The Charcoal Stair, buried within the wall between the tower and the kitchen annex, was one of the darkest passages in Belzetarn. No arrowslits brought light and air to the narrow well. It could as easily have been a mine shaft delving deep into the earth as an ascent from the cellars to a dortoire tucked under the annex roof. Flaring torches illumined its tightly twisting steps and knobbly newel post. Gael knew that Keir avoided it, misliking its claustrophobic confines. It was true that when one descended, if one met a troll going up, it was a tight squeeze to pass one another.

But Gael was headed to the artisans’ yard to meet the mine teamsters, and the Charcoal Stair provided the shortest route from the regenen’s servery. He’d slipped along the inner wall of the regenen’s kitchen and the regenen’s preparatory, marveling anew at the massive hearths feeding into the colossal stacks that vented their smoke, the high vaulted ceilings, the tiny spiral stairs—tighter even than the Charcoal Stair—giving access to opteons’ chambers emplaced within the thick upper walls, and the ranks of glassed casements providing light for the cooks to see what they were doing.

The kitchens were like smithies for food, impressive in their way, although Gael strongly preferred the metal forges under his own jurisdiction. Which was odd, now that he considered it. Surely feeding the twelve- to fifteen-hundred trolls dwelling in Belzetarn—depending on how many cohorts were rotated home—should be preferable to equipping ten-thousand troll-warriors with the arms and armor needed for battle against the unafflicted.

Did he love the beauty of the worked bronze so much? Enough to counter his antipathy toward the truldemagar who killed the unafflicted? Or was there some other reason he relished overseeing the metal smithies? A desire to rule would be satisfied as well by supervising the kitchens as by overseeing the smithies. No, it was not authority over others that Gael enjoyed. It was the tallying itself, and specifically the mathematical precision that tallying metals for forging required.

Tallying foodstuffs might be demanding, but he’d seen the approximations that Barris resorted to, that seemed to be part and parcel of cooking.

Tallying for the kitchens would never possess the symmetry of the matrices Gael constructed in his tally chamber as he monitored Belzetarn’s metals.

His legs felt better descending the Charcoal Stair than they had earlier. He’d awakened sore and stiff and tired. Pain stabbed up through his heels when he stood, and every joint protested while he dressed. He’d suppressed groans through each of the fifteen spirals down the Regenen Stair, but his discomfort had diminished as his muscles warmed. And his ankle did not click.

Despite his shortened sleep and aching body, his mind was clear. The previous night’s confusion must have stemmed from the shocks of the day. This morning, it seemed obvious that neither his investigation into the thefts of his ingots nor the muting of the cursed gong could be planned in one fell swoop. Each stage of the proceedings would be governed by what he learned as he went along.

Certainly, he must interview the castellanum and then the magus, assessing their potential as thieves while he distracted each with questions about their experiences yesterday when the cursed gong resounded throughout the tower.

He’d considered nabbing Theron when he encountered him on a landing of the Regenen Stair, but the castellanum had been in full spate, haranguing a dilatory scullion.

Gael frowned.

Not a tower scullion or a kitchen scullion, come to think of it, but a smithy scullion. Why would the castellanum feel it behooved him to scold one of Gael’s scullions? Gael would ask him that very question. He’d forborne to interrupt Theron amidst his diatribe. But he’d get an answer soon.

Keir was undoubtedly issuing ingots to the smithy scullions even now. The boy could handle most of the reconciling of yesterday’s morning and evening tallies as well, although Gael wanted to hear those results the moment they were done.

But after meeting with the mine teamsters, Gael would have time enough to question his suspects and time enough, too, to demonstrate the properties of the cursed gong to Arnoll. He would show Arnoll the blasted thing. He needed a smith to look at the gong with his inner sight. A smith might see something that a former magus could not. And Arnoll was the only smith in Belzetarn who Gael trusted enough to make such a request.

And yes—damn it—he still trusted Arnoll. Despite what his friend had done. Beneath his anger, he trusted. By choice and reason, as well as the unreasoning affection of his heart.

After he’d consulted Arnoll, he would devise the next step for the gong.

And after he’d interviewed the castellanum and the magus, he’d figure the next step in catching his thief. Or thieves.

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Cold, gray clouds had blown up during that last afternoon with her father, and the breeze over the white surf of the small cove between two headlands had grown stiff.

Keiran stood barefoot on wet and shell-littered sand, looking out at the silver waves rushing in through the cove’s inlet and crashing around the tall rocks protruding within the smaller body of water. Pater stood behind her, his hands warm on her shoulders.

A rolling billow crashed on the shore and she felt its vibration through the cool, wet sand. The broken wave hissed up the beach toward her toes. A gull cried, blown sideways by a gust.

“Open your inner sight,” came Pater’s gravelly voice, “and direct it where the surf breaks.”

Keiran drew in a deep breath of the sea air—too brisk to carry the scent of salt and brine as strongly as when the breeze was gentle or absent—and held it, then let it slowly trickle out through her nose. She closed her eyes and let her inner perceptions unfurl.

Silver arcs of energea curled more wildly and more tightly in the ocean surf than she’d ever seen elsewhere. Flint and sand hummed with straight lattices. Grasses and reeds featured gentle, simple curves. People, sheep, and goats possessed complex arrays of arches that branched from one another. But the wind-tossed sea, powerful and furious, exhibited tangled spirals, ever changing and snarling.

“Follow the energea from the moment of impact up the beach,” said Pater.

Ah! The spiraling energea bounced against the lattice of the sand and uncurled, flowing in a current of loose spirals that grew ever straighter as they approached the farthest reach of the water. Where the wave ebbed, the energea ebbed with it, tangling anew in its retreat, save for a mist of softly undulating arcs flowing inland, under Keiran’s feet toward the dunes behind her.

“Let the sea energea enter,” Pater instructed.

Keir softened her knees and felt her feet relax, her toes letting tension flow out of them.

The next incoming wave broke, pounding the sand, and the energea surged up the beach. Keir felt the inland flowing mist tickle the nodes at the base of each toe, stroking her own energea into a slightly faster vibration.

“Good,” said Pater. Was he watching with his inner sight? No doubt.

