Chapter 176: Famine Ledger

The next shipment wasn’t just supplies.

It was the supply route for all of the northern shelters.

Through the grating, Austin Veyron watched as Vordessa’s broker pulled out a black ledger quill. Frostmarket’s route was displayed across the auction table: grain, coal for heat, medicine, and the thin trail of a sea lane that would carry it all through Glasswake. Every line glowed white, and every one of them was a route that Austin Veyron and the group knew. They had walked those roads. Seeing them laid out on an auction table sickened him.

"The buyer will have sole decision over who receives the shipment, and over its survival terms," the broker announced.

Queen Ysara stood by the table holding the debt chime. It glowed as the broker spoke, and she held it tight.

"The shipment will make it through if it’s guarded by one authority," Ysara told the buyers. "If everyone thinks they have a right to the route, it won’t get through at all."

"That’s stealing," Tessa said.

Joren looked out the tower window. The workers outside were loading the shipment under the eyes of the debt patrols, and his sister was one of them. He could see the blue bill token around her wrist as she loaded another supply crate. She was hunched over beneath the weight, and she never once looked up toward the tower.

"They’ll make the workers deliver the shipment on debt terms," he said quietly. "Once a buyer has control over the route, every dock worker will be put on a winter debt advance."

"We’ll need to see the full auction sheet to dispute it," Tessa said, pulling out the map case.

"The sheet on the auction table is missing information," Ceryn confirmed. "The labor and survival terms aren’t shown on the buyers’ sheet."

All around the table below, the buyers were taking their seats. They pulled out their sheets and spoke with their clerks about what they had. They glanced at the map, then back down at their sheets. None of them seemed troubled by what they saw. It was just business to them, the same as it had been every winter before, and the people on the docks were only numbers in a column.

Ceryn had the seal from the Black Mouth Exchange in their pocket. It had traveled a long way to get here. They placed it on the ice grating, and silver letters spread across the bars, slowly building until they revealed what was hidden beneath the auction table.

BUYER HAS THE RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT IS NEEDED.

Austin Veyron’s wrist mark burned when he read the words.

DEVOUR wanted to consume the ledger. Everything in that tower was debt and route information, and Austin Veyron could feel the hunger in all of it.

Veyra noticed him staring at the ledger.

"What do you want?"

"I want the ledger."

"What would that create for you?"

"A record of every debt that has ever been committed."

"If you consume that information, you’ll just be creating more debt," Sable said.

Austin Veyron let out a breath. "Then we’ll consume the claim, not the information."

DEVOUR didn’t want to consume only the claim. It told Austin Veyron to consume the information, because the information was more powerful. He knew that voice. It always sounded calm and reasonable, and it was always wrong. It had told him to take the Hunger Road. The storm and the ice-heart had come with the same voice, DEVOUR telling him it was the right choice.

The broker rang the bell for the auction to begin.

"Who would like to place a bid?"

Austin Veyron entered the auction room through the workers’ door. He felt warm the moment he stepped inside. The room smelled strongly of wine, candles, and burning wood. After two days on the ice, it was almost strange to be warm. Out on the docks, the workers didn’t even have enough smoke rising from their chimneys to heat their hands.

All the buyers looked at Austin Veyron as he came through the door. Their masks turned toward him, and the bidding stopped.

"We will not be bidding on this shipment," Tessa said as Ceryn set the Black Mouth seal on the auction table. "This is a supply shipment, and its survival terms are being hidden."

"We do not accept challenges from anyone who isn’t a buyer of this port," the broker said from behind his smiling mask.

Ceryn showed them a copy of the route sheet with the missing information written on it. "We have proof that these terms are attached to the shipment. This is a public route. No buyer should have control over who receives it."

The buyers began to murmur to each other behind their white masks.

One buyer stood up from her seat. "If no one controls the route, how will it be delivered?"

"Workers," Tessa said, placing the count sheet on the ice table. "The people who deliver it now will keep delivering it. They just won’t be working under debt."

Joren walked into the room through the workers’ door. He brought his sister and two other workers with him. The buyers saw the blue tokens on the workers’ wrists and stared at them. Joren’s sister held her head high, but Austin Veyron could see her hands shaking at her sides. The buyers stared at the workers as if the furniture had suddenly stood up and started speaking.

"Every advance becomes three weeks of unpaid loading at the port," Joren said. "The port thinks that protects the route, but my sister has delivered food for five years and is still in debt for the first meal she ever received."

