Chapter 73: The Bill

Aldous woke up shortly after the sun rose that morning, lying on the pallet that Hale’s cook had thrown together for him next to the kitchen fire, and the first thing he did was cry.

He didn’t cry loudly or make any fuss about it. He just lay there on the pallet, staring up at the smoke-stained rafters with tears running down the sides of his face, until the cook noticed him and came over with a bowl of porridge. She had been staring daggers at Kai’s vest every morning since he got there, but she didn’t stare at Aldous at all. She helped him sit up and propped him against the wall, and then she stuck a spoon in his shaking hand and stood over him with her arms crossed until he ate.

Aldous took one bite, and then he stopped, and his whole face crumpled.

"It tastes like salt," Aldous whispered. "And butter. I had forgotten about butter."

The cook snorted and announced that the fire was smoking something terrible this morning, and then she went back to her stove and banged a pot around for a few minutes longer than she needed to.

Kai stood in the doorway of the kitchen with his tea cooling in his hands, and he had to look away for a second.

[Faith gained. New follower: Aldous. Faith: 12%. Status: Tasting.]

"That one is going to stick," Kai whispered.

[Yes. He has paid for everything in his life for the past forty years. I believe he will enjoy having something that he does not have to pay for]

Kai smiled and took a sip of his tea, and that was when he noticed the mark on his hand.

There was a circle in the center of his right palm, about the size of a coin and a pale golden color. It was warm, the way your hand gets when you hold it over a cup of hot tea for too long, even though he had been holding his tea in his left. He stared at it for a moment and rubbed at it with his thumb, but it didn’t rub off. When he held it up to the light coming through the window, he could just make out a very faint picture stamped into it, of a little man pointing at something and missing.

[Kai]

"I see it," Kai whispered. "What is it?"

Syraphim didn’t answer him, and instead, a line of text appeared in front of him, right where her skill window usually appeared, but it wasn’t the same soft gold that her words always were. It was more of a brassy color, like a coin that had passed through far too many hands.

[Debt assumed. Former debtor: Aldous. New debtor: Kai Mercer. Balance remaining: forty years.]

Kai read the words over and over again, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

[I did not do that]

"I know," Kai whispered, and his voice came out very small. "I know."

Another line of brassy text appeared underneath the first one.

[Interest will be collected hourly. Current divinity points: 47.]

As Kai watched, the number flickered and ticked down.

[Current divinity points: 46.]

He set his tea down on the counter very slowly, because his hands were beginning to shake.

When everyone had gathered around the dining table an hour later, the number was down to forty-five. Kai sat at the head of the table with his right hand lying palm up in front of him, and they all took turns leaning over to peer at the mark, the way people look at a spider that may or may not be dead.

"So when you broke his contract," Mira said slowly, "you didn’t get rid of it. You just took it over."

"Yes," Kai said.

"That is not how contracts work," Hale said, frowning down at Kai’s hand. "You cannot take on another man’s debt without agreeing to it. Not in any court in Veyrath."

"I don’t think it cares very much about the courts in Veyrath," Kai said.

Princess Seris was already taking notes in her notebook, and she looked up from it with the end of her charcoal pressed between her teeth.

"One point every hour," Princess Seris said. "That is twenty-four points a day. How many points do you earn in a day, Kai?"

Kai thought about the last few updates Syraphim had given him, and he looked down at the table.

"About ten on a good day," Kai said. "Maybe fifteen on a really great one."

No one said anything to that, and Princess Seris didn’t need to write the rest of it down.

"What happens when you run out of points?" Garrick asked.

[Kai]

Kai didn’t answer Garrick right away, because he was waiting for Syraphim to finish explaining it to him, and when she did, he wished that she hadn’t.

"Every point I earn goes straight to it, the moment I get it," Kai said. "No new skills, and no points saved up for an emergency. It just eats away at them, for the next forty years."

