Page 119 of The Sun He Buried

“I’ve just paid six riders. It would be wasteful not to.”

That is not an answer.

It is very much an answer.

Baldr covers my hand and tells me he has it. He means to make the problem lighter for me.

Eirik found the weakest part, made me fix it, and will send the first load when the count closes.

Breakfast still happened. Listening doesn’t erase it.

It does make him harder to arrange inside my head.

Asta studies the three wagons.

I know she’s not studying the wagons.

Ketill opens the top ledger on a standing desk. “If we’re changing the release record, we should test the columns against the last eastern run.”

A clerk brings two boards and a folded receipt.

Mine count. Upper-gate count. Pass count.

The first two agree.

The third is eight bars short.

“There,” I say.

Ketill checks the date. “This was copied before the rear wagon cleared the pass scale. The final receipt is probably in the delayed packet.”

“Clerical lag?” Asta asks.

“Usually.”

Eirik takes the folded receipt.

His purple eye moves across it once.

Then he tucks it inside his coat. “Find the final.”

Ketill closes the ledger. “I had planned to embroider it.”

“After you find it.”

The moment ends.

Clerks return to the scales. A guard carries a new stack of seals from the smithy. Ketill starts giving names to the three crews.

Nobody says theft.

I turn to find Snowpetal.

She’s not beside the scale.

She’s not under the wagon.

She’s not attacking the pine branch she abandoned near the fence.