Another wave came in, and another. Her feet seemed to buzz, warm despite their contact with the cold, wet sand. The vibration—still within the energea, not the flesh—mounted through her legs and on up through her torso. Her heart warmed, but the energea cooled as it fountained up her neck and then out through her crown.

“Now follow your own energea out to sea,” said Pater. Was that excitement in his voice?

Her awareness glided on the energea, easy and comfortable, just above the surface of the waves. At the mouth of the cove, she plunged downward, sensing the water in a way wholly different from the interaction of one’s body with the ocean. She was liquid and permeable, yet powerful, with glints of brightness flickering in her lucidity. She surged and flowed. She soared out to sea, through the sea.

The flickering glints within her lambency strengthened, definite and pulsing. Their brightness pierced her, and then she was their brightness, darting and fierce and free.

“Stay with them,” rumbled Pater.

She’d almost forgotten him in the sensations dominating her attention, but she obeyed.

As a hundred or more points of sharp brilliance, she turned and flashed and swooped. I am the fish, she realized dimly. And it was magical.

On and on she swam, one with the water, one with its denizens, one with being, one with all that was. How far had she travelled? How far would she go? How could she ever turn and return? Her larger self beguiled her.

And then her fish school darted forward to envelop a monstrous presence. Darker, more powerful still, with colossal flukes and a mighty tail. Its mood was heavy, remorseless, and compelling. Her awareness entered its shadow, slow and intense. She tightened . . . something. And then the monster was hers, bound to her and caught.

Or had it caught her?

She pulled.

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Keir took the Cliff Stair, the least trafficked of all four and dim, with the sun over on the other side of the tower. She climbed, needing to retrieve her tally sheets from the vaults before retiring to the tally chamber to reconcile yesterday’s accounts. As she climbed, she thought about what she had learned this morning.

The privy smithy, with its laxness, was a clear source of metal for the thief. But was Arnoll the thief? Even hearing Ravin’s story, she couldn’t believe such a thing of Arnoll. He and Gael were thick as . . . hmm . . . thieves. But Keir was more inclined to believe, like Ravin, that Arnoll had taken the tin for a legitimate reason. Even though he had not returned it or reported it yet to the tally chamber.

She would see what Gael thought when she told him.

And she would tell him. If Arnoll were the thief, Gael needed to know. If Arnoll were innocent, then Gael would know what the smith was doing with that tin ingot, and she could cease to consider him a suspect.

The more worrying thing was this morning’s theft, somehow achieved right under her own nose. She supposed it must have happened in the stairwell, one of those times when Jemer plunged into a clump of trolls, with only a flash of his elbow or a bob of his head visible to Keir. Which meant that someone was very slick, winkling the tin out of Jemer’s carry sack within the few moments that the crowd hid him.

She didn’t remember seeing any warriors on the Regenen Stair. They mostly used the West Stair anyway. It had been the usual crowd of the castellanum’s scullions—going to set up the tables and benches in the great halls—and the kitchen scullions bringing bowls of salt and mustard to the tables.

What would motivate a scullion—or a porter—to steal a tin ingot? Surely there would be more trouble than benefit coming to him for such a theft. Unless . . . he was ordered to do it by a superior.

Keir found it easy to suspect the castellanum. She’d seen him looking at her almost covetously, and she’d never liked him. But what use would the castellanum have for tin? Honestly, what use did anyone in Belzetarn—save the smiths—have for tin?

She could see a warrior stealing one of the elite swords reserved for his superiors. Greater prowess in battle might tempt such a troll. She could see someone like the castellanum stealing a finely wrought chalice or a beautifully crafted table. Theron liked rich things. But he had no need to steal them; they were his already as a prerogative of his station.

She could see the scullions stealing food, especially the rarer stuffs served only at the high table.

But the only troll with a real use for tin and copper and bronze would be a troll-lord with legions at his command and smithies supplying them. Could one of the scullions possess such ambitions? The idea was ludicrous. The very nature of the mark of Gaelan—the truldemagar—tended to sort trolls by their innate power. Those with physical might became warriors, those possessing great force of character took leadership, and those with neither served their betters.

If one of the scullions had stolen that tin ingot, he’d done so for someone else.

Keir wondered who Gael suspected.

Had he already heard Arnoll’s account of the tin ingot taken from the privy boys? Had he been shocked? Or had he nodded prosaically, approving Arnoll’s action as proper? And with Arnoll in the clear, who else might Gael suspect?

Keir shivered. She was innocent of theft, but she had other secrets. Gael had always treated her like any other boy in Belzetarn, with fairness and precise instruction. And she’d felt no qualms about passing herself off as a boy. It had been necessary.

But what if the theft of his metals prompted Gael to scrutinize his assistant more closely than before? A cursory scan of the nodes of her energea, sufficient to discern that they were unanchored, had not and would not reveal her sex. But a more thorough scrutiny would. As would a more thorough scrutiny of her person. What if Gael discovered she was—not a boy, but a young woman? How would he respond? Would he feel betrayed by the lie that she’d enacted all this time? And what if he plumbed . . . other things?

Keir paused to lean into one of the arrowslit’s embrasures. Beyond the opening, golden sunlight lay on the forested hills. A thin mist rose from the trees. The northern sky was very clear, white near the horizon and shading to pale turquoise in the upper airs.

If Gael scrutinized Keir, it would be with an eye to his assistant’s actions, not his assistant’s person, she reassured herself. Although . . . her actions were not wholly above reproach either. But why did she care so much anyway? Gael was a troll. Every last denizen of Belzetarn was a troll. She herself was a troll. It wasn’t as though someone still human would be judging her. The way her father had judged her on that last day.

Pater’s opinion had been important.

No one’s thoughts of her here in Belzetarn—not even Gael’s—could matter as Pater’s thoughts had mattered that day.

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The tin smelters must have laid and fired their charcoal early, long before their scullion fetched their pebbles from the vault, because they were already packing the unrefined tin into the weighty stone funnel at the top of the slanting upper surface of the forge. A stone trough extended from the funnel’s outlet and down across the slant. The smelters would keep the forge at just the right heat to melt the tin without melting the other impurities in the pebbles. The liquid tin would drip into the large crucible placed below the trough, while the solid impurities remained behind.

