"Cease the inspection of the Grayden Military Supply Depot at once."
The voice of the man in the gray cloak echoed through the depot.
Barik lowered his head, and Edric stopped his pen. Only Rowan rested a hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Young Master."
"Speak."
"That man does not appear to have any manners."
"So?"
"May I give up mine too?"
"Not yet."
Four private soldiers stood behind the man. They were not government troops. The crest of House Seradin was embroidered inside their gray uniforms.
Kael looked at their boots. There was little dirt on them. They had been waiting nearby.
There had been a reason for Barik's relief.
"Your name."
The man in the gray cloak raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean?"
"If you are going to give orders, reveal your name first."
"I am Lucas Bern, administrative agent of House Seradin."
Lucas Bern.
It was not a name that had made it into the great ledger of his previous life. But names like that were more often used to bring people down.
"I am Kael Riorden."
"I know."
Lucas looked at Kael's chest, where the Temple-notarized manifest lay.
"Then this will be quick. Warehouse No. 3 is now subject to reinspection."
He took out a folded document. It bore the seal of the Eastern Administrative Office and the guarantee signature of House Seradin.
But Kael saw something else first.
[Temporary Closure Request]
[Time of Drafting: Today, after noon]
[Filing Record: None]
[Validity: Undetermined]
Kael scanned the document and raised his head.
"The closure came too late."
"What do you mean?"
"It came too late."
Lucas's smile thinned.
"No goods may be removed from a depot undergoing reinspection."
"I did not say I was removing anything."
"Then what is the document inside your coat?"
Edric's hand stiffened atop his document case.
Lucas spoke smoothly.
"If you take documents from a sealed depot, it will constitute theft and obstruction of administration."
"A sealed depot?"
Kael pointed to Lucas's document.
"You just said you were closing it."
"They are consecutive steps within the administrative process."
"Fine words. They mean nothing, but they sound good."
Lucas's expression hardened ever so slightly.
"House Seradin understands the Barony's circumstances. There is no need to make this a bigger problem."
When Kael took a step forward, one of the private soldiers placed a hand on the hilt of his sword.
Rowan immediately stepped in front of him.
"Mind your hand. The wages at our estate are overdue too, so we cannot pay your treatment bill."
The private soldier's face stiffened.
Lucas raised a hand to stop him.
Kael turned to Edric.
"The record?"
Edric drew a short breath.
"The first draft of the recoverable supplies inventory is complete."
"Witnesses."
Edric's eyes went to Barik.
"I did not see anything."
"You did."
Kael said,
"You opened the gate, guided us, and accompanied us all the way to the ledger chest behind the shelves."
"I only... opened the gate."
"If you write that you saw nothing, then you abandoned your duties. If you write that you did, it means there were hidden supplies."
Barik's Adam's apple bobbed.
"Which will you write?"
Barik looked at Lucas.
Lucas said nothing.
That silence was an answer.
"I... guided them."
Edric's pen moved.
"Barik Holden, person in charge of Warehouse No. 3, present during the Riorden inspection."
For the first time, Lucas's smile disappeared.
"That record has no legal effect."
"Not yet."
Kael returned his words to him exactly.
"But since you came to seize a record with no legal effect, it looks as though it will have some effect someday."
Lucas did not answer.
Instead, he held out his hand.
"Hand over the document."
The document.
Kael did not overlook that word. What Lucas wanted was the Temple-notarized manifest.
"And if I refuse?"
"House Seradin has guaranteed the Eastern Administrative Office's reinspection. The documents and supplies are subject to temporary preservation."
"Temporary preservation. That is another way to say you will hide them."
"It is dangerous for the heir of a fallen barony to say such things to an agent of House Seradin."
"An official document."
Kael looked at the closure request Lucas held.
"It has no filing number."
Lucas's fingers covered the bottom of the document.
It was a very small movement, but Edric saw it.
"Young Master. The filing field is blank."
"The closure request was drafted, but it was not filed. When we came in, and when we found the ledger chest, this depot was not yet a locked place."
"That is an interpretation."
"No. It is the sequence."
"In a ledger, sequence comes before excuses. Who signed first, and who hid it first."
At that moment, the red letters over Lucas's document became clearer.
[Interference Purpose: Retrieval of Documents]
[Related Claim: Relief Debt of the Four Eastern Territories]
[Instructing Party: House Seradin Accounting Office]
Kael's eyes narrowed.
This was not an improvised response. Seradin had been managing this depot through its ledgers.
"Lucas Bern."
"Yes?"
"Are you an agent of House Seradin, or an agent of its Accounting Office?"
Lucas's eyes wavered for the briefest moment.
It was brief, but enough.
"As I thought. Seradin never abandoned this depot."
Rowan murmured in a low voice.
"May I draw now?"
"Not yet."
Kael spoke to Edric.
"Fold the inventory."
Edric folded the recoverable supplies inventory and placed it inside his document case.
Lucas's gaze followed the movement.
"You must leave that inventory behind as well."
"Why?"
"Because it is a record of the supplies in the depot."
"Wrong. The supplies are here, and the inventory is a document made by our hands."
"If you want to take it, try taking it."
Two private soldiers moved.
Rowan drew his sword.
