Two hundred and eighty silver marks.
Plus the ten-lash fee, which the Concern valued at thirty.
Plus the transfer charge, the registry stamp duty and the auction premium Gorse had paid, all of which, under Section Seven of the Bondage Statutes, a third party redeeming a bond was obliged to cover.
Lucan stood in the echoing marble hall of the Lower Wards Debt Registry at noon, reading the statutes off a brass plaque on the wall, and did the sum in his head.
Three hundred and forty-one silver, six copper.
He had ninety.
The Registry was the busiest building he had ever been inside.
It was a vast, cold, high-ceilinged hall like the inside of a cathedral, with tall windows of smoke-yellowed glass and a floor of black and white tiles worn into hollows by centuries of feet.
Long counters ran down both sides, each one fronted by a brass grille, and behind every grille sat a clerk in a grey coat and sleeve-protectors, stamping, writing, filing.
The queues for the grilles snaked across the hall and doubled back on themselves.
Most of the people in them were poor.
Many of them were crying.
And at the far end of the hall, standing in a row like statues, were six Debt Marshals.
Lucan kept his cap pulled low and his collar turned up.
The Concern had posted his name as dead.
The Marshals at Pit Nine had seen his face.
He did not think anyone here would recognise him, but he was very aware that he had killed a man last night, and that sooner or later someone was going to find that man’s body by the spoil-chute grate.
He read the plaque again.
Section Seven.
A bond of obligation may be redeemed in full by any free subject of the Crown upon payment at the Registry of the bond’s registered value together with all fees, duties and premiums attached thereto, whereupon the bondholder shall be compensated and the bond discharged.
Redemption shall be final and shall not be contested.
Any free subject.
Lucan was legally dead.
He wasn’t a free subject of anything.
He couldn’t walk up to the grille and pay.
Even if he’d had the money, the first thing the clerk would ask for was his papers.
So he needed someone else to walk up to the grille.
And he needed three hundred and forty-one silver, six copper, in threaded coin.
And he needed both of them before the Registry closed its doors at the fifth bell, two hours before sundown.
He had five hours.
He turned around and walked out of the Registry, back into the smog.
“Absolutely not,” said Ottilie Brask.
“Three bottles.
Not one.
Three.”
“It took me ten years to build the kind of trust it takes to sell one bottle of that to a Spire man.
You want me to walk up to the same man the same afternoon and sell him three?
He’ll think I’m running a factory.
He’ll think the Brotherhood’s been robbed.
He’ll call the Thread Office before I’ve got the cork out.” She jabbed her pipe at him across the counter.
“No.
And no again.
And a third no, for luck.”
“Then don’t sell him three.
Sell three people one each.”
“In five hours?
Do you know how long it takes to set up a meet with a man who has an air-warden?”
“No,” Lucan said.
“Tell me.”
She glared at him.
He looked back at her.
After a long moment, she pulled out her glass eye and started polishing it furiously on her waistcoat.
“There’s a physician,” she said at last, not looking at him.
“Halloran.
Spire-licensed, does house calls in Brassmarket.
Treats the wives and mistresses of men who’d rather the Cathedral didn’t know what they’ve got.
He’s bought from me before.
Laudanum mostly, and the kind of thing you use when a girl’s in trouble and the family wants it quiet.
He’ll pay well for restoratives.
He’ll pay very well for this.” She jammed the eye back in.
“And there’s Madame Orlov, who runs the Silk House on Velvet Row, who has a lot of girls who get hurt by a lot of gentlemen, and who’d sell her own grandmother for something that could fix a broken jaw overnight without a mark.”
“That’s two.”
“The third one,” she said, with great reluctance, “is a man called Pickett.
He’s a fence.
A worse fence than me, if you can imagine that.
He works for people I don’t like.
But he pays in clean coin, and he pays fast, and he doesn’t ask questions.”
“Then that’s three.”
“And if this goes wrong, corpse, they’ll put both of us in the square.”
