The Tally Master

by J. M. Ney-Grimm

  “No. One night’s dose proved adequate. The order’s been canceled. Tell Rainar so, please,” instructed Piar.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The assistant stepped back through the doorway, and Gael heard him murmuring to someone else in the hallway, his voice growing fainter as they moved away. “The castellanum doesn’t want it anymore. Cancelled his order.”

  Gael frowned. Theron had ordered a sleeping draught? How distinctly odd. The castellanum was autocratic, patronizing, jealous of his privilege, and patrician in his refinement, but never anxious. The idea of him suffering insomnia was . . . ludicrous.

  Piar reached for a small stone jar and a narrow bronze spatula resting on the sideboard. With a swift, light touch he spread ointment on Hew’s burn, and began wrapping it with linen bandage. “How did this happen?” he asked.

  Hew fumbled in his sash with his uninjured hand and drew out . . . a nugget of tin.

  Gael choked. Cayim’s hells! Was everyone stealing his tin? Even the sweeps?

  Hew’s face fell. “Oh,” he wailed. “It was so pretty! Like a falling star, all bright and shining! I tried to catch it, and I did.” He stared, heartbroken, at the lump of silvery gray metal in his hand.

  Gael was beginning to understand. “Had you never swept the smithies before?” he asked.

  Hew shook his head. “Samo said I done such a good job on the stairs, I could. As a reward! And then I saw such pretty stars, wasted on the floor. I saved one! But it’s gone dull!” His mouth trembled.

  Gael stifled the hilarity that rose through his weariness. “Hew, the metal glows when it is very hot. It’s beautiful, but you cannot touch it then without serious injury. Do you understand? The brightness fades as the metal cools.”

  Hew handed the lump of tin to Gael. “I didn’t know,” he said humbly. “I thought it was a star, and stars belong to everyone who can see, don’t they? But metal belongs to you.” He ducked his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Gael accepted the tin and sighed. “You’re a good boy, Hew.”

  Hew’s face brightened. “I am?”

  “You are. You don’t steal. And you’ll know not to touch hot metal the next time you sweep the smithies, won’t you.”

  Hew brightened still more. “I’ll sweep the smithies again? I’ll see the stars of hot metal?”

  “I’ll request you especially,” Gael promised. “When you’ve healed. You cannot push a broom until your hand is well.”

  Hew looked at his bandages in surprise as Piar rearranged the sling, slipping it back under the boy’s arm and hand.

  “I’ll keep him here overnight,” said Piar. “Samo gives you your work?” he asked Hew.

  Hew nodded, still scrutinizing his bandages.

  Piar smiled his quick, tight smile, looking at Gael. “I’ll send word to Samo of what’s happened, so the boy does not get in trouble.”

  The physician rose. “I think you’re done here, Secretarius.”

  Indeed.

  He now knew that Theron needed to give a better briefing to the scullions who cleaned the smithies. He knew Hew to be honest. And he knew he must seek his thief elsewhere.

  Which was probably just as well. How could Belzetarn prosper, if even its lowliest denizens proved untrustworthy?

  On the other hand . . . if the lowly were innocent, then the guilty one lived among the powerful.

  * * *

  Keir was absent from the tally chamber.

  Gael grimaced. He’d lost count of the times he’d climbed the tower’s stairs today, but his ankles had registered every last riser and both of them ached, not just the one more prone to it.

  This trip from the yard, he’d followed the route taken by the oxhide ingots and the tin pebbles, when they arrived at Belzetarn from the mines: first the straight shot through the kitchen annex tunnel, then two-and-a-half twists up the Charcoal Stair to the place of arms behind the melee gallery, then ten twists up the Lake Stair. There he’d left the oxhide route, crossing the lower great hall to the Regenen Stair and its landing where the door to the tally chamber stood, closed and locked, as was proper when the chamber went unoccupied.

  Gael could wish he’d occupied that tally chamber a good deal more today than he had. Although . . . he supposed he’d sat before his desk all the morning as usual. It was just the afternoon that had evaporated in traipsing up, and down, and then up again. And, and, and. He snorted.