The smelters would pour the tin ‘hat’ ingots one by one, setting an empty crucible below the trough and moving the full one inside the forge to re-melt the congealed tin. When the characteristic golden skin formed on its molten surface, it would be ready to go into the mold.

Ravin saw Keir approaching and met her beside the massive pier dividing the tin smeltery from the annealing smithy. She forced herself not to look away from his truldemagar ravaged face. Was it truly hatred she felt? Or was it pity? She wished these flashes of emotion would cease taking her unawares.

Ravin stripped off his heavy gloves and started right in with his account, needing no prompting.

“The privy boys had started a game of blind-troll’s-buff. Tears, you should have seen them!” He shook his head. “Or maybe you shouldn’t have. The blindfolded one was stumbling into anvils and counters. The others were knocking over tool racks and sand buckets as they dodged.”

Keir pursed her lips.

Ravin wrinkled his nose. “Arnoll got involved when one of the boys, leaping away from his pursuer, knocked over the scullion raking the charcoal in the armor smithy’s forge.” Ravin shook his head. “He almost pushed him into the forge. Idiot. I doubt he knows how close he came to a beating, right there and then, from the smith himself.

“But Arnoll lowered his hand, marched the boy back to the privy smithy, and began directing them in their usual chores. He didn’t lecture, just gave orders, but they knew he was furious. Hells, even I knew he was furious a smithy away.”

“Go on,” said Keir.

“Once the boys were busy, Arnoll just stood watching them, leaning against the counter where their ingots and such lay. He pointed at something, maybe a sand bucket—I couldn’t really see—and then looked down at the counter. I think he shook his head, and then put a tin ingot in the sack he was carrying.

“He gave the boys a few more instructions, and then returned to his own tasks in the armor smithy.”

“What did he do with the tin?” asked Keir, wondering if pursuing that question was wise. Ravin seemed oblivious to the possibility that Arnoll might be in the wrong, and she preferred he remain so.

“Just laid it on the shelf under a counter. Why?”

“I’m trying to get the full picture, that’s all,” she replied.

Ravin scrubbed the back of a hand across his lined forehead. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”

Keir intended to continue following Gael’s instructions scrupulously on this one. She would not give confidential tally room information away. “You know we hope to find more efficiencies, Ravin,” she said patiently. “I doubt there are any to be found in the tin smeltery or the blade smithy, but the more complex undertakings—armor, blade grinding—might benefit from small changes. And the privy smithy surely needs something. Or many somethings.” She let the corner of her mouth turn up. “Any extra witnesses of privy smithy doings are useful.”

Ravin smiled. “Oh. Of course.” He started drawing his gloves back on. “My opteon will need me soon. Are you—may I—”

“Yes, thank you, Ravin. I’ve heard all I need.” Actually, she’d heard more than she wanted to.

He nodded and hurried toward the furnace, where the first bright droplets of molten tin were trickling down the canted trough.

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Martell was already present in the privy smithy when Keir arrived with Jemer. One scullion pumped the bellows at the forge, causing a shower of sparks to rise from the carefully layered charcoal. Others arranged various tongs and molds on a counter. In the neighboring smithies, the clatter of tools and the shouts of smiths punctuated the roar of the heating furnaces. A few long shafts of sunlight fell across the adjacent armor smithy. The smells of stone, metal, and fire permeated the dim and echoing space.

Martell pounced on Jemer’s carry sack the instant he saw the boy.

“Ha, ha! Now we are ready! Now we shall create greatness!”

The smith rummaged briefly in the suede receptacle, placing the ingot of tin he grabbed directly into a crucible, while his notary hastily uncapped his ink bottle, dipped his pen, and scribed the first tally mark on his parchment.

Keir intervened, touching Martell’s shoulder. “No, give your notary a chance.”

The smith looked surprised. “Keir! Why is it that you are here?”

Had he truly forgotten? If so, he recovered rapidly.

“Ha! I have it! You wish to count the ingots!”

Keir nodded. “I do. So if you’ll put that one back, please, we’ll begin.”

Martell’s brows rose. “In the carry sack?”

“In the carry sack,” she confirmed.

“Ha!” He waved Jemer to do the deed.

Keir checked to see that the notary was ready, perched on a stool at a counter, parchment spread before him, and pen poised. She pulled the tin ingot from the carry sack and set it on the counter. The notary tapped the tally mark he’d already made.

Keir nodded and continued to empty the sack, item by item, with time for the notary to record each: two more ingots of tin, twenty-seven ingots of copper, the broken scissors, the failed ladle, and the nugget of remnant bronze, still four ounces when weighed on the privy scales.

She didn’t even need her own parchments—temporarily abandoned in the locked vaults—to see that the privy smithy had already lost an ingot. But she couldn’t see how the loss—or theft—had occurred. She’d placed those four tin ingots in Jemer’s sack herself. She’d watched him every step of the way down the Regenen Stair to the forges. She’d watched Martell take one ingot out of the sack and watched Jemer replace it. Where in Cayim’s nine hells could the fourth tin ingot have got to?

She felt in the empty sack once more. It truly was empty.

She turned to Martell, hovering impatiently behind her.

“Well? Well?” he asked. “We may begin, yes?”

She repressed an urge to answer him immediately, contemplating her choices. She could require him to wait until she’d consulted Gael. But what would that gain? She’d already determined that the theft had occurred before the ingots arrived in the privy smithy. She could tell him that he was already missing an ingot. Which would merely spread the rumors she’d carefully avoided starting yesterday. Or she could tell him to go ahead.

“Yes. You may begin,” she said.

He seized her hands excitedly. “Today we make the ornaments for the regenen’s cape!” he told her. “I will be marvelous!”

Her smile must have been faint, but Martell gave her hands a satisfied shake and dove into directing his scullions. His notary rolled his parchments and tucked them into the leather tube hanging from his belt. He looked worried.

“They didn’t match, did they?” he murmured.

Keir made her face stay still. “You will not share that guess,” she said softly.

His eyes widened.

“Your inaccurate speculation could do much harm,” she continued.