“It won’t go wrong.”
“Saint’s teeth, I hope you’re right.” She snatched up her shawl from the hook behind the counter.
“Give me the bottles.
And watch my shop.
If anyone tries to sell you a stuffed animal, say no.
I don’t care how good it is.
I’ve got enough.”
He watched the shop for four hours.
Nobody came in.
The clocks ticked.
The stuffed owl in its little hat glared at him from its shelf.
He sat on Ottilie’s stool behind the counter and breathed the Ironmarrow technique with his eyes half-closed, pulling in the thin grey mana of the Tallowgate air.
It was weaker here than in the pit, much weaker, and the progress crawled.
[ Ironmarrow Breathing: Foundation Form — Progress 1.9% ]
He used the time to think.
He thought about the clean-currency rule, and about what it meant.
If the most powerful parts of the Exchequer could only be bought with money that had passed through the real world, then his power wasn’t really limited by the Mint at all.
It was limited by his capacity to launder.
By how much he could buy, sell and move without being caught.
Every channel he built, every fence and front and middleman, was a pipe.
The more pipes he had, and the bigger they were, the faster clean money would flow back to him.
He needed more pipes.
Much bigger ones.
Ottilie was a single narrow pipe in a back lane in Tallowgate.
That would do for now.
It would not do for long.
He thought about the guard, Marsh.
About the way his heels had drummed on the stone.
He thought about Nell Harlow, whom he had never met.
At half past the fourth bell, the cracked little doorbell jangled, and Ottilie came in out of the smog with her shawl over her head and a heavy, clinking canvas bag clutched to her chest.
She was breathing hard.
She went straight past him, into the back, and he followed her.
She dumped the bag on a workbench covered in watch parts.
“Three hundred and sixty,” she said.
“Halloran paid a hundred and forty.
Orlov paid a hundred and thirty and offered to buy me a girl.
Pickett paid ninety, the thieving little leech, and asked where I got it, and I told him I found it in a dead man’s boot, which, if you think about it, is very nearly true.” She sat down heavily on a crate.
“My commission’s out of that already.
Don’t argue.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.” She looked up at him.
Her face was grey.
“Pickett’s going to ask around, corpse.
He’s going to want to know where it came from.
He works for a man named Saul Varney, who runs half the protection in Tallowgate, and Varney’s going to want to know too.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“That’s what worries me.” She pushed herself up.
“The Registry shuts in half an hour.
If you want this done, we go now.”
They made it with eleven minutes to spare.
Ottilie went to the grille.
Lucan stood behind her, a little to one side, with his cap low, playing the part of a nephew or an errand boy.
The clerk was a thin man with a cold in his head who kept sniffing into a grey handkerchief, and he looked at the redemption form and then at Ottilie and then at the bag of coin as if all three of them had personally ruined his day.
“Redemption,” he said.
“Of Harlow, Nell.
Coldwater Mill.
Section Seven.” He sniffed.
“The bond has already been sold, madam.
To a Mr.
Jebediah Gorse.
This morning.”
“I know that.
Section Seven says I can redeem it regardless.
With premiums.”
“Section Seven does say that.” He sounded deeply disappointed about it.
“Very few people read Section Seven.” He began to count the coins, slowly, holding each one up to a brass lens that hung on a chain around his neck.
The lens glowed faintly blue every time it touched a coin, reading the king’s thread inside.
Lucan held his breath every single time.
Every single coin came up clean.
Three hundred and forty-one silver, six copper.
The clerk counted it twice.
Then he took a stamp from a rack, inked it on a pad and brought it down on the redemption form with a heavy, final thunk.
DISCHARGED.
[ LEDGER: Debt owed on behalf of one under the Account Holder’s protection — SETTLED.
]
[ Recognised beneficiary: Nell Harlow.
]
[ RANK REQUIREMENT FULFILLED.
]
The panel flared so brightly that Lucan flinched.
For a horrible second he was sure everyone in the Registry could see it.
Nobody even glanced at him.