  And now he faced a climb of another ten spirals around the newel post of the Regenen Stair, for he knew where Keir was. The evening check-in had gone long, and Keir was still in the vaults marking the finished and partially finished swords in, marking the armor scales and the completed armor hauberks in, marking the ingots in, and weighing the metal remnants in.

  Keir should have been done by now. Or had Gael forgotten how much longer the process took with one, not two, getting it done?

  C’mon, old troll, he told himself, Carbraes probably takes an extra lap at day’s end, up and down the Regenen Stair one more time whenever he thinks he’s not gotten sufficient exercise.

  But Carbraes performed a daily ration of handstand push-ups.

  And I’m not Carbraes.

  But he did need to learn how Keir’s first solo had gone and whether the tin discrepancy had given any sign of increasing – or diminishing. Which meant he’d best start climbing.

  He took it slow and found Keir locking the individual coffers in the tin vault, frowning the while.

  The boy looked up from his task as Gael arrived. “Martell is late,” he said, irritation in his voice.

  Gael’s own brows drew down. “He’s yet in his smithy?”

  Keir shrugged. “Apparently so.”

  Now that was strange. Martell was always the last of the smiths to check in his materials at the end of the day, but even Martell was not this late. There had been too many departures from usual lately. The question was: which anomalies stemmed from the theft of Gael’s tin and bronze, and which from mere chance?

  “Shall I lock the vault door?” Keir asked. “Or did you wish to await me here?”

  “Where –?” Gael directed a questioning glance at his notary.

  Keir’s jaw muscles bunched. Grinding his teeth? “I’m going to fetch Martell. And when I get him – I’m going to have some words with him.”

  “Ah,” said Gael. “I believe I shall have words with Martell, but you may certainly add your words to mine.” He smiled, tightly, like Medicus Piar. “But I’ll fetch him up for you.”

  “But sir!” Keir forgot his exasperation in surprise. “I’m the one who does the running, not you!”

  Gael’s smile grew more genuine. “But you are doing my tallying for me. I’ll go.”

  Keir was still protesting as Gael headed to the Lake Stair, which debouched nearer the privy smithy than did the Regenen Stair. Some part of Gael joined Keir’s protest. Was he really making another full descent to the tower’s roots, followed by a full ascent back up to the ingot vaults?

  His ankle answered that question, unhappily. Yes. Yes, he was. Cayim’s hells!

  Traffic on the stair was heavy: servers readying all three great halls for the evening feast, officers headed for the war room to give a last report to the march, artisans making for their quarters to tidy themselves before eating. Gael even noted a hunter – in his leather boots and breeches, game bag hanging from the strap across his back – leaving the stairwell for the lower great hall.

  Really? A hunter? What was he doing away from the hunters’ lodge?

  He was a healthy fellow, almost untouched by troll-disease. His ears and nose looked human, and his skin was firm, with a good color. He didn’t look like a troll at all, but of course he was one. Carbraes insisted that every newcomer be checked.

  What was a hunter doing in the tower proper at this time of the evening?

  Then Gael remembered that Barris had mentioned the castellanum was scattering favors more generously than usual. That must be it. This hunter was being rewarded with
a meal in the lowest of the great halls for some praiseworthy deed. Supplying Theron with a superlatively tender haunch of oxen or some such thing.

  Gael shrugged.

  If he didn’t hoist Martell out of his smithy with dispatch, neither the secretarius nor the privy smith would have time to visit their respective chambers before sitting at table. Hadn’t Barris said that Martell was bidden to dine in the upper great hall? Or was that honor granted him the previous evening? If it was tonight, he absolutely had to change his sooty smith’s garb for more fitting garments.

  As Gael paused on a landing between the main place of arms and the entrance place of arms, letting an urgent posse of messengers have the right of way, Martell, his notary, and his scullions rounded the newel post from below.

  The smith spotted Gael immediately.

  “Ah, ha! My friend, look at this!” Martell exclaimed.

  Gael was in no mood to admire another product of Martell’s genius, but the smith did not seize the stem of the candelabrum poking out of one scullion’s sack. Instead he grabbed the rolled parchment carried by his notary, allowed it to unroll, and brandished it under Gael’s nose.

