The Tally Master

by J. M. Ney-Grimm

  The smile in Heiroc’s eyes traveled to his lips. “Morza loves you nearly as much as she loves me,” he said.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  Gael slipped away from Belzetarn’s main hall via the Lake Stair, the one most easily reached from his end of the high table. Night had fallen at last, and the torches illuminating the stairwell flared, casting golden light on the stone walls and making the embrasures of the arrowslits into seeming caves. Coolness poured through their dark openings, carrying the pure freshness of the night air.

  Gael paused at the last embrasure before he had to exit the stairwell and cross the lower great hall via the curving balcony that led to his chambers. After the noise and brightness and smells of feasting, the solitude of the night called him.

  He took the awkward step up to the embrasure’s floor and moved to the arrowslit at its far end. Leaning his elbows on the deep sill, he looked out.

  The moon waning deichtain had just started today, so the moon shone large in the night sky, a gibbous lantern shedding silvery light across the landscape below. He could hear the lake lapping at the base of the cliff on which Belzetarn stood. Dark water spread toward the horizon and the silhouette of the mountains there, a wake of moonlight shivering across the broad expanse, pointing east.

  The trolls who fished the lake drowned sometimes. Belzetarn’s hunters took their hounds when they chased dangerous game, but the fishers had no dogs to help them, unlike the fisherfolk of Hadorgol.

  In Hadorgol’s rivers and bays, landseers brought fishing nets to shore, towed small dinghies, retrieved waterfowl for duck hunters, and rescued children who fell in the water or men tossed from capsized boats.

  The king’s landseer, Morza, had rescued Gael in more ways than one.

  The six guardsmen who had accompanied him to Hadorgol’s border carried his gear, steadied his faltering steps, cooked meals, and procured shelter so long as they were with him, but they departed all too soon. Without Morza, he would have perished. She carried his gear then, in a pack attached to a special harness. She guided him through the trackless wilderness. She hunted hares for his sustenance. And she lay close to him when he fell, keeping him warm in the cooling weather.

  A lump rose in his throat when he thought of her: great hearted and generous, patient, steadfast.

  Her sagacity preserved his afflicted body, but her love – dog-love though it was – preserved his soul. When he’d buried his face in his hands, despairing, she nudged her cold nose against his wrist until he looked up. When he stopped walking, wondering if there were any point to going on, she barked until he stepped forward again. And as summer changed to autumn, when he failed to build a fire in his evening’s camp, she fetched wood and stood over him until he arranged the sticks and lit them with his flint.

  Through the long nights, she pillowed her head on his chest, where his searching hands could stroke her ears when he felt most alone. He was not alone – because of Morza.

  On her last night, Morza met an ice panther’s charge, slowing it just enough for Gael to loose a bolt of energea before it reached him.

  The beast fled snarling into the darkness, confused and defeated.

  Morza bled to death in the snow, her noble head cradled in Gael’s arms. He’d wept then. Never had he wept for his truldemagar. Nor for Damalis’ dismissal. Not even for his king’s banishment.

  But for Morza, Gael had cried.

  A clatter on the stairs recalled him. Reluctantly, he returned to the stairwell, passed down the last steps to the landing, and exited onto the balcony above the lower great hall. Below him, scullions were carrying the table boards to adjacent storerooms, while others noisily stacked the trestles against the walls.

  Gael hurried to his chambers, quickly changed into the scruffy knee-length tunic and trews he reserved for dirty work – a rarity – and hastened down the Regenen Stair toward the smithies.

  Arnoll was no doubt wondering what was taking Gael so long.

  Just as Gael wondered what mystery Arnoll sought Gael’s opinion on.

  * * *

  The Regenen Stair was a good deal busier than the Lake Stair. It provided the most direct route between all three great halls – stacked above one another – and the kitchens. Scullions carrying leather bottles to the bottle scullery jostled scullions toting drinking horns to the horn scullery. Porters bearing broad laving basins sped past their slower brethren burdened by heavy bench cushions.

  Gael had intended to descend via the Cliff Stair, which debouched directly into the armor smithy, but habit had directed him onto the more familiar route. He steadied a messenger boy who, tripping on a porter’s heel, threatened to tumble headfirst through a bunch of his ascending fellows.