The first private soldier stopped. The second took another step forward, and at that very moment, Rowan's sword tip touched just beneath his throat.
No blood was drawn.
But the private soldier stopped breathing.
"I am a knight whose pay is overdue, so my patience is cheap. Take one more step, and the reckoning will be quick."
Lucas's eyes turned cold.
"You have drawn a sword."
"They moved first."
Kael said,
"There is a witness too."
He looked at Barik.
Barik gritted his teeth.
"The private soldiers moved first."
Edric wrote down those words too.
While a sword stopped them once, the pen bound them three times.
"Very well."
Lucas said,
"Take the results of your inspection. But you must leave all original documents and supplies in the depot behind."
Kael pressed his fingertips to the manifest inside his coat.
If he left it behind, it would disappear.
If he took it out now, he would give Lucas grounds to act.
Ledgers never gave everything away. They left only enough to lead into the next reckoning.
"Edric."
"Yes."
"Did you record the title and contents of the first page of the Temple-sealed manifest?"
"Yes. Provisional Relief Supply Manifest for the Four Eastern Territories. The notarizing authority is the Imperial Temple. I recorded the Riorden name as well."
Lucas's eyes sharpened.
Kael took the manifest from inside his coat and set it on top of the ledger chest.
"I will leave the original."
Lucas reached for it.
"But we will seal it again here and now."
Taking the original would be theft.
But resealing the original and recording those present would create a record.
"Barik. The depot sealing cord."
"That requires government approval..."
"Fine. Then I will record that you failed to maintain custody of the original."
Barik gritted his teeth and took a red cord and an old seal from his belt.
Kael put the bundle of manifests and the iron chest inside as they were. Edric wrote.
"Hidden Ledger Chest of Warehouse No. 3, resealed after inspection by the Riorden Barony, with Barik Holden, person in charge of the depot, present."
Kael looked at Lucas.
"And Lucas Bern, agent of House Seradin, present."
Edric's pen stopped, then moved again.
Lucas's face froze completely.
"Do not record my name."
"You already came inside. As a witness who verified the state of the originals before issuing the closure notice."
Lucas was silent for a long time.
When faced with a record against their interests, people choose one of two paths.
They tear it up, or they avoid it.
Lucas believed he could tear it up, but Rowan's sword barred the way, Barik's testimony had been secured, and Edric's inventory was already inside the document case.
It was too late to tear it up.
"Very well."
Lucas said,
"But after today, no one may access this depot until the reinspection is complete."
"Once that reinspection request has been filed."
"It will be filed soon."
"Then we will file our claim soon too."
Kael pointed to the recoverable supplies inventory.
"Forty-eight bundles of leather straps, twenty-seven bottles of fever-reducing distillate, and eleven sets of repair tools. The Riorden Barony asserts a priority right of recovery over these supplies."
"I cannot acknowledge that."
"You do not need to. We only need to record it."
Edric wrote.
"We also claim the right to obtain a copy of the Temple-notarized manifest found in the hidden ledger chest, and to determine the debt to which that document is connected."
Lucas smiled coldly.
"Who do you think will accept that claim?"
"At first, no one."
Kael answered calmly.
"That is why it becomes expensive."
At first, a claim was merely a bothersome sheet of paper.
But when several claims piled up and witnesses attached themselves to them, they changed. A nuisance became a risk, and a risk became a price.
Seradin was a house that understood that.
That was why they had come so quickly.
"Barik. Lock the depot door."
"What?"
"You lock it. Not Lucas."
Kael pointed to the sealed chest.
"If anything disappears after today, the person holding the key will have to explain himself first."
Barik's face went pale.
Only then did he seem to realize.
Kael was not protecting him.
He was binding him.
The depot doors locked one after another. Finally, the main gate closed, and Barik set the seal. Edric recorded the time of sealing and those present.
When they stepped outside, the sky hung low and overcast.
The horses of Seradin's private soldiers stood in the depot yard. Riorden's old carriage looked shabby beside them.
But Edric's document case was heavier than before.
There was no money inside it.
But it contained an inventory that would become money.
It also held a record someone desperately wanted to destroy.
Lucas approached Kael's side.
"Do not take House Seradin too lightly."
"I have never taken it lightly."
"Then why provoke it?"
Kael looked back at the sealed depot.
"Because if it were light, there would be no price worth claiming from it."
Lucas's face hardened.
The carriage began to move.
"We left the original behind."
"I know."
"Then what did we gain today?"
Kael looked at Edric's document case.
"What the other side fears."
Kael took a small scrap of paper from inside his coat.
Before he had returned the manifest to the ledger chest, an edge had caught on his fingertips and fallen away.
The last three digits of the Temple notarial number remained on it.
[Notarial Ledger Location: Eastern Temple Branch]
[Inspection Requirement: Proof of Interested-Party Status]
Kael folded the scrap of paper.
"Edric."
"Yes."
"When we return, tell Lady Selena that we found a way to reduce Riorden's debt."
"Truly?"
"No."
Kael smiled faintly.
"We found a way to increase it."
Rowan turned only his head from the driver's seat.
"Is that good news?"
"Good debt becomes a weapon."
Kael pressed the scrap of paper in his hand.
"Now it is time to create debt that they will fear, not debt we will have to repay."