  “All of it!” announced Martell. “Every last ounce! Every last tally! All of it is written!”

  “Good.” It meant nothing. Martell always had confidence in his notary’s records, no matter how the smith hurried him and no matter how many times those tallies proved wrong. “But you are very late, my friend.” Gael would reserve his more serious reprimand for a private moment. Or . . . better yet . . . allow Keir to deliver the one he longed to. Perhaps Martell would respond well to Keir’s less genial manner. “All the other smiths are long gone, and Keir awaits.”

  “Ah, ha! My friend, I know it! But you would not have me forego the castellanum’s candelabra?”

  Gaelan’s tears! Was Martell going to drag it out after all?

  “Or the decorative hooks for the opteon of the annex? Or the rivets for the magus?”

  Gael knit his brows. “How many more things did you create after I spoke with you, my friend? I thought there remained but one.”

  “Ah, I forgot.” Martell looked crestfallen for only a moment, then brightened. “But I completed all, all! And they are beautiful! The castellanum will be pleased!”

  “If you dine with the castellanum tonight, you’d best hasten, my friend.”

  Martell looked surprised. “But, no, he honors me but the once. Last night contents me! The ordinary great hall –” he glanced sideways uneasily “– is more comfortable. And the castellanum pours too much wine. Again and again he filled my cup.”

  Gael hid the smile that wanted to sneak onto his lips. No matter how irritated he might grow with Martell’s lack of organization, the smith’s ebullience made Gael want to laugh. No doubt Martell preferred his cronies – who admired him – for dinner partners over the elite of the citadel. Martell repressed his boasting in the presence of the castellanum.

  “Don’t keep Keir waiting any longer,” he advised, stepping toward the upward stairs and gesturing Martell to come with him. If he allowed the smith to determine when their conversation ended, they might stand here yet at midnight. And then Keir would be as irritated with Gael as he was with Martell.

  Gael suppressed a second smile.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  In the cramped corridor outside the tin vault, Keir met them with pressed lips and a disgusted expression, but declined to give Martell the promised scolding. The scullions with the finished implements had peeled off toward kitchen storerooms and the stewards’ closet. Martell’s notary turned over his tally parchments to Gael, while Martell himself had only a few nuggets of leftover bronze, a failed bronze ladle, and a failed pair of scissors to hand in.

  Keir frowned, padlocking the tin vault’s door. “No tin nuggets?” he queried.

  “Today was all bronze,” answered Martell breezily. “Tomorrow I try the tin ornaments I plan for the edge of the regenen’s cape. I must start early, very early, to have time enough for such flourishes.”

  Keir’s frown deepened. “Then shouldn’t you have a tin ingot left over?”

  Gael was wondering the same thing.

  Martell looked surprised. “I thought I did!” He rummaged in his sack, came up empty, scratched his head, then held up a finger. “Ha, ha! I have it! Foolish Martell! I made tin-lined sauce pots demanded by cook.”

  Gael’s shoulders relaxed. Martell might be foolish – was foolish – but Gael was equally so, if he thought he could solve the mystery of his missing metals from anything Martell said. He’d need to go through his usual process of reconciling the tally sheets from the smithies with those of the tally chamber from this morning’s check-out. And that would have to be done tomorrow. Also as usual.

  He’d hoped to get a quick look for discrepancies tonight, but Martell’s tardiness and his own appointment with Arnoll later in the evening meant it would have to wait.

  Keir unlocked the bronze vault, right next door to the tin vault. The space occupied by Belzetarn’s bronze stores was equally constricted, but considerably more congested. A ledge along one wall held the coffers of bronze ingots and a balance. Bins for the broken swords and other weapons retrieved from the battlefields, as well as items that failed in their forging, lined the opposite wall, making the narrow aisle leading to the horn-paned window casement even narrower.

  As Keir placed the privy smithy’s bronze remnants on the balance, Martell seized the scissors and brandished them under Gael’s nose, angrily.

  “Look at these! The tracery of deer in the forest, so lovely! The warm sheen of the bronze, beautifully brushed in finish! But the metal failed to penetrate the mold fully!” Martell actually gnashed his teeth.

