The labour cart left at five on Friday morning with nine sacks of grain, four slaves, an overseer named Hask who did not care about anything, and Soren.
Greyfen came up out of the mist at seven.
It was, by the standards of the world Soren had come from, a very small place.
Four thousand people, one market square, one temple of the Radiant Concord with the sun mosaic over the door and half the tiles missing, and a river with a stone bridge that had been repaired so many times it was more repair than bridge.
By the standards of the Marrow Vale it was the city.
<<Loraine: Note the wall.>>
What about it?
<<Loraine: There isn't one. A town with no wall in a nation with slavery means the local powers are confident nothing will come. That confidence is worth understanding, because it means the Sallow Hand runs this town and nobody has probably made them regret it.>>
The what?
<<Lilith: You will find out in about forty minutes. I could tell you now. I would rather watch.>>
Corben Vail's yard sat by the river at the bottom of the market road, and it had a weighbridge in it, and the weighbridge was where Soren spent his morning standing about looking stupid, which he had been specifically instructed to do and was extremely good at.
He watched them weigh nine sacks.
He watched the factor, a thin nervous man called Petrin, write down a number that was not the number on the bridge.
He watched Petrin do it three more times.
And he watched, at about the fourth sack, a man come out of the counting house and lean on the door frame and watch Petrin work with the particular boredom of somebody supervising a thing he had done a hundred times.
He was big. He had a shaved head and a leather coat that was too good for the yard and a Bindmaster's iron token hanging on a cord around his neck, which he was not entitled to, because he was not a Bindmaster.
<<Loraine: Seventh level Apprentice Warrior. Name unknown. That token is stolen or bought, and either way it means the men in this yard believe he can read a slave mark, which means every slave in Greyfen does what he says.>>
And can he?
<<Loraine: No.>>
Huh.
Soren looked at his own feet and kept looking stupid.
Here was the scheme, and it took him until the sixth sack to have all of it.
Petrin recorded the weights honestly on his own tally, which stayed in the counting house, because Vail needed real numbers to sell against.
The number that went onto the Callowmere copy was written later, out of sight, off a second book.
The nine percent lived in the gap between two ledgers, and it worked because the only person who ever saw both books was Petrin, and Petrin was terrified.
And the reason Petrin was terrified was leaning on the door frame in a leather coat.
Loraine. If I get the second book out of that counting house, can Vesper take fourteen months back off Vail?
<<Loraine: She can take fourteen months and his yard. Solvane commercial law is savage about false weight, and Vail is a commoner, and she is a Callowmere even if her family pretends otherwise. It would not even go to a magistrate. Her brother's steward would simply arrive.>>
Right.
<<Loraine: Soren.>>
Yeah.
<<Loraine: You are 3th level Apprentice. He is 7th level Apprentice. That is four levels and roughly six times your output, and you have a Profound grade battle art you have never once used on a person.>>
I know.
<<Loraine: I am simply establishing that I said it.>>
He waited until noon, when the yard broke for food and the shaved head went up the market road to a place called the Broken Yoke, and Petrin went to sit against the weighbridge with a heel of bread.
Then Soren went and sat down next to him.
Petrin looked up, saw grey linen and a slave band, and went back to his bread. Nobody minds furniture sitting down.
"Nine percent," Soren said.
Petrin choked.
"I'm not going to do anything," Soren said, in the flattest, most boring voice he had.
"I can't. Look at me. I'm asking because my lady sent me to stand here all day and I'd like to have something to say when I get back that isn't I stood there all day."
"I don't," Petrin said. "I don't know what—"
"Second book's in the counting house. Probably under the floor or behind the ledgers where the dust line doesn't match." Soren picked at a splinter on the weighbridge.
"The bit I don't understand is you. You're not getting rich. You've got a mended cuff and one pair of boots. So it isn't money."
Petrin didn't answer.
"Is it the big one?" Soren asked. "With the token?"
Petrin's hands had started shaking.
"His name's Ost," he said, very quietly. "He's Sallow Hand. And I've got a daughter."
Ah.
There it is.
<<Lilith: Oh no...>>
<<Loraine: Oh no what.>>
<<Lilith: You know exactly oh no what. Look at his face.>>
<<Loraine: ...Soren.>>
<<Loraine: Soren, you are third level Apprentice.>>
Soren stood up and brushed the grain dust off his knees.
"What time does he finish?" he asked.
...
The Broken Yoke sat on the corner where the market road met the bridge, and it had a low door and a bad sign and, at four in the afternoon, eleven people in it.
Soren had never been in it before, so he made a point of coming in badly. Shoulders in. Eyes down. Grey linen, slave band, the whole picture.
Ost was at the long table with his back to the wall and four of the Sallow Hand around him.
The barmaid who came over was maybe twenty three, dark haired, with her sleeves pushed up over forearms that said she'd been carrying barrels since she was twelve.
She put a hand on her hip and looked at him the way you look at a lost dog.
"You're Callowmere's," she said. "You can't buy anything, love, you haven't got any money."
"I've got six crowns."
She raised an eyebrow.
"You have not."
Soren put six crowns on the counter.
The barmaid looked at the coins, and then at him, and then at his face properly for the first time, and something in her expression did the thing that Soren had already noticed this face made happen to people and had decided, some time in the last week, to stop apologising for.
"...Huh," she said. "I'm Reia."
"Soren."
"Soren." She swept the coins. "Sit somewhere I can see you, Soren, because if Ost's lot notice a slave with money you'll be a slave without money and probably without teeth."
He sat somewhere she could see him.
He nursed one cup for two hours, and he listened, and by six he had four things.
First, that the Sallow Hand took a cut from every yard on the river road, that Ost collected it personally on Fridays, that Ost walked home along the towpath alone because nobody in Greyfen had ever needed to walk him home.
And lastly and probably the most importantly, that the man Ost answered to was called Brannick Sallow who was a first level Adept.
At half past six Ost got up and went out.
Soren counted to fifty.
<<Loraine: Say it.>>
Say what?
<<Loraine: Say the thing where you pretend this is about the ledger.>>
It's about the ledger though.
<<Loraine: It is about a thin man with a daughter and you have known that since noon.>>
Loraine.
<<Loraine: What.>>
Set Pebble Amongst Dragons to 1st level Apprentice.
There was a pause.
<<Loraine: ...Not unranked?>>
No. 1st level. I want him to see something. I want him to see something small, and take his time, and not shout for anybody.
<<Pebble Amongst Dragons: Displayed rank set to Apprentice, 1st level.>>
<<Loraine: Piercing Palm. First strike. If you do not put him down with the first strike you will not get a second one.>>
I know.
<<Lilith: Break that thing of his.>>
<<Loraine: Lilith.>>
<<Lilith: What? I've been in this house six days and I've watched what that lot do to people. Break something of his.>>
Soren went out onto the towpath.
The river ran black under the bridge and the mist was already coming back up off it.
Forty yards ahead a big man in a leather coat was walking home with a purse full of other people's money, whistling.
Soren followed him for a hundred paces, keeping his feet loud enough to be heard, because he wanted to be turned around to.
Ost turned around.
He looked at the thin boy in grey linen with the slave band on his wrist, and he read him, the way men like that always read people, and Pebble Amongst Dragons handed him a first level Apprentice.
Ost started laughing.