The broker signaled for his ledger enforcers. They rose from beneath the chairs, wearing black paper coats, with hands made of blue ice. Each one carried a bill hook marked with a red number.

PAY FOR WHAT YOU SAY.

Rin shot an arrow at the first enforcer and broke its bill hook. The hook’s number tried to crawl toward Joren’s sister’s token, but Orena knocked it away with her spear. Veyra stopped another ledger enforcer from reaching the workers and broke its bill hook with her blade. Nyra pulled the workers behind a pillar, the heart shard in her hand. Sable stood in front of the workers with the crown shard raised. Any red numbers that tried to reach her faded to gray the moment they touched the shard.

Chaos erupted in the auction room. Buyers ran from the table, knocking over chairs and spilling wine across the ice. Servants ran to hide behind the braziers. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Austin Veyron saw the clause glowing beneath the routes on the table.

BUYER HAS THE RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT IS NEEDED.

All of the buyers’ routes were linked to the auction table. If he consumed the entire map, he could stop the shipment. But he would be consuming the buyers’ hunger along with it, and the workers’ debts, and the supply routes too.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The clause that gives a buyer the right to decide what is needed. Not the shipment. Not the workers. Not the routes."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable agreed.

Austin Veyron placed the white root chain on the auction table, and DEVOUR opened. The clause tasted like an entire warehouse of food with only one key.

BUYER HAS THE RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT IS NEEDED.

He consumed right.

The table cracked with a sharp sound that echoed through the room, like a frozen lake splitting in the spring.

All of the buyers’ routes on the table split apart into separate trails. No single buyer had control over Frostmarket’s shipment anymore. The tokens on the workers’ wrists faded to a dull blue. The enforcers stopped moving, and their bill hooks fell to the ice.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Joren’s sister took the token off her wrist and placed it on the auction table.

"I am not working for debt," she said.

One by one, more workers took off their tokens and placed them on the table.

A buyer stood and walked away from the table. "I will not be bidding on this route."

More buyers followed him. By the time everyone had a chance to react, half of the buyers had walked away.

Queen Ysara held on to the debt chime even tighter.

"You will make them suffer," she said. "Supplies need someone controlling them, or they won’t be delivered."

"No," Veyra replied. "They need a route."

Tessa read the true supply counts to everyone, and Ceryn posted them on a board outside the auction room. Joren and the workers began calling the supply counts down to the workers below.

Outside, the dock workers stopped working for the debt patrols. They all gathered around the board, looking at the route information for Frostmarket. The patrols stood and watched but did nothing to stop them. Some of them shifted their weight and looked at each other, unsure of what they were supposed to do now that no one was telling them.

A strike began. No one knew exactly when it started or who started it, but it spread throughout the port. Workers told other workers about the board, and the word spread faster than the patrols could keep up.

The broker was not happy about the strike.

He grabbed the debt chime from Queen Ysara.

"This port will be difficult to control with you here," the broker snarled. "But the ledger is more than one tower."

A crack opened in the ice floor behind him.

Water rose up through the crack and flooded across the ice. Buyers stepped back and held their ledgers above their heads. The broker backed toward the crack in the floor. Ysara followed him, and for a brief second her eyes met Austin Veyron’s. She looked angry, but Austin Veyron saw something else in her eyes too. She looked almost afraid of what she had just seen.

"Where are you going?" Veyra asked.

"The sea vault," the broker answered. "Where debt is used to feed others."

The crack widened, and they disappeared into the water with the debt chime.

Once they were gone, the crack sealed itself. Only a thin line and a spreading puddle of water were left where they had gone.

The tower shook, and dust fell from the ceiling.

"They’re going to use the debt to feed the ships south of us," Joren said.

Austin Veyron looked down at the water seeping across the floor of the auction room. His mark glowed once and pointed down toward the bottom of the port. Veyra followed his gaze and lowered her blade to her side. Neither of them said anything. They both knew where the chime had gone, and they both knew they would have to follow it.

The shipment was free.

The workers began building a list of the ships that could carry the supplies and the people who needed paid shifts. It took longer than having one person decide who got what, but no blue tokens were being handed out. Joren’s sister was the first to grab a count board and walk it to the north side of the warehouse. Workers gathered around her to see what they were carrying for the first time. They all talked among themselves about the routes and what needed to happen next. It was loud, and it took longer than Austin Veyron expected, but it made him happy.

But somewhere below them, the debt chime was already being used to feed more than one tower of debt.