[ RANK 1 ACHIEVED.
]
[ Rank Dividend received: ]
▸ Account Holder’s physical constitution reinforced (Rank 1 standard).
▸ ROSTER — UNLOCKED.
(Slots: 2)
▸ MARKET Tier II — UNLOCKED.
(Clean Currency only.)
▸ Spells — UNLOCKED (Tier I).
▸ Passive Skill gained: LEDGER SIGHT.
Before he could read what Ledger Sight was, it hit him.
First the body.
It came from the inside, like the Draught had, but slower and deeper, a slow burn that started in the marrow of his bones and pushed outward.
His muscles clenched and released, clenched and released.
His heart hammered.
He felt his bones grow heavier and denser inside him, felt sinew pulling tighter over them like rope being wound onto a winch.
He grabbed the edge of the counter to stop himself falling, and the wood creaked under his fingers.
Then his eyes.
The hall changed.
Everywhere he looked, above every head, words appeared.
Faint, gold, small as handwriting on the edge of a page, floating in the air above every person in the Registry like the price tags on goods in a shop.
Above the snivelling clerk: Owes: 14 silver (landlady).
2 silver (tailor).
Is owed: nothing.
Above a weeping woman in the queue: Owes: 87 silver (Holloway Loan Society).
1 life, pending (husband).
Above one of the grey-coated Marshals at the end of the hall: Owes: 1,200 silver (gambling — Saul Varney).
Is owed: 3 lives.
Above Ottilie Brask: Owes: 0.
Is owed: 31 favours (uncollected).
1 life (Gorse, Jebediah — her sister, 1871).
Lucan stared at that last one.
“Corpse?” Ottilie had turned to him.
She was frowning.
“You’ve gone white.
You all right?”
“Fine,” he said.
His voice sounded strange to him.
“I’m fine.
Let’s go.”
[ LEDGER SIGHT (Passive) — The Account Holder perceives the debts owed by and to any person within sight: money, favours and blood.
Accuracy increases with Rank.
]
Coldwater Mill was a black brick monster on the bank of the Grise, the sluggish chemical river that ran through the mill quarter.
It was six storeys of soot-stained windows, with a chimney like a finger pointing at the smog, and the noise of it reached them two streets away: the thunder of a thousand power looms, driven by mana-turbines in the cellar, shaking the cobbles under their feet like the heartbeat of some huge animal.
The workers lived in the tenements around it.
They called them the Cradles.
They were long narrow buildings, four storeys tall and one room deep, joined together in rows, with outside staircases of rusted iron zig-zagging up their faces.
There was washing hung between them on lines, grey and limp in the dead air.
There were children everywhere, thin and filthy and silent.
Nell Harlow lived in Cradle Row Six, top floor, room nineteen.
It was ten minutes before sundown when Lucan found it.
The sky above the smog was going a sick, bruised violet.
The mill’s evening whistle had blown, and the workers were streaming home through the lanes, coughing.
Lucan climbed the iron stairs.
He could hear voices above him.
A man’s voice, oily and smooth.
A girl’s voice, hoarse and furious.
“—don’t care what it says, I’m not going anywhere with you, you fat—”
“Language, sweetheart.
Language.
You’ll want to learn some manners now you’re mine.”
Lucan came up onto the top landing.
There were four men in the narrow corridor outside room nineteen.
One was a Debt Marshal in his long grey coat, bored, leaning against the wall, picking his teeth.
Two were big men in cheap brown suits and bowler hats, the kind of men who stood behind other men and made them feel safe.
Above them, Lucan’s new eyes read: Owes: 4 silver (gin).
Is owed: 2 lives.
And: Owes: 19 silver (Varney).
Is owed: 1 life.
The fourth man was Gorse.
He was enormous.
Not tall, but wide, pale and soft and bulging, packed into a mustard-coloured waistcoat whose brass buttons strained to hold it closed over his stomach.
His face was round and pink and damp with sweat, and his lips were small and red and wet.