The notary swallowed. “Notarius, I will do nothing to displease the tally chamber.”

Keir’s lips twisted. “See that you don’t.”

“I promise.”

“Good.” She nodded and strode away toward the tin smeltery, which lay beyond the armor smithy and on around the other side of the annealing smithy.

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The short and rather scrawny privy scullion came panting up, protesting innocence. “It wasn’t my fault! Really!”

Well, she’d heard that before from just about every boy who ever messed up, but she was curious what Jemer’s excuse would be.

“The castellanum stopped me on the stairs”—Jemer’s eyes went wide—“and said he had questions for me.”

Keir frowned. This was very peculiar. It was unlikely the boy was lying, because the truth of his assertion could be checked so easily. And he must know that Keir would check. But why would the castellanum detain one of the scullions personally? Especially this castellanum, who disdained the lowly.

“What did he ask you?” she said.

“What I did, if I was good at it, when the work at the forge started and stopped. Everything!” Jemer shook his head. “I don’t know why he wanted to know all that stuff, but I couldn’t hardly tell him to shove it, could I? I mean, he’s the castellanum.” The boy snorted. “I wanted to, though. He went on and on. Prying and scolding. I thought I’d never get away from him!”

That was decidedly odd. Keir’s frown deepened while she pulled ingots from the copper vault. Maybe she’d best accompany the boy on his descent to the smithy, rather than permitting him to go ahead.

Despite his small size, Jemer was wiry and strong. Even after Keir had loaded his carry sack with twenty-seven ingots of copper, four ingots of tin, the failed scissors and ladle, and a four-ounce nugget of remnant bronze—more than thirty pounds of metal—the privy scullion seemed prepared to scamper, eager to make up for his tardiness.

“Wait,” said Keir. “I’m coming with you.”

The boy bit his lip and bounced on his toes, impatient to be off. But he obeyed.

She finished recording the items disbursed to him from the bronze vault, then padlocked the vault door behind her.

It was hard to keep up with the privy scullion. Jemer had perfected the stride needed to allow him to positively run down the stairs, and he was gifted at dodging around anyone slower, which was most of the trolls in Belzetarn. Keir was relieved when the boy ducked into the servery for the regenen’s kitchen.

She’d intended to lean in the doorway, letting her presence urge Jemer to be quick, although the boy seemed scarcely to require such urging. But Gael was there, standing before the hatch talking with his friend, Barris the cook.

Gael looked weary, his olive skin paler than usual, the lines showing more prominently on his face, and his shoulders slumped. He’d clipped his shoulder-length hair back with a silver fibula, and the metal seemed to highlight the gray streaks among the dark strands. He must have been up late, hard on the track of his two mysteries.

The cook’s relative youth and good health made Gael look even more worn. The contrast . . .

Keir pushed down a sense of hurt, compressing her lips.

Barris’ short brown hair possessed no gray. His brown eyes shone with energetic enthusiasm. And his movements were sure and light: turning to toss an order to an underling, reaching to steady a platter of fruit leather on the edge of a work table, stepping away to stir one of the many pots on the massive hearth, and then returning to the hatch to continue his conversation with Gael.

Keir threaded her way amongst the kitchen scullions who were already bearing salt saucers and wooden trenchers from the storeroom toward the great halls for the morning meal. Jemer preceded her, shrugging out of his carry sack and thumping it down on the counter of the servery hatch, while greeting Barris.

“Hungry, young ’un?” The cook smiled at the boy, nodded to Keir, winked at Gael, and then bent to pull a tray of smoked fish tidbits from the shelves below the hatch counter.

“All well?” murmured Gael to Keir.

She nodded. “I have some . . . anomalies . . . to report to you.”

Gael’s face lightened. “Good.”

Keir’s brows tightened. Why would Gael regard things gone wrong as good?

Gael lifted an eyebrow, his eyes warm, and then Keir felt foolish. Anything unusual could be a lead on their thief.

Barris rested his tray atop Jemer’s carry sack, one hand steadying its rim, the other hand below it. The boy stuffed two tidbits of the smoked fish into his mouth and started chewing while he snatched two more.

The cook tilted his head to one side. “Gael? Keir? This batch is especially flavorful.”

Keir could tell. An appetizing aroma rose from the glimmering golden skin that topped each neat square of the smoked fish. She allowed herself to be persuaded. The skin crunched under her teeth, giving way to the velvety smooth flesh beneath and a burst of smoky richness on her tongue.

Barris smiled at her—relieved?—and she smiled back. Had he actually worried that she might not like the delicacy? She supposed that cooks did worry about things like that, but this was delicious.

“Another?” he suggested.

Keir took two more, noticing that Gael also accepted seconds, while Jemer went for fourths.

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Keir stood just inside the copper vault, enjoying the flow of cool morning air and the way the clear dawn light poured through the casement she’d opened. This narrow, claustrophobic hollow within the tower’s thick wall was infinitely more bearable when freshened by breeze and sun. Why had she always followed Gael’s lead so precisely in every detail before? He wouldn’t have minded if she’d opened the casement during the checking out of the metals. Not in summer. But because he’d always left the casement shut, so had she.

She double-checked the stacks of copper ingots resting on the ledge by the door. There were the nine for the blade smithy, shiny in the flood of light. And there, the twenty-seven requisitioned by the privy smithy—three stacks of nine—including the ingot retrieved by Gael last night.

She thought again of the note he’d left for her under the three recovered ingots—one copper and two bronze.

Keir, Some of our missing metals have come home. I have not tallied their return yet. As you’ll see from the tally sheets, I have marked the disbursal of one ingot of tin for a special project. Gael.

She’d been up early—determined to fulfill her duties perfectly—and had time to rule and label the sheets for the evening checking in. She’d tallied the two bronze and the one copper ingot in, along with a written comment on the irregularity, wondering all the while how Gael had found them. She hoped he would tell her. She wanted to know.

No, she needed to know.

A footstep in the hall heralded the arrival of the blade scullion, a young troll with ruddy hair and a very upturned nose. Keir quelled an involuntary shudder at the strong evidence of his troll-disease. He grinned at her. “While the lynx lounges, the hare plays,” he teased.