  “Thanks!” gasped the boy, dashing onward.

  Gael chuckled.

  The messenger boys of Belzetarn were just like the page boys of Hadorgol – eager to get where they were going, equally eager to leave once they arrived. It made no difference, at their young age, whether they suffered the truldemagar or not. Later, the disease would slow the afflicted ones, but not now.

  Was exile really the right choice for dealing with trolls? They were no different from men . . . until they were. That was the difficulty: knowing when the madness would claim them. And when it did, all too often, they used the dangerous energea – acrid orange – to lay waste to their surroundings. A rare few hid their insanity, doing more subtle damage for a longer interval. Neither outcome – explosive destruction or subtle corrosion – yielded anything good.

  There was no good answer. But Gael could not help wondering how his life might have gone, if Heiroc had chosen to keep his magus by his side in some other capacity. Gael had bent all of his intelligence and loyalty to Carbraes’ service for the last seven years. How if he had given it to Heiroc instead, to the benefit of humans, not trolls?

  Gael shook his head. He’d thought down this road so many times before, and he knew its turnings too well. Heiroc had possessed no other real options for the disposal of his friend and magus, afflicted as he was by the truldemagar.

  But Gael wished his king might at least have allowed Gael the grace of claiming the necessary exile, instead of thrusting it upon him.

  No. That wasn’t true. Heiroc had been generous. Heiroc had thrust nothing upon him save his beloved landseer Morza. It was Damalis who’d leapt to repudiate Gael.

  And, yet, what choice had she possessed? At least she’d been honest.

  Gael wanted to blame her. To blame Heiroc. But his own reason prevented him. Thousands of trolls had been exiled before ever Gael was born, and thousands more would be exiled after his death. How should Heiroc – or Damalis – solve this desperate riddle of the ages?

  The footsteps on the Regenen Stair – slow tramping mingled with swift rushing, irregular punctuated by steady – and the warning shouts – “Look out!” – faded rapidly as Gael took the tunnel from the stairwell toward the forges. The light faded with equal thoroughness.

  The torches in the tunnel had been doused.

  Gael suppressed a curse. Had he simply followed the same routine for so long that he’d forgotten how to operate when he did something different? He’d meant to take the Cliff Stair, not the Regenen. He’d meant to bring a tallow dip, expecting the smithies to be dark, and had not brought it.

  Standing in the archway at the back of the blade smithy, he strained to see.

  Was that a glimmer of light on the far side of the forges that clustered around the central flue?

  He squinted. His eyes adjusted. And – yes – someone in the armor smithy – no doubt Arnoll – had remembered the need for lighting at this hour.

  Gael stepped forward cautiously into the gloom. If he felt before him, he should be able to maneuver around the work counters in the blade smithy, the tool racks in the tin smeltery, and the anvils in the annealing smithy without more than a stubbed toe or a barked shin.

  His eyes adjusted further as he moved forward, and the glow
from the armor smithy strengthened.

  Reaching the low wall on the far side of the annealing smithy, he paused.

  Arnoll settled one haunch on a tall stool, his burly shoulders casting a large shadow. Two tallow dips flickered on the work counter beside him, lighting his face from below, accentuating the deformed curve of his troll nose and casting his eyes into darkness. The smith looked . . . evil.

  He studied the object he held in his right hand.

  An ingot of tin.

  * * *

  Gael stared in shock.

  Arnoll! Arnoll was the thief?

  It was impossible. If any troll within Belzetarn could claim integrity, it was Arnoll. He told no lies. He avoided pretense and poses. He befriended those in need. He’d befriended Gael for no reason Gael could see, those seven years ago. He defended those who needed defense. He’d defended Gael.

  Gael’s thief absolutely could not be Arnoll.

  And yet, there Arnoll sat, examining an ingot of tin that he should not possess.

  Gael’s feet felt glued to the stone floor, while his heart hammered.

