By the time they returned to the Riorden estate, the sun had already begun to set.
When the carriage stopped, the servants before the entrance looked not at Kael, but at Edric's document case.
An old leather case.
There were no gold coins inside it. But everyone knew. Kael had not returned empty-handed today.
"Kael."
Selena Riorden stood in the entrance hall.
She wore the same clothes as she had during the day, but the ends of her sleeves were wrinkled.
"I am back."
"The depot?"
"It has been sealed."
The air in the hall froze. Ria and Ian looked down from the stairs.
"The supplies?"
"They are inside."
"What did you bring back?"
"An inventory."
Edric came forward with the document case held in both hands. Ink still stained the old butler's fingers.
"I have prepared an inventory of the supplies recoverable from Warehouse No. 3 of the Grayden Military Supply Depot. Forty-eight bundles of military leather straps, twenty-seven bottles of fever-reducing distillate, and eleven sets of iron repair tools. The record of those present has also been made."
Selena slowly lowered her gaze.
"So the goods are not in our hands. Only the record is."
"Yes."
"And the depot has been sealed."
"Yes."
Edric's voice grew low. It was the voice of a man reporting a defeat.
The servants in the entrance hall gradually let their shoulders drop.
To them, an inventory was neither bread, wages, nor firewood to cover them tonight.
Not yet.
Kael shook his head.
"That is wrong."
Selena looked at him.
"What is?"
"We did not gain only a record. We also learned that the other side hurried to seal it."
"Does that become money?"
It was a cold question. It was not reproach, but calculation.
In his previous life, Kael had avoided questions like that from his mother. He had wanted to believe everything would be resolved if he rose to the capital.
Today, Kael did not run away.
"Not immediately. But we can create a price."
"Explain."
Kael walked to the long table at the center of the hall.
The servants stepped back, and Ria and Ian came down from the stairs. Edric spread the inventory across the table.
Items. Quantities. Condition. Witnesses. Time sealed.
And Lucas Bern's name.
Selena stopped at the last line.
"An agent of House Seradin?"
"Lucas Bern. He is a man from the Accounting Office."
"They came themselves?"
"Yes."
"They were quick."
"Too quick."
Quick meant it was not a coincidence. Someone had been watching and waiting.
"Then the Grayden depot was not an abandoned depot."
"Yes."
"Was it a depot Seradin had been managing?"
"For now, that is only an inference."
"When you say 'for now,' it sounds as though you are almost certain."
Ria looked at the inventory on the table and asked,
"Brother. We could not take the goods, so what can we do with just an inventory?"
"Prove that the goods existed."
"Is that all?"
"No. Prove who wanted to hide them as well."
Ria narrowed her eyes.
"Then are we charging them for the secret?"
Rowan gave a quiet laugh.
"My lady, that is quite a direct way of putting it."
"Am I wrong?"
Kael shook his head.
"You are not wrong. But if we take the price of a secret immediately, it becomes blackmail. If we follow procedure, it becomes a claim."
"Are the two very different?"
"It is the difference between whether your head stays attached to your neck."
Ria fell silent for a moment.
Ian cautiously raised his hand.
"Brother. If a good debt is still a debt, is it not bad?"
The hall fell quiet for a moment.
A child's questions were always dangerous. They pulled complicated words down to their simplest place.
"A debt is a promise."
"A promise?"
"A promise written down, stating who received what and what they must return later."
"Then is a good debt a good promise?"
"If the person who received it can repay it himself."
Ian still looked as though he did not fully understand.
Kael put it another way.
"Suppose you borrowed bread from me. But I wrote Ria's name in the ledger and told her to repay the price of the bread."
Ria answered at once.
"I would hate that."
Ian looked at Ria.
"What if I only eat half the bread?"
"I would still hate it."
"Just a little?"
"You repay even the crumbs you ate."
Rowan murmured in admiration.
"Lady Riorden has a creditor's talent."
For the first time, Ria puffed up a little.
"That is a bad debt."
Ian nodded.
"Then what is a good debt?"
"Repaying the price of the bread you ate yourself."
"But that is obvious."
"Yes."
Kael pressed a finger to the inventory on the table.
"Too many people have broken even that obvious rule."
Selena's gaze lingered on Kael.
"Kael. Did you not say you would reduce the family's debt?"
"I will."
"But just now, you spoke of the Empire's debt."
Kael did not answer.
"Are you trying to save this family, or use it to open a larger ledger?"
Edric's hand stopped. Ria and Ian looked at Kael as well.
"Both."
Selena's eyes turned cold.
"That answer is dangerous."
"We are already in danger. So we are choosing the better danger."
"A better danger."
"The bad danger is being stripped of everything without knowing anything. The good danger is at least knowing what we have staked."
"And what have we placed at stake now?"
"The Riorden name."
Kael continued.
"Mother."
Selena stopped at that form of address.
"In my previous life, I abandoned this family."
The hall froze.
Ria's lips parted. Only Selena kept looking at Kael.
"Previous life?"
Kael did not correct her.
"After I went up to the capital, I learned far too late how this house had fallen apart. At the time, I wrote that it could not be restored."
"Kael."