He had a gold watch-chain stretched across his belly, rings on his fat fingers, and a sheaf of papers in one hand.
Above him, the gold words of Lucan’s sight were crowded so close together they almost overlapped.
Owes: 3,450 silver (various).
Is owed: 41 bonds.
6 lives.
9 lives (pending).
Nine lives pending.
Lucan read it and felt something in his chest go very cold and very quiet.
The door of room nineteen was open.
In the doorway stood a girl.
She was small and skinny, with a pointed chin and a mill-worker’s cropped hair, bright red like Dez’s had been before the bone dust got to it.
She had a bandage around one hand and a black eye that was yellowing at the edges.
She held an iron fire-poker in both fists like a sword.
She had Dez’s eyes.
That was the worst of it.
“You come one step closer,” she told Gorse, “and I’ll take your eye out.”
Gorse laughed, a wet, wheezing laugh.
“Oh, I do like a girl with spirit.
We’ll knock it out of you soon enough.
Marshal, if you’d be so kind?”
The Marshal sighed, pushed himself off the wall and pulled out a pair of iron cuffs.
“Excuse me,” Lucan said.
Everyone turned.
He walked down the corridor toward them, unhurried, with his hands in his coat pockets.
He felt strange.
Calm and light and very heavy at the same time.
His new body moved differently.
Each step felt like it was landing harder than it should.
“Who the devil are you?” said Gorse.
“I’m the one who paid off her bond.” Lucan took the redemption paper out of his pocket and held it up so the Marshal could see the stamp.
DISCHARGED.
“At the Registry.
Two hours ago.
Section Seven.”
The Marshal took the paper.
He read it.
He held it up to the brass lens around his neck, and the lens glowed blue over the official stamp.
“It’s genuine,” he said.
He sounded almost surprised.
He handed it back to Lucan and turned to Gorse.
“Bond’s discharged, Mr.
Gorse.
Redeemed.
You’ll be compensated at the Registry.
Collect it tomorrow.” He put the cuffs back on his belt and yawned.
“That’s me done, then.”
“What?
No.
No!
I paid for her!” Gorse’s face had gone from pink to purple.
“That’s my property!
I bought her this morning!”
“And you’ll get your money back, with the premium.” The Marshal was already walking toward the stairs.
“Section Seven.
Final and not contestable.
Read your statutes, Mr.
Gorse.” He clattered off down the iron steps without looking back.
Gorse stared after him.
Then he turned to Lucan, and his small red mouth twisted.
“You little bastard,” he said softly.
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.
I’ve got friends at the Registry.
Friends in the Concern.
Friends at the Thread Office.” He took a step closer.
“That paper’s just paper, boy.
Accidents happen in the mill quarter.
Girls fall down stairs.
Girls go missing.
Nobody looks very hard.” He jerked his head at his two men.
“Take her.
And break his legs.”
The bigger of the two men grinned and pulled a cosh from his sleeve.
It was a short, leather-wrapped club with lead in the end.
He came at Lucan fast, swinging it at his knee.
Lucan caught his wrist.
He didn’t mean to catch it.
He meant to dodge, the way he would have tried to dodge yesterday.
But his body moved on its own, faster than it had ever moved before, and his hand came up and closed around the man’s thick wrist, and stopped it dead.
They both looked at it.
The man’s eyes went wide.
Lucan squeezed.
Bone crunched under his fingers like a fistful of dry sticks.
The man screamed.
The cosh fell out of his hand and hit the boards, and his hand flopped at the end of his arm at a horrible, impossible angle, and Lucan let go of the wrist and hit him in the throat.
He hit him hard.
Harder than he had ever hit anything in his life.
He felt the man’s windpipe fold in under his knuckles like a tin cup crushed in a fist.
The man went over backwards, choking, clawing at his own neck, his face going dark red, then purple, then a thick, mottled blue.
The second man had pulled a knife.
He was a better fighter than the first.
He didn’t rush.