  Gael took the scissors from the smith before he could do something extreme.

  They possessed the usual design, two blades sharpened on one edge only and connected by a curving strap of bronze that acted as a spring. The mold for them had pour vents at the tip of each blade, funneling the molten metal down through the blade area to the spring strap at the very bottom.

  In these scissors, the metal had failed to fill the spring strap completely, resulting in a circular occlusion right at the stress point.

  Gael turned them over in his hands. The work was beautiful. He could understand Martell’s annoyance, but –

  Gael’s brows knit, and he squeezed by both Martell and Keir to get into the dim light filtering through the window’s horn panes. He wrenched the casement open. The sun was on the opposite side of the tower and getting lower in the sky, but a good deal more light flooded through the unobstructed opening, along with a slight breeze and the scent of water off the lake.

  Gael studied the bronze of the scissors, with its extraordinarily warm hue.

  He turned abruptly.

  “Surely the bronze in these scissors has fewer parts of tin than even you use, Martell?”

  “Sometimes I forge in pure tin.” Martell sounded impressed with himself. “Sometimes I forge in pure copper.”

  “But today, aside from the cooks’ tin-lined pots, you forged in bronze only.” Gael held the scissors out for Martell to look at them. “Surely this is a one-to-nineteen ratio bronze.”

  Martell’s eyes widened. “You are right, my friend, you are right.” He tapped the flat of one blade edge, obtaining a dull ting from the metal. “I use but half the tin ingot for the lined sauce pans, which means this bronze should be one-to-twelve. Which it is not! Of course the pour went wrong!”

  The smith brightened and his chest puffed out. “Ha ha! Am I not magnificent! The pour went right in all the rest! Even with barely any tin to calm viscosity!”

  Martell’s excitement turned to bewilderment. “But Keir makes no mistake when he doles out copper and tin for Martell. And Martell makes no mistake when he compound his bronze. Wherefore does Martell’s one-twelve bronze transform to one-nineteen?”

  Gael sighed. “That, I mean to find out.”

/>   This could be his missing metals, right here in Martell’s apparently missing tin. According to the smith’s account, after he’d used half the ingot of tin to line the sauce pans, he’d melted one-and-a-half ingots of tin with eighteen ingots of copper to create his bronze. One-and-one-half to eighteen equaled three to thirty-six, which simplified into one to twelve.

  Something had gone wrong, resulting in a bronze with one tin ingot and nineteen copper ingots. Or maybe even less tin than that.

  Possibly someone had stolen tin right out of Martell’s smithy.

  Possibly, but Gael didn’t think so. Probably Martell’s disorganization would just make it harder for Gael to pin down the real theft. Unfortunately.

  Gael gestured for Martell to hand the scissors to a very thoughtful-looking Keir. Keir weighed them along with the ladle and the nuggets. Gael marked the tally of ounces on Keir’s parchments.

  Gael sent Martell toward his dinner, while Keir locked the bronze vault’s door.

  * * *

  Dimness cloaked the tally chamber in the early eventide, its cabinets looming like forest menhirs in a shadowed dell, the gloom emphasized by the brightness of the air outside the glass casements.

  Gael tucked the tally parchments in their proper niche and then hooked the inner shutters open, allowing a little more light to enter. Turning, he noted that Keir lingered at his own desk rather than sequestering the coffer keys in the box beside Gael’s desk where they belonged.

  “Gael?” The boy stared at his feet, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain.

  Gael leaned against the casement sill, studying his notary. What ailed the lad?

  Keir straightened abruptly, his face troubled. “Do you ever wonder what you’re doing here? What we’re doing here? In Belzetarn?”

  Gael’s brows tightened. “What do you mean?” He kept his tone noncommittal. Perhaps Keir would elaborate.

  Keir swallowed. “It’s just that . . . all my life I was taught to hate and fear trolls. And I still hate them. Sometimes. A lot of times. My stomach feels sick with it. Especially when a bunch are gathered together in a mob. Even though I am a troll, I feel it. And I feel . . . divided. Like I’m betraying my people, the people of Fiors, just by being here. By helping Carbraes.”