"I will not write that this time. I will save this family. I will save it by claiming from those who pushed their debts onto us."
Selena said nothing for a long while.
"You really do seem to have returned."
Kael could not answer.
"Not your body. Your eyes."
After a moment, Selena picked up the inventory.
"Good. Then let us speak in terms of saving this family. What do we need now?"
"First, proof of interested-party status to inspect the Temple Notarial Ledger."
Edric wrote it down at once.
"Second, a trading partner who can turn the depot inventory into money."
Rowan said,
"Can there be a trade when the goods are inside the depot?"
"We can first sell the recovery rights or use them as collateral."
"We are selling the right to receive the goods?"
"Exactly."
"It is becoming more complicated than a sword."
"That is why it costs more."
Selena looked at the inventory.
"An ordinary merchant will not do. The depot has been sealed, Seradin is involved, and Temple documents have appeared."
"We need a merchant who knows the price of risk."
Selena thought for a moment.
"Belka."
Kael's eyes shifted.
"Belka?"
"It was once a sizeable trading company on the eastern supply route. It has nearly collapsed now, but there is still someone there who can smell the market."
"Who is it?"
"Mira Belka."
Ria tilted her head.
"A woman merchant?"
"She would hate it if you called her a merchant. She would say she is not the head of a trading company yet. But no one is quicker when it comes to making a deal."
The faintest smile crossed Selena's lips.
"And she has a pathological hatred of losing deals."
"Will someone like that help us?"
Ria asked.
Selena tapped the inventory.
"She will not help us. She will put a price on it."
Kael liked that answer. Help wavered, but profit moved.
"Can we contact her?"
"We can. But that girl will not take the word of a fallen noble at face value."
"She does not need to believe us."
"Then?"
Kael looked at the inventory of recoverable supplies.
"We just have to let her smell money."
Selena nodded.
"We will send someone to the Bardin Supply Market tomorrow morning."
"I will go."
"No."
It was an unexpectedly firm refusal.
"Seradin moved today. If you leave the estate again, they may stop you on the road."
Kael did not argue.
"I will move this time."
"You will go yourself, Mother?"
"Kael. I was born into a merchant family. I have only pretended to forget while playing the role of a nobleman's wife. I have not forgotten how to bargain over the price of goods."
Ria's eyes shone.
Kael looked at Selena.
In his previous life, he had remembered his mother only as a woman who had kept up appearances until she broke.
He had been wrong. She was a woman who had endured by selling even her dignity.
"Then what about me?"
"You prepare a way to open the Temple Notarial Ledger."
Selena looked at the small scrap of paper Kael held.
"Are the last three digits enough?"
"They are not enough."
"Then we find more."
"Where?"
Selena looked at Edric.
"Aldren's room."
Edric's face stiffened.
"My lady."
"There will be something he still has not told us."
Aldren Riorden. Baron of Riorden. Kael's father.
In his previous life, Kael had judged his father to be incompetent. A man who had believed in the Empire's orders and contracts and buried the family beneath a mountain of debt.
But the ledgers revealed so far were saying something different.
Aldren might not have been merely a man who had been deceived.
"The Baron is still conscious..."
Edric said carefully.
"Whether he is or not, his room remains."
Selena was firm.
"Where is the key to that room?"
Edric did not answer.
Kael said,
"Edric."
The old butler's hand went to the small ring of keys at his waist. One of them was old and silver.
Edric held that key for a long time before offering it to Kael.
"Young Master."
"Speak."
"There are not only ledgers in the Baron's room."
"What else is there?"
Edric's eyes darkened.
"Regret as well."
Kael took the key.
It was cold. Like the temperature of a room that had been shut for a long time.
"Do not do the calculations alone this time."
Selena said.
"If you have placed the family at stake, then the family must see the ledger too."
Kael tightened his grip around the key.
"I understand."
That night.
Edric walked ahead with a candlestick. Rowan said he would guard the entrance hall.
Kael stood before Aldren Riorden's door.
In his previous life, Kael had hardly entered this room. As a child, he had been afraid. Once he grew older, it made him uncomfortable. On the verge of collapse, it had been bothersome.
As a result, he had failed to see something important.
Kael inserted the silver key.
Click.
The door opened.
The smell of dust and faint medicinal herbs drifted out.
Inside were a bed, a desk, a weapons rack, and an old bookcase.
Kael's gaze stopped on the desk.
An old manuscript lay open on top of it.
A short sentence was written on the cover in Aldren's hand.
The Empire will pay its price someday.
Kael's hand stopped.
Edric spoke softly from behind him.
"It is the record the Baron was writing last."
Kael opened the manuscript.
On the first page, supply orders from the Eastern War and part of a Temple notarial number had been set down.
And beneath them.
Red letters appeared.
[Interested-Party Status Can Be Proven]
[Condition: Signature of Aldren Riorden, Baron of Riorden]
[Warning: Signatory's Survival Must Be Verified]
His father was still alive.
And for the first time, that fact felt not like an asset, but like a blade.
The candle on the desk flickered.
Edric asked,
"Young Master?"
Kael looked down at the manuscript.
In his previous life, he had treated his father as a man whose account was closed.
The ledger of this life said otherwise.
It was not over yet.