He came in low, slashing, and Lucan felt the blade open his coat and the shirt beneath and a long, hot line across his ribs.
Lucan drew the work knife from his belt, the one he had bought in the body cavern for eight copper, and stepped inside the man’s next slash and drove the knife up under his jaw.
Seven inches.
All of it.
Up through the soft floor of the mouth, through the tongue, into the roof of the skull.
He felt the point scrape bone.
The man went rigid.
His eyes rolled up white.
Blood poured out of his mouth over Lucan’s hand, warm and thick, and he made a gentle, wondering sound, and folded.
Lucan pulled the knife free.
The man fell.
The first one had stopped kicking.
Lucan turned around.
Gorse was standing against the wall with his mouth open and his little eyes huge.
A dark stain was spreading down the front of his mustard trousers.
Nell Harlow was in her doorway, still holding the poker, staring at Lucan as if he were a ghost.
Lucan walked toward Gorse.
“No,” Gorse whispered.
He pressed himself against the wall.
“No.
Please.
I’ve got money.
I’ve got money.
How much do you want?
How much?”
Lucan looked at the words above his head.
Is owed: 41 bonds.
6 lives.
9 lives (pending).
Nine people.
Nine people, right now, somewhere in the Cradles, owned by this man, who were going to die.
And six already had.
He thought about killing Gorse.
He wanted to.
He wanted to so badly that his hand shook around the knife.
He thought about how easy it would be: three steps, one stroke, the soft white throat opening like a purse.
He thought about the Registry clerk who had stamped the discharge form two hours ago.
He thought about the bored Marshal, who had seen his face.
The Marshal who had seen him standing here, with Gorse, holding the redemption paper, with Ottilie’s name on it.
If Gorse died tonight, the Marshal would remember.
Ottilie’s name would be the first one they looked at.
“You’re going to walk down those stairs,” Lucan said quietly, “and you’re going to go home.
You’re going to tell anyone who asks that your men were drunk and got into a knife fight with each other.
And you’re not going to come near this girl, or this building, or the woman whose name is on that paper, ever again.”
Gorse nodded so hard his chins shook.
“Because if you do,” Lucan said, and leaned close, close enough to smell the piss and the sweat and the cologne on him, “I’ll know.
I’ll know before you know it yourself.
And I’ll come for you in the night, Mr.
Gorse, and I’ll take every single thing you have, one piece at a time, starting with your money and ending with your skin.”
He stepped back.
Gorse ran.
He ran down the iron stairs, his enormous body bouncing off the railings, the whole staircase ringing and shaking under his weight, and he didn’t look back once.
Lucan watched him go.
Then he turned around.
Nell Harlow was still standing in her doorway.
The poker was shaking in her hands.
Her eyes moved from the two dead men on the boards, to the blood on Lucan’s knife, to the cut across his ribs, to his face.
“You’re Lucan,” she said.
Her voice cracked.
“Lucan Marr.
Dez’s friend.
The quiet one.
The one who reads.”
“Yes.”
“They said you were dead.
The Concern posted your name.
They said you both—” She stopped.
Swallowed.
“They said there was an accident.”
“There wasn’t an accident,” Lucan said.
She looked at him for a long time.
Then the poker clattered to the floor, and Nell Harlow sat down very suddenly on her own doorstep, and put her face in her hands, and began to cry.
Lucan stood over her in the dark corridor, with two dead men cooling at his feet and blood drying on his hands, and didn’t know what to do.
After a while, he sat down on the step beside her.
He took the ration card out of his inside pocket, the one with the terrible poem on the back, and put it in her hand.
She looked at it.
She read it.
She made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
“That doesn’t even scan,” she said thickly.
“He said he’d fix it later.”
“He always said that.” She held the card against her chest with both hands.
“He always said that.”
[ ROSTER available.
Slots: 2.
]
[ Clean Currency Balance: 18 Silver, 4 Copper ]
Lucan read the notice and closed it.
That could wait until morning.