  He wanted to turn around, to retrace his steps – through time, as well as space – to go back to the moment before this one. To return to his chambers and not leave them. To avoid this instant of discovery altogether. To never see Arnoll holding the tin ingot. To not lose one more friend. To not be betrayed.

  Gael stepped forward.

  Arnoll looked up. His curly hair, iron gray, emerged from shadow, and his face lightened, losing the demonic aspect conferred by his frown and the lighting. He held the tin ingot out to Gael. “Look at this,” he directed matter-of-factly. “What do you make of it?”

  Gael’s heartbeat slowed, and he tamped down his consternation. Of course there would be a reasonable explanation. Arnoll was exactly as he presented himself: trustworthy, solid, steadfast. Gael was a fool to even consider otherwise.

  He took the ingot in his hand and immediately knew why Arnoll had perceived something amiss with it.

  The flat rim, roughly two fingers in width, lay cool and smooth against Gael’s palm, filling it. The hollow pyramid rose at the normal angle from the rim, a dull and silvery gray, not yet darkened from its fresh forging to the blacker hue of old tin. The flat top was properly square. The ingot looked entirely normal, and it possessed the correct heft, neither too light nor too heavy.

  But the metal was too thin.

  Not by a lot. Not enough for an inexperienced troll to notice, perhaps. But to a smith or to one who tallied metals, it was significant. Belzetarn’s ingots of copper, tin, and bronze all weighed the same – one pound – and possessed identical width, length, and height. But the thickness of the sheet forming the ‘hat’ shape of the ingots varied. Dense copper was thinnest. Bronze, just a hair thicker. And tin – light and rare – was thickest of all.

  This tin ingot possessed the thickness of a copper ingot. And Gael wanted to know why.

  “Did someone use the wrong mold?” he asked, without really thinking.

  “That would be the preferable explanation,” said Arnoll, his voice taking a sardonic tone. “But, no.”

  Arnoll knew something Gael didn’t, evidently.

  “What is it?” asked Gael.

  “Look at it with your inner sight,” said Arnoll.

  Gael’s calming pulse quickened again. Anything in Belzetarn involving energea posed the potential for unwanted complication. Gael especially wanted no complications in the smithies or, by extension, in his tally room. But complications were almost guaranteed, once he’d discerned the thefts of tin and bronze. He was awash in complications.

  With almost as little preparation as the physician he’d observed in the afternoon, Gael closed his eyes and opened his inner gaze.

  As he expected, a lattice of energea, criss-crossing to form diamond shapes, vibrated within the metal. But the diamonds were smaller, more closely packed than those of tin, while their vibration was less rapid than it should be. Small flickers of green shimmered within the lattice.

  Someone had used energea to tamper with this ingot.

  Gael compressed his lips. How dare anyone defile his tin. He reached for power within his heart node, guiding silver sparks along his arcs, and pushing them through the ingot, where they caught the green flickers and drew them out of the metal.

  Arnoll cursed. “Cayim’s hells!”

  Gael closed his inner gaze and opened his eyes.

  The ingot resting in his palm now looked like what it was: an ingot of copper, warm-hued and shiny.

  “Gaelan’s tears,” said Gael blankly.

  He set the ingot down on the counter.

  “Do you have any idea who might have done this?” asked Arnoll.

  “No,” said Gael, even more blankly. He could imagine all sorts of reasons that someone might steal tin. It was valuable. But why in the north would anyone want to make an ingot of copper look like an ingot of tin? Something very strange was happening amongst Belzetarn’s metal stores.

  “Neither have I,” said Arnoll. “Which was why – I did steal this ingot, Gael. And I hadn’t planned to tell you.” The smith grimaced and gestured at the ingot. “But you needed to know this.”

  Gael’s teeth set hard. “Why?” His tone held an equally hard edge.

  Arnoll did not mistake the direction of Gael’s question. The smith’s gaze fell, not in shame – because his face was just as set as Gael knew his own must be – but in some other uncomfortable realization.

  Gael swallowed. What distressing revelation would come next in this string of bad to worse?

  Arnoll looked up. “This is not my secret. Which was why I planned to keep you unknowing of it. But in the circumstances” – he nodded at the copper ingot – “you need to not have my theft mixed in with whatever else is going on.”