Keir sniffed. “You wish,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. “The secretarius is more forbearing than I, and even he is not tolerant of much regarding his metals.”

The scullion shrugged, and slipped the strap of his carry sack off his shoulder to open it. Keir hefted the nine ingots going to his smithy from their ledge—nine pounds weren’t precisely heavy, but neither were they a feather weight—and lowered them into the embrace of the soft suede. She marked the tallies on the waiting tally sheet and paused a moment to see if the privy scullion would appear.

“You always going to issue the ingots now?” asked the blade scullion.

“No,” she answered shortly. It wasn’t really his business. “Perhaps a deichtain or two.”

“Why doesn’t the secretarius give it to you permanent? I heard he was moving up to the posh suite next to the regenen’s and would leave all his work to you.”

Now it was definitely time to snub the boy. “Then you heard wrong.”

“If he did, you could get a boy to work under you. You could ask for me! And when Gael retired, you could be secretarius, and I could get a boy who did what I said.”

That wasn’t worth answering. “It doesn’t work that way in Belzetarn,” she said.

“I’d ruther be the tally master than the bladesmith,” explained the boy.

No doubt, but he would become neither. And the privy scullion was late again. Keir hustled the blade scullion out and padlocked the vault door behind her. The corridor was very dark with the sunlight from the copper vault blocked, only a few glimmers of daylight from the stairwells at each end filtering through.

After she unlocked the tin vault and swung the door open, the latch clanging against the stone wall, light flooded into the corridor again. Just inside on the ledge, the tin ingots and her tally sheet awaited, readied by her earlier when she’d opened the vault’s casement. She gave the blade scullion his one ingot of tin, tallied it, and relocked the vault. No point in delaying for that late privy scullion.

The armor scullion arrived as she opened the bronze vault. She handed him his four bronze ingots, and he departed as swiftly as he’d come.

Keir wished the blade scullion would go, but he needed to collect a trio of nicked swords resting in the safe repository. That was next, and then she could get rid of him.

“Wouldn’t you like to be regenen one day?” the boy asked. “Tell everybody what to do!”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she answered coolly. “And you shouldn’t say things like that. It will get you in trouble sooner or later. More likely sooner.”

“Why?” he said.

A whole mob of scullions erupted from the Regenen Stair, jostling one another and kidding. Keir winced. Groups of trolls still bothered her, but maybe the blade scullion would shut his mouth now.

Keir opened the safe repository, settling into the rhythm of her work. Eight swords went to the two scullions of the grinding smithy and were tallied. She handed ten swords to the scullions of the annealing smithy. And tallied them. The hilt smithy received its swords, the armorers’ lodge received their scales and wire, the fletchers’ lodge accepted forty-nine arrowheads, and the spearmakers took their thirty-four spearheads.

The blade scullion stacked the three notched blades carelessly atop his ingots in the carry sack and left with the mob.

And still the privy scullion remained absent.

Keir locked the safe repository and entered the Regenen Stair in the wake of the departing scullions. They were headed all the way down to the smithies, but she turned off at the next level, encountering the scullions from the copper and tin smelteries as she did so. They were older than the boys in the other smithies, nearly as capable as their opteons, and serious about getting the partially refined metals from the mines to the peak of perfection required for Belzetarn’s forges.

Keir bypassed the doors to the vestries for the armor and weapons reserved for the legions’ elite.

The pebble vault lay behind the third door. She’d already weighed the irregular clumps of tin allotted to the tin smeltery and recorded the nine pounds and three ounces on her tally sheet. As she tilted the scoop into the smeltery scullion’s carry sack, the scullion—a dark fellow with a downcurving nose like Gael’s—muttered, “You’re overseeing the privy smithy this morning?”

Keir frowned. Not at all surprising that he knew of the arrangement; the scullions talked to one another. But why would a tin scullion concern himself with the privy smithy? What was his name? Ravin? Yes, Ravin.

“I will descend with the privy scullion after I issue his ingots,” she said.

Ravin sniffed. “The boys grow unruly while waiting on their smith,” he said. “Arnoll sorted them out yesterday, but their mischief will increase if it goes unchecked.”

Keir followed him out of the pebble vault, securing the door behind her. The two copper scullions were standing at the far end of the dim corridor near the oxhide vault. She stopped the tin scullion as he made to leave. “You did not mention this yesterday when I interviewed you.”

He shrugged. “It slipped my mind until now, when I realized we’d be treated to the same, unless someone kept those boys in order.” He took a step toward the Lake Stair and the copper scullions. “I suppose Arnoll will do it, even if you don’t. He’s responsible that way. Yesterday he noticed that the privy boys had collected one ingot too many of tin and took it from them. To return it to the vaults, no doubt.”

Wait. What?

Keir thought back to yesterday evening’s check-in. She didn’t remember the armor smithy turning in anything save the bags of scales they’d fashioned that day. She would have noticed—with ingots missing from the tally—if an extra ingot had turned up.

And Gael had recovered copper and bronze, not tin.

There’s something wrong here, she thought, and I don’t have time now to delve into it.

“Ravin, I want to hear more about Arnoll and the boys. Will you speak with me after I finish in the privy smithy?”

The scullion tipped his head to one side, considering. “Aye, that’ll do. The tin’ll still be heating. My opteon can spare me.” He paused. “Unless you need to hear me elsewhere. That’ud take too long.”

“No, I’ll just draw you aside,” she reassured him.

He nodded and continued toward the stairwell, clapping one of the copper scullions on the shoulder as he passed. “Think you’ll drop it today?” he gibed.

All three of them—copper and tin together—laughed.

The oxhide ingots were large and heavy, weighing eighty pounds each and shaped like animal hides, with a leg protruding at each corner to provide a good gripping point. During the trip from the mines to the tower, they were tied to the pack harnesses of two mules, one beast to each side. If four trolls instead of two could transport an ingot from the vaults to the smithies, it might be easy. But the stairwells—generous though the main ones were—were yet too narrow for that.

Instead, one troll gripped a front leg and heaved, while another troll gripped a back leg and heaved. The ingot, held at hip level, hung to below their knees.

