Chapter 177: Sea Vault

There was another market beneath the ice harbor that fed off the debt chime, one that sold hunger itself.

When Joren placed his hand on a rusty wheel in the auction house floor, a black crack formed and opened up beneath them.

They followed Joren down a set of steps that led under the Famine Ledger tower. A current of freezing water flowed down into the hole as the team followed him into the depths. Above them, Glasswake was still holding its open count. Through Tessa’s relay token, Joren could hear his sister’s voice from one of the port’s relay stations, telling him that the workers at the docks were counting out the routes and refusing blue-token shipments at the port houses.

"We can keep the docks open for now," his sister said. "Just find the chime."

"I will," Joren said, his eyes closed.

Tessa held the token close to Joren, and he listened to his sister’s voice for just a little too long. Austin Veyron knew why. Having that voice in his ear meant there was still a world above them, and that it hadn’t fallen yet.

The sea vault was carved from black rock older than the port itself. The team passed many engravings on its walls. Ships, sacks of grain, and hands counting with ledgers were carved into the sides of the cave. Many of the symbols had been worn smooth by people brushing against them over the years. The water rose to Austin Veyron’s knees, then to his waist, as the team made their way deeper into the sea vault. It was so cold he could barely breathe with every step he took. Blue bills floated on the water at every turn.

Ceryn pulled one out of the water.

It listed real route information: food from the coast and coal for the winter. Three weeks’ worth of grain was also being carried north.

A line of red text appeared beneath the count.

DEBT TRANSFERS WITH SURVIVAL.

Tessa took the bill from Ceryn and studied it. "The broker is feeding real information into this engine. If we burn it, we’ll lose the routes as well."

"We don’t burn it," Austin Veyron said. "We consume the transfer claim."

"We need to find the engine first." Veyra looked at the water around them. "And make sure we don’t die in these caves."

They followed Joren through a cave system that had once been used to store fish for the harbor. Crates and nets floated in the water, and the team had to work their way around them. "The sea vault should be under the old harbor customs house," Joren said. "There’s an exit at the top, through one of the pumps at the north dock. If things get out of hand, use the red wheel and swim with the current."

"Is the red wheel still working?" Orena asked.

"It was when I was a kid." Joren frowned.

"At least you’re honest," Rin mumbled.

A blue light began to move beneath the water in front of them.

Debt eels came up out of the flooded cave below.

They were slim creatures with black bodies and scales made of ledger slate. Blue bills were wrapped around their bodies, and when they opened their mouths, they were full of teeth. Words appeared on the water as frost, spilling from their mouths.

PAY TO SURFACE.

One of the eels lunged at Nyra.

Rin’s arrow hit the bill wrapped around the eel, and it writhed in pain. The bill fell into the water, then reappeared on another debt eel. Orena hooked the first eel by its tail with her spear and threw it against the wall of the cave.

Austin Veyron watched the command move through the bills the eels were carrying. They weren’t trying to eat the team. They were trying to make them feel as though they owed something just to breathe. Austin Veyron was already starting to feel the effects of the debt. Each breath felt heavier than the last, as if someone were keeping track of every breath he took.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The pay-to-surface clause. Not the water. Not the debt eels. Not the route bills."

"Witnessed," Veyra replied.

"Witnessed," Sable agreed.

Austin Veyron sank his root chain into the freezing water.

DEVOUR opened. The pay-to-surface clause tasted like salt in his lungs and a toll he had to pay just to breathe.

PAY TO SURFACE.

He consumed pay.

The blue bills disappeared from the water.

The debt eels lost interest in the team and began to swim away. One sank to the bottom of the cave, while the others simply swam past them. Austin Veyron felt his breathing return to normal, and he heard Nyra take a deep breath behind him.

The team made it to the sea vault.

It was huge, a flooded cavern beneath the ice harbor, and at its center was an abyssal trade engine. Chains ran from a giant wheel that was turning in the water. Account tablets floated all around the room, with chains attached to them as well. Every survival debt ever taken out at the port was listed on one of these tablets. They all glowed a faint red from the debt stored inside them.

