The rates came up in the air over the counter and they were not a list.
They were a column, and the column kept going after the top of it went out of sight above the mezzanine rail, and the part Dain could read went like this:
[ POSTED RATES — CONVERSION TO CREDIT ] [ SWORD, ARMING, HARTH PATTERN, SERVICEABLE — 1 ] [ BOOTS, LEATHER, WORN — 2 ] [ BELT KNIFE — 1 ] [ SURCOAT, SILVERED COMPANY, BLOODED — 0 ] [ TOOTH, HUMAN, YOUR OWN — 0 ] [ JAR, HONEY, SEALED — 30 ]
“Honey,” Dain said.
“Don’t start.”
“A jar of honey is worth thirty credits and my sword is worth one.”
“I know.”
“I have carried that sword for nineteen years.”
“I know, Dain.”
[ Rates are posted.
Rates are not discussed.
]
Dain put both hands on the counter and read down the column, and Rurik watched him do it and had the specific unpleasant feeling of a man watching a customer find a price he is going to be upset about.
Dain stopped reading.
Rurik followed his eyes.
[ BADGE, COMPANY, STRUCK SILVER, BEARER DECEASED — 61 ]
Neither of them said anything.
Up on the third floor a shelf light was buzzing, and Rurik had been meaning to get to it since February.
Dain reached up to his collar.
“No,” Rurik said.
“Sixty-one.”
“I said no.”
“You do not get to say no. This story is hosted at g.com.
It is mine and it is on your list and I can read the number—”
“It’s not on my list.
It’s on its list.” Rurik came around the counter.
“I didn’t write that.
I didn’t set that.
I found out what a half-crown was worth about an hour ago, same as you.”
“Then take the badge.”
“No.”
“Why.”
And this was the part Rurik had trouble explaining afterward, including to himself, because the honest answer was that he had sixteen hundred books upstairs and no customers and a bill coming in a month and he was standing in front of the first human being who had ever walked into his store and wanted something, and every business instinct he had ever developed was standing up and screaming the number sixty-one.
“Because you’d be selling me your unit,” he said.
Dain’s hand stayed at his collar.
“I’ve got a policy,” Rurik said.
“I’ve had it since I opened, it’s on the card by the register, you can read it.
Nobody’s turned away for money.”
“That is a stupid policy.”
“It is a catastrophically stupid policy.” Rurik got the ledger out from under the counter, the paper one, the one he’d bought in a moment of optimism and used twice.
He opened it to the first page and wrote DAIN VERROW and underlined it.
“It’s also why I’m about to be the only man in Harth running a tab.”
“A what.”
“You take the book.
You pay me later.
If you can.” He turned the ledger around so Dain could see his own name sitting on the page.
“That’s it.
That’s the whole thing.” Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Dain looked at his name for a while.
“You do not know me.”
“You’re the only customer I’ve got.”
[ Query fee waived on that exchange.
]
Rurik looked up.
“Why?”
[ … ] [ -1 credit.
]
“There it is.”
Volume two came off the shelf and went under Dain’s good arm, and at the door he stopped, because Mira was standing there in her crooked name tag with her hands behind her back.
“Who taught you to hold a bad line,” she said.
Dain went still.
“That is a strange question.”
“It is the one I have.”
“Captain Ilvar Sund.” He said it flatly, the way men say a name they have already had to say several times that day.
“Twenty-two years.
He drilled us to break slow.
He used to say a company that breaks fast is a company that dies twice.”
“Where is he now.”
“He was in the granary.”
Mira did not say anything to that.
She reached past him, and opened the door, and held it.