As the two copper scullions eased their oxhide ingot through the vault doorway, Keir heard a shrill voice calling her name. “Keir! Where are you? I’m sorry I’m late! Keir?”

The privy scullion. Finally.

Keir locked the oxhide vault and hurried back toward the Regenen Stair. The boy would need copper ingots, tin ingots, and the failed scissors and ladle from the bronze vault. Three doors to unlock—again. Three doors to re-lock—again. What had kept the boy?

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Lying on his sleeping couch in his chambers, Gael found sleep eluding him. In his weariness, he’d forgotten to swing the shutters closed, and the moonlight shone brightly on the leather hangings, the scattered small tables and backless chairs. But it was not the light alone that kept his eyes open.

Every inch of him ached, his feet and legs from all the stair climbing of the day, his shoulders and neck from tension, and his head from his repellent discoveries.

Were it not so late, he would have visited the saunas in the yard to sweat the soreness from his body and the churning images from his thoughts: Martell aggrieved that any suspicion rested on him, the simple sweep grabbing for a drop of molten tin, the bullied lunch boy calmed by Keir, and—worst of all—Arnoll holding a stolen ingot.

Gael turned toward the wall, bright in the moonlight, and then got up to close the shutters. His legs protested, and returning to the soft sheepskins cushioning his couch felt good. But still he could not sleep. Even with the greater dimness.

Very well. If sleep refused him, he would think. What did he know?

When the theft of his tin first came to his attention during the tallying, he’d assumed an error had been made. That had proved incorrect. He’d suspected petty pilfering next. Perhaps a miserable scullion, hoping to barter it for better treatment, had impulsively swiped an ingot. Perhaps a simpleton had been attracted by the metal’s glossy sheen.

In retrospect, his suspicions seemed ludicrous. The metals flowing through Belzetarn were far too well monitored—by himself—for a lowly scullion to succeed with thievery. Only someone with more reach, more resources, and more ambition would or could arrange the intricate plans necessary.

And . . . tin was not shiny right out of the mold. It required careful polishing.

No, he was right to bend his scrutiny to the powerful.

And, yet, he’d been wrong in assessing the march as the one troll in the entire citadel who would never steal from his lord. Dreas had stolen tin. And he’d stolen it through Arnoll, the one friend Gael was certain possessed an unbreakable integrity.

Gael turned over yet again, unable to find a comfortable position.

He’d told Arnoll that he trusted him still. He wanted to trust him. But, in truth, his trust was shaken. He understood Arnoll. He suspected he would do the same as Arnoll in a like situation. But . . . he was not sure he could admit Arnoll to his deepest confidence in the immediate future.

Gael adjusted the pillow beneath his head. A stray moonbeam penetrated a chink in the shutters, illuminating a pattern of triangles stamped into one of the leather hangings.

Another unwelcome thought crossed Gael’s mind.

If the march could use Arnoll to steal tin, then surely the magus or the castellanum might also use another’s hands to reach into the smithies. Hells. The regenen himself could do so, although Gael still could not take that possibility seriously. The regenen would not stoop to steal from his secretarius—and thus from himself.

The castellanum seemed the most likely thief. Barris, in the kitchens, had mentioned that the castellanum was inviting many more underlings to the honor of dining in one of the three great halls. Gael himself had noted one of them. Could one of the castellanum’s guests be stealing for him?

The stray moonbeam vanished.

Gael wriggled a heavy fold of blanket off his toes.

What about the magus?

He remembered the rumors that had leaked from Pirbrant before the last battle on the plain between the rivers. Rumors that had subsequently proven true. How Heiroc’s brother Erastys had fallen in love with a very proper lady who spurned him. How the lady had possessed one of the talismans of ancient Navellys. How Erastys and Nathiar together had plotted to obtain what they wanted from the lady: Erastys, the lady’s passion; Nathiar, the lady’s artifact.

Her artifact was not one of the lodestones. Those were long lost, all five of them. The lady held one of the originally more numerous amulets, still very rare in this day and age.

Nathiar had cast the glamor that would steal both the lady’s virtue and the lady’s treasure as one.

But Nathiar’s magery had failed him, bringing the truldemagar upon him.

Nathiar had stolen honor and dignity and innocence before in the court of Hadorgol. Gael had witnessed it. Would he also steal metal, here in Belzetarn? Gael had no evidence to indicate that it was so.

He didn’t truly know much of anything. Suspicions and possibilities were not the same as real knowledge. It didn’t help that two competing concerns pressed him. He absolutely needed to get to the bottom of this thievery, but he also must resolve the dangers posed by the cursed gong brought in by the scouts of the Third Cohort.

As things stood, Gael had given neither problem sufficient attention.

Worse . . . the mere presence of the evil gong seemed to exert an insidious effect upon him. And he was all too aware that it lay close, with merely two doors between it and him.

After seven years of eschewing the manipulation of energea, he’d used his powers thrice today. First to ease the simpleton’s pain. Next to clear the disguised copper ingot of its tin mask. Thirdly to set a trap to catch his thief. Or one of his thieves. And . . . had either the retrieved bronze or the tin honestly given to Arnoll proved to be tainted like that disguised copper ingot, Gael would have cleansed it without a thought.

Was Carbraes correct in his belief that any use of energea worsened a troll’s affliction? Or was it merely the dangerous energea—the searing orange—that did so?

Gael thumped his pillow, irritated with himself. He had to get some sleep, or neither of his problems would receive even so much as the inadequate focus as he’d funneled into them today.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 7 (scene 32)

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Arnoll’s tallow dip flickered on the deep golden hue of the bronze ingots upheld by Gael and on the pale copper of the ingot in Arnoll’s other hand.

“Cayim’s nine hells,” swore the smith softly.

Gael was past swearing. Tonight he’d learned that his most trusted friend—Arnoll—had stolen from him. He’d discovered that someone was using forbidden energea to tamper with his ingots. And now he’d retrieved two bronze ingots, when only one should be missing, according to Keir’s latest tally of the bronze vault. How many more anomalies within his tally chamber and the smithies would he encounter? At this point, no unpleasantness seemed impossible.

Setting the ingots on the floor, Gael inhaled and then wished he hadn’t. His nose was no more accustomed to the stench in the latrine than when he’d first pulled its door open.