The whole table went quiet, and Mira reached over and put her hand over Kai’s marked palm, as if she could cover it up and make it go away. Kai could feel the warmth of the mark pressing against her fingers.

"Forty years," Mira whispered. "You only have one."

"Unless we can pay it off," Kai said. "Or find a way out of it."

Aldous was sitting at the other end of the table in a borrowed shirt, eating his second bowl of porridge slowly and carefully, as if he was afraid it might disappear. Now he set his spoon down and looked at Kai with his faded brown eyes.

"It keeps a ledger," Aldous said.

Everyone turned to look at him.

"Every deal it has ever made is written down," Aldous said. "Every price and every debt. I saw it on the night I made my bargain. It is a great book with a gold cover, and every page of it is covered with names." He swallowed hard, and his spoon rattled against the side of his bowl. "My name was on the very first page."

Hale leaned forward in his chair so quickly that it creaked.

"Then it has terms," Hale said, and he had the same sharp look in his eye that he’d had at the Conclave. "If we can see the terms, then we can find a way out of it, Mr. Mercer. I have read contracts for fifty years, and I have never once read one that did not have a flaw somewhere."

"Where is it?" Kai asked Aldous. "The ledger."

"Wherever its master is," Aldous said. "And I do not know where that is. All I ever saw was the cellar."

Kai looked down at the mark on his hand, and he realized that he already knew where to look. The bargain god didn’t have a temple, or a church built in its honor, or a door carved in the Hall of Seven Doors. There was only one person in all of Veyrath who would willingly sit down across a table from it.

"Draven," Kai said. "It said he was only a customer. And customers keep receipts."

The rest of the day flew by, and the number kept going down. Kai could feel each point leaving him like a cold pinch somewhere in his chest, and with every one, Syraphim became a little quieter. Bors and the city watch spent the afternoon searching every building Draven had ever owned in the city, and by the time the sun went down, they had found nothing at all.

Aldous spent most of the day sitting on the bench beside the well with a blanket over his shoulders. The cook kept bringing him food, and while he ate it, he told Princess Seris everything he could remember about the cellar, and she filled up page after page of her notebook. He told her that the god loved numbers and never once raised its voice, and that it always called him a valued customer, even on the nights when he begged it to let him go. It had always been very polite, he said, right up until someone tried to leave without paying.

"It is not cruel," Aldous told her, staring down into his cup of tea. "That is what makes it so terrible, Princess. It is only fair, in the way that a set of scales is fair. It does not care what you have lost, as long as the scales are balanced."

[Current divinity points: 37.]

It was almost dark when Hale’s cook came into the dining room holding an envelope between two fingers, as far away from her body as she could manage, as if she was afraid it might bite her.

"This was on the front step," the cook said, and she set it down in front of Kai and wiped her hands on her apron. "Nobody knocked."

The envelope was made of thick, cream-colored paper, and it was sealed with a blob of gold wax pressed with the very same picture that was on Kai’s palm. His name was written across the front of it in elegant handwriting that he recognized at once, from the note that had been tucked inside his new pair of shoes.

Kai broke the seal and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside, and he read it out loud, because he didn’t trust himself to read it silently.

Statement of Account

Debtor: Mr. Kai Mercer

Amount Owed: Forty Years

Your debt may be paid off at any time in a single lump sum. My client will accept the last light of the Radiant Mother as full payment, and your debt will be cleared.

If no payment has been made by the new moon, my client will collect what he is owed.

Sincerely,

Castor Draven

Collections

Kai slowly set the paper down on the table, and his hands were shaking.

"When is the new moon?" Kai asked.

Princess Seris already knew the answer, because she had been keeping track of the moon’s phases ever since the Silver Moon began singing again.

"Nineteen days," Princess Seris said quietly.

[Kai]

"I know," Kai whispered, and he closed his fist around the mark on his hand. "He’s not just a customer anymore. He’s working for it."

[Current divinity points: 36.]

[338 days. Ninety-eight true believers to go]