  Arnoll settled more securely on his tall stool.

  Gael glanced around, saw a stool around the counter’s corner, and snagged it to sit himself. If Arnoll was going to confess to stealing . . . Gael needed to be seated. This would not be pleasant hearing.

  Arnoll nodded, grimly, and began. “The march sponsored me in Belzetarn thirty years ago. He was not the march then, of course, just one of the opteons. One of the better ones.” Arnoll’s lips straightened. “Ylian would have executed me else.”

  “You?” Gael couldn’t imagine any regenen ordering Arnoll’s death.

  “I held the same standard you did when you arrived here. I would not betray the unafflicted.”

  “Dreas convinced you otherwise?” Gael knew that currently Arnoll believed trolls deserved protecting – thus his peace as armor smith – even while he also held that men deserved better than war with the troll horde. Gael could not slice his own loyalties so finely, but he understood Arnoll’s point of view.

  “No,” answered the smith. “Dreas promised to secure me a post in which I would do no direct harm to Belzetarn’s enemies.” Arnoll sighed. “He kept that promise, not only at the beginning, but through the years.”

  Gael could see where this led. “You owe him.”

  “I owe him,” agreed Arnoll.

  “But why tin? You thought it was tin, didn’t you?”

  “The march’s troll-disease is advancing,” said Arnoll.

  Gael’s belly felt abruptly cold. The truldemagar did advance. That was its nature. And in a citadel of trolls, there would always be a troll in whom it had advanced too far. But one didn’t like learning of it. And one especially didn’t like learning of it in a troll so key as the march.

  “Seriously so?” asked Gael. “Requiring an end?”

  “Not yet,” said Arnoll. “But Dreas sees his end, more clearly than before. And he wants to delay it. Not for himself, he says, but for Carbraes. Carbraes needs him. He says.”

  Gael understood that. Carbraes and Dreas had held one another’s backs for decades. Dreas would not trust another to do so as faithfully as himself. But death waited on no one’s will, and the truldemagar le
ss so than many hardships. How did Dreas think he could delay it?

  “The march plans to follow Fuwan’s path,” continued Arnoll.

  Gael’s cold belly grew colder yet.

  Fuwan had been Belzetarn’s magus before Nathiar. Nathiar was already installed as magus when Gael arrived, but Gael had heard the stories. Fuwan was the oldest magus the citadel had ever possessed, and his body had shown it: spine so curled he could not stand straight, but craned his neck upward from his half-bent stance; ears so enlarged that the lobes brushed his shoulders; skin and eyes so yellowed he should have been too sick to climb out of bed.

  Despite his physical deformities, Fuwan’s mind stayed clear and sound, most unusually so. But when his madness came, it came suddenly and thoroughly. One of Belzetarn’s outposts was a slagged heap of stone, melted by Fuwan’s potent and destructive energea in his death throes.

  “There’s a way to follow Fuwan?” Gael demanded. “Why would Dreas want such an end? Why would you help him to such an end? Slaying hundreds of trolls – many of them young boys, no doubt – in his final conflagration? Arnoll –”

  Arnoll gripped Gael’s forearm. “Hear me out,” he said.

  Gael settled back, nodded.

  “Dreas found Fuwan’s notes, which included his predecessor’s researches,” Arnoll explained. “Small amounts of tin ingested daily retard the truldemagar madness, but bring it on more violently when at last it comes. Dreas – eating powdered tin every morning, when he broke his fast – would outlast Carbraes. There would be no final conflagration for Dreas. Once Carbraes was gone” – Arnoll drew the edge of his hand across his throat, mimicking a knife on tender flesh – “Dreas would depart as well. By his own hand.”

  Gael felt sick. The more he delved into the arrears in his tallies, the uglier it got. He could see where Arnoll’s story was going.

  Gael spoke his thoughts aloud. “If Carbraes knew the march’s intention, he would forbid it. I can hear him now: ‘No troll knows the ultimate path of his disease. Let us take our chances, old friend, and live it as it comes.’ And while Dreas is willing to act against his regenen’s probable wishes, he’s not willing to disregard his expressed request.”