So. Had tonight’s fugitive hidden the bronze in the bucket niche? Or was it someone else? But that was not the important question. Who had hidden those ingots? Gael needed to know, preferably without alerting the thief. Which meant he couldn’t wake a scullion and assign him the duty of guarding the privy door and reporting every troll who approached it. The whole tower would soon know of Gael’s inexplicable concern with a clogged latrine, if he did that.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—he possessed another option.

Disciplining himself to defy the foul odor, he inhaled slowly and steadily. On an equally slow out-breath, he let his inner sight open. The lattice of energea humming within the stones of the bucket niche featured a slow, cold vibration of silver so dim it seemed a ghost of metal.

Gael reached inside himself, pulling on his heart node and guiding the resultant stream of power along his arcs, bright and sparkling. As the tiny stars leapt from his fingertips, he directed them to lattice intersections within the stone’s energea. Only when a hundred or more small lights winked and blinked in these new locations did he stop, sighing with weariness.

“Did you just do what I think you did?” asked Arnoll.

“My energea will cling to the hand of the next troll to reach inside this hidey-hole,” said Gael. “I doubt the thief will leave his plunder here indefinitely. Once he checks on it or attempts to move it . . .”

“He’ll be marked,” concluded Arnoll.

“Unless he leaves Belzetarn altogether, I’ll find him,” said Gael.

“You clever devil,” murmured Arnoll.

Gael stifled a snort. Grabbing up his bronze ingots, he replaced the loose stone in the sidewall of the bucket niche and pushed to his feet. His ankle protested, and he almost didn’t make it, his legs wobbled so. He replaced the bucket in the niche, retrieved the saucer of the guttered tallow dip from the floor, and stepped out into the stairwell. Arnoll closed the door behind them.

“What next?” said the smith.

Gael shook his head. “These go in my tally room for now. Then we’ll get you that tin ingot for Dreas. And then—I’m for bed. I’m not going to solve this tangle tonight.”

Arnoll grunted.

They took the stairs slowly this time, climbing past the place of arms where their fugitive had escaped and then onward to the lowest of the great halls. Moonlight glimmered through the tall embrasures on the southern curve of the circular space, shedding silver light across the cleared floor and casting an ominous shadow from the massive central pillar wrapped in its twining stair.

The Regenen Stair and its landing with the door into Gael’s tally room lay exactly opposite the Cliff Stair. Gael led the way across, his soft shoes noiseless on the stone, Arnoll’s boots thunking beside him.

Wordlessly, Gael unlocked the padlock on the tally room door and ushered Arnoll inside.

The moonlight was stronger within, flooding through the casements which Keir had unshuttered, illuminating the pigeonhole cabinets lining the walls, but casting the two desks—surrounded as they were by cabinetry—into deep shadow.

Gael lit two fresh tallow dips from Arnoll’s, which was nearly out.

Keir had left the parchments for the morning’s tally neatly stacked and properly ruled—ready—on his own desk. Gael marked one tin ingot (for Dreas) checked out on the sheet for the tin vault, placed the three recovered ingots—one copper and two bronze—atop the parchments, and wrote a brief note of explanation. That would do for now.

“Come,” he said to Arnoll.

The climb to the vaults was equal to that from the smithies to the tally room. Going slower with each twist of the stair around the newel post, they passed the passage to the first balcony and one to the second balcony, then the one to the great hall where Gael had dined that evening. The vaults lay above it.

Unlocking the tin vault and one of the coffers within it was a simple matter.

Arnoll turned the tin ingot in his hands while Gael locked up behind himself. This ingot possessed the right thickness and the right energea. Gael had checked.

“Come to me when you need another,” he said.

Arnoll looked at him ruefully. “I regret this.”

“But you would do it all again, if necessary.”

Arnoll’s expression firmed, but he did not answer.

Gael clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll keep the march’s secret.”

Arnoll looked down.

“Surely you knew I would,” Gael pursued.

Arnoll looked up. “Of course. But it was not my secret to tell.”

Well, Gael understood that. Hard as it was to accept that Arnoll had betrayed Gael with his theft, in another way Arnoll had proved his faithfulness thoroughly. The smith would not betray an older friend for a newer one. Gael could hold to that, must hold to that, even when a more thorough loyalty to himself might feel more welcome.

“Arnoll. I trust you.”

Arnoll placed his hand over Gael’s, still resting on his shoulder. “And I trust you,” he replied.

As they moved toward the stairs, Arnoll stopped again. “What did you want to consult me about?” he asked.

“Come to my chambers tomorrow evening,” said Gael, “and I’ll show you.”

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The Tally Master, Chapter 6 (scene 31)

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Crawling around the privy smithy bearing one of Arnoll’s tallow dips, Gael collected fully as much dirt and soot on his tunic and trews as he’d expected. The smithy scullions kept the forge area clean and tidy. The tower sweeps kept the floors and counters clear. But the odd corners, crevices between various fixtures and the wall, and the surfaces below the tool racks collected finely sifted ash ground into grease.

It had never occurred to Gael that he should squirm on his belly under the lip of the privy forge or squish between the counters and the back wall, but now that he had, he would develop a few additional protocols for smithy maintenance. He should probably first check the other smithies to see if they suffered the same pattern of encrusted dirt. They might not.

Arnoll found a set of elegant two-tined forks in an empty quenching pail. Who knew which day they were forged? Gael himself found nothing. And neither of them discovered any missing ingots.

When Arnoll closed the lid of a chest of sand with a snap, Gael shook his head. “I think we both knew there was nothing to find,” he said. “But I had to check.”

Arnoll surveyed the blackened knees of his trews ruefully. “The leather grooms are going to beat me senseless when I hand these over for cleaning,” he remarked.

Gael’s knees were no better. “Time to quit for tonight, I think,” he said.

Arnoll nodded and led the return to the counter in his smithy where the stolen copper ingot still rested. Gale collected it, and then they headed for the exit on the back wall where the Cliff Stair climbed to the magus’ quarters below the battlements.

