, but he would be intelligent about it. Raw emotion and impulsive action would merely land him in the cell next to hers, doing her no good at all. In the morning, he would place his stipulation before Carbraes. And if the regenen acceded to it, then the matter was solved. If he refused . . .

  Gael would pretend to meekness, subdue the gong, and then develop the careful plan that would get Keir out of Belzetarn. Her escape should not be impossible to arrange for a magus wielding his full powers.

  The tally room, when he let himself in through its door, proved to be as orderly as the vaults: parchments rolled in their pigeonholes in the cabinets, ink bottle corked, quill cleaned and resting to one side of Keir’s desk. Apparently she had completely finished the evening tasks, although she’d left the glass-paned casements open. Through them the sky was darkening at last. Below, in the yard, a few trolls walking from the kitchen entrance toward the well carried torches.

  Gael swung the casements closed and wrote a record of the returned copper ingot.

  Tomorrow, after he dealt with . . . more than he wanted to contemplate right now; he was weary . . . he would need to supervise digging the rest of the ingots out of that clogged latrine. Were it not for the gong, he’d do it tonight. But the buried treasure would keep one more day. He wondered just how many ingots were hidden in the foul sludge. At least nine more, going by Barris’ tally, but the hunter would have added his loot to that count as well.

  Tomorrow, he told himself, bringing his thoughts back to the fallout from his confrontation of Theron. Really he should have expected something like what had happened. Theron was expert at nosing out weakness, and scrambling back into Carbraes’ favor – or tolerance – over Keir’s vulnerability must have given him positive pleasure. That it also divided Gael’s interests from those of the regenen’s would have been a special grace note.

  That was the real issue at hand here.

  Carbraes had never needed to doubt Gael before, because Gael had always been in solid support of the regenen’s decrees. Had one of his friends – Barris, Arnoll – been in peril, Gael would have sought Carbraes’ protection for him. And received it.

  But Theron had found a way to endanger Keir via Carbraes himself, taking advantage of the regenen’s hostility toward the one whose hand had slain Dreas. When Gael had sought protection for Keir, he’d sought in vain. Theron had created a divide in Gael’s loyalties, which seemed to grow ever wider without any effort at all on Theron’s part.

  Except . . . was that really true?

  Not really.

  Gael’s loyalty had remained strong by dint of his carefully narrowed vision. He chose not to think about the war Carbraes prosecuted upon the unafflicted. He avoided dwelling on the violent discipline exerted within the ranks of Carbraes’ legions. He looked past the nasty back-stabbing that went on in the tower hierarchy under the castellanum’s aegis.

  Occasionally, such as when the Ghriana spy was captured, the realities of Belzetarn intruded. He’d always managed to press his awareness back down once the incident was finished.

  But Keir’s death – if Carbraes decided she must die – would not be something he could ever forget.

  He cast a swift final look around the tally room. The cabinets loomed in its gloom, quiescent like standing stones in the forest. The warm scent of the parchment and the flat one of the ink wrapped him round like a comforting fleece. This had been his sanctuary, but it was all illusion. There was no true sanctuary to be had within Belzetarn.


  He walked to the door, passed through it, and then turned to lock it behind him. He was done here for the night.

  The torches were lit in the Regenen Stair. Climbing the spiraling steps toward his chambers – just one and two-thirds twists around the newel post – he thought back to his arrival at Belzetarn and Carbraes’ demand that he swear fealty or die. It seemed he was back at that choice again. Would he declare himself Carbraes’ ally and partisan, thus accepting such protection as the regenen offered, with all its limits? Or would he declare himself Carbraes’ enemy?

  There was no middle ground.

  * * *

  When Gael stepped through the doorway into his chambers, he took one of the rush lights left inside for him by the tower scullions and lit it from the nearest stairwell torch. Then he locked the door behind him, crossed to his bedroom, and kindled two more rush lights.

  The stamped leather of the hangings and the golden wood of the chests along the walls looked warm and welcoming in the mellow light, but Gael did not feel the sense of homecoming that both the smithies and the tally room had evoked. These chambers were his, and very comfortable, very pleasant, but they lacked something, he wasn’t sure quite what.

  The quick wash at his ewer and bowl, however, together with cleansing his teeth, lacked nothing. After a morning spent in the saddle and an afternoon of alarm and exertion of a different order, it felt wonderful to be clean. Clean and weary, with his inviting sleeping couch awaiting him.

  He paused in the act of donning his nightshirt, looking down the compact, olive-skinned length of his body. He did enough shifting of the heavy oxhide ingots in the course of his tallying to keep strength in his arms and pectorals, and he climbed Belzetarn’s stairs with sufficient frequency – even when no ingot thief needed to be tracked down and stopped – to do the same for belly and legs. So what was different?

  The bruises from his fist fight with Dreben had faded entirely, but that wasn’t it.

  His breath caught on a hope he’d not dared indulge.

  What might Keir’s re-positioning of the nodes in his energea lattice do over time?