Gael was glad for his tallow dip, burning low at this point though it was. The torches in the tunnel between the smithy and the stairwell were doused, as was usual at this hour. And so few trolls climbed the Cliff Stair at night that only every third landing was illuminated by a flaming torch. Gael wasn’t sure why Theron bothered to order any torches lit. The bright landings merely meant one’s eyes must work harder to adjust on the dark ones and all the dark steps in between.

In silence, Gael climbed side by side with Arnoll, past the place of arms adjacent to the melee gallery and on toward the place of arms on the next level. His thighs felt weak as pouring copper, and his left ankle stabbed fiercely each time he took the next tread with his left foot. He’d chosen the outer position, which required longer steps, to spare Arnoll. Now he wished he hadn’t. Arnoll hadn’t climbed up and down the tower all day the way Gael had.

As they rounded the newel post toward a landing that should have been bright with flickering torch flame, Gael put out a hand to check Arnoll.

The landing was dark.

Gael paused, listening.

The sound of a door closing softly somewhere above was followed by the click of a latch, a gasp, and then running footsteps, headed up. Someone—perhaps the someone who’d doused the torch—had noticed the glow of their tallow dips approaching.

Gael looked sharply at Arnoll. Arnoll looked back, nodded.

And then they were running, shoving their weary bodies upward with all the speed possible. Whoever it was had a guilty conscience. They’d catch him, question him, and find out why.

Reaching the dark landing brought momentary relief to Gael’s tiring legs—three full strides across a blessedly flat floor. Then they were climbing again, up and up, around and around.

Gael felt his pace slowing, heard the furiously echoing steps of their quarry drawing away. He pushed harder, but sheer will wasn’t enough to hasten his faltering feet.

The footsteps above quickened, then cut off altogether.

Gael cursed and halted, slumping against the outer wall of the stairwell. Arnoll stopped a few steps above him, equally winded.

“He’s left the stair,” panted the smith.

Gael nodded, bent with one hand on his knee, sweatily clutching his copper ingot, the other holding his tallow dip, lungs heaving.

“Hells,” said Arnoll. “A dozen deep-set doorways, the central stair, half a dozen dark embrasures, and the entrances to the three other stairwells. We’ll never catch him.”

That was a given, now that they’d broken off the pursuit. But Gael shared Arnoll’s unspoken conclusion. Their fugitive could be anywhere by now.

Gael hung there, catching his breath. His grubby tunic clung to his shoulders and back as though someone had dumped a bucket of quenching water over him. His ribs ached, and his arms wobbled almost as badly as his legs.

“Let’s go see what’s behind that door just above the dark landing,” he said at last, straightening. “A latrine, I think. But.”

Arnoll nodded.

Gael’s panting had slowed, as had Arnoll’s. They waited several moments more. Descending on wobbly legs would be worse than climbing.

“Come,” said Gael, starting down, taking the inside position this time.

Arnoll joined him with a grunt. “I almost wish I owned a cane,” he muttered.

Gael snorted a laugh. Arnoll with a cane was ludicrous, but Gael wanted one, too. Each step down to the next tread threatened to collapse his legs entirely. Had his troll-disease advanced another notch? Or did he merely sit too long every day at his tally desk?

When they reached the door located three steps above the dark landing that should have been bright, Gael eased it open. A powerful stench rolled out.

There was indeed a latrine behind that door, with the usual arrangement: a square of stone floor, a closed stone bench at the back, a round hole carved in the seat of the bench, and a slanting ceiling overhead.

So much was ordinary.

The wastes brimming at the lip of the latrine hole were not.

The latrines located off the Cliff Stair emptied into long channels descending through the walls of the tower, carrying their contents to the steep cliff located on this side of the citadel. The channel emptying this latrine—like several others—possessed a dogleg and required regular maintenance to prevent clogging. Such maintenance was always scrupulously provided, never neglected. Why had it been neglected now?

Gael reeled back, jostling Arnoll and nearly tumbling both of them down the two steps to the landing.

Somehow, Arnoll retained his balance, steadying Gael as well.

“Sias!” gasped Arnoll.

Gael surged forward to close the door. It didn’t reduce the stench much, and they retreated to the next landing up, where an arrowslit provided fresh air. Their tallow dips flickered wildly.

“What in hells?” said Gael.

Arnoll shook his head.

Gael pressed his lips with a forefinger, thumb beneath his chin. “Someone didn’t want to be discovered there.” He thought a moment, resisting what came next. “I’m going to check it thoroughly.” If only he’d not doffed his caputum when he changed his clothes. He could have pulled the fabric that covered his shoulders up over his mouth and nose.

“Wait here,” he told Arnoll, handing him the copper ingot.

The smith chuckled. “Oh, I’m coming with you,” he said.

“You need not.”

“Oh, I know, I know. But I’m curious, too.”

The stench outside the latrine door had not dissipated appreciably. It strengthened unpleasantly when Gael opened the door. He buried his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow, held his tallow dip high with the other arm, and stepped inside, Arnoll hard on his heels.

Surprisingly, the floor was clean and dry, as was the surface of the bench.

Why had the castellanum’s scullions cleaned the latrine compartment thoroughly, but left the clog untouched? Surely they’d earn a birching that way.

Gael studied the slanting ceiling behind the bench, the small blocks of stone neatly fitted together, the mortar between them tidy. The side walls were similar. The front wall possessed a small arched niche to one side of the door, with a bucket of water resting within.

Gael removed the bucket, handing it to Arnoll, who set it down on the bench, well away from the brimming hole.

Gael crouched, hampered by the cramped space, peering into the empty bucket niche. His tallow dip flickered and went out, but he waved aside Arnoll’s offer of his, setting the extinguished saucer on the floor and probing the niche with his freed hand.

The mortar felt crumbly and loose. He worked a piece out, held it up in the dim light of Arnoll’s dip, then put it down to pick at the loose mortar again. Following the seam, he discovered a section lacking mortar altogether. His fingertips traced out a rough rectangle. He probed for purchase, then drew out the unmortared stone.

“Hah!” Arnoll exclaimed.

Gael stayed grimly silent, reaching into the now open cavity in the niche’s sidewall.

Somehow, he felt entirely unsurprised when he pulled out two nested ingots of bronze.

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