Above the engine, the debt chime was ringing.

Queen Ysara stood on one side of the engine, and the broker stood on the other. His dark-red jacket was soaked through, and the smile on his mask looked even bigger than before.

"You took your time getting here," the broker said to Austin Veyron. "The debt chime and this engine will be in sync soon. A winter meal in Glasswake will be traded for a meal in the Ember Marches, for labor and debt in the north, and for trade at the Black Mouth."

Ysara looked at the floating tablets in the water around her. She didn’t look happy about what was happening. She just looked tired. Her broken crown rested crooked on her head, and the hem of her armor was crusted with salt from the sea below. She looked like someone who had walked down a road without knowing where it would end.

"I didn’t agree to this," Ysara said.

"You agreed to give debt meaning. And meaning always travels," the broker chuckled.

"You were supposed to keep your people safe," Tessa said. "Instead, you sold the north to Vordessa."

"I thought if I could control the debt with my crown, no merchant could starve us out." Ysara looked at the debt chime.

"Now the merchants can control your crown," Tessa replied.

The broker spun the engine.

Tablets began to sink beneath the water and came back up as contracts that floated toward the pipes around the vault.

DEBT TRANSFERS WITH SURVIVAL.

The engine was spreading the debt claim through the route pipes.

Austin Veyron could feel each of the tablets in the vault around him. Hundreds of people owed a debt to someone, and all of them were pulling at the mark on his wrist. He could devour every single one of them and free everyone in this room from debt.

The hunger wanted to devour all of the debt and free the people from having to sell themselves. It told him he would do it with kindness, that he wouldn’t own anyone the way the merchants did. As long as the debt was inside him, no one would ever be sold again.

Veyra put her hand on Austin Veyron’s arm, and he came back to his senses.

"Name it."

"I want to consume all the debt in this vault."

"What would that create?"

"A debt inside of me that I would use to decide who is free."

"Not that," Sable said.

Nyra walked toward the debt chime and pulled the heart shard from her pocket. It glowed blue-black in her hand. "I can pull the debt chime’s resonance away from the engine, but I won’t be able to consume it."

"Do you want to do that?" Austin Veyron asked her.

"Yes."

Nyra lifted the shard toward the chime.

The blue-black light wrapped around the debt chime, and it began to ring a harsher note than before. The engine started to slow, but the broker pulled on the wheel with even more force.

Contract divers rose out of the water around the broker. They were covered in the same slate scales as the debt eels, and each carried a pen with a hook at its end.

Veyra engaged the first contract diver at the top of the steps into the sea vault and knocked the pen out of its hand. Rin shot an arrow through a gap in the second diver’s armor, and it sank to the bottom. Orena pulled Joren behind one of the vault’s pillars when another contract diver lunged at him with a red line of debt from its pen. The line struck the pillar and burned a hole into the stone, but it did no harm to Joren. He looked at the damage it had done to the pillar and nodded at Orena for saving his life.

Tessa and Ceryn began wading through the debt tablets in the water, calling out every food fact that didn’t have a debt clause attached to it.

"Food from Frostmarket. Seventy sacks of grain. No debt clause."

"Coal from Glasswake. Twenty carts of coal. No future debt."

"Medicine from North Ridge. Six crates of medicine. No transfer clause."

As they called out the facts, the tablets began to change color, from red to white.

Austin Veyron looked at the engine and saw the clause controlling it.

SURVIVAL MAY BE OWNED BY ANY BUYER.

This was the clause that let merchants turn someone’s need for food into something they could own. It offered a target that was wide open, but there was one small word he could consume to break it.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The survival-may-be-owned clause. Not the information on the tablets. Not the debt chime. Not the engine itself."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron waded deeper into the water around the trade engine.

All of the tablets showed people who had taken on debt in a moment of need. Someone taking soup during a blizzard. A port worker signing a debt for a winter meal. Austin Veyron knew that if he consumed the debt, it would free them all from working for someone who owned them.

But if he consumed it, he would be the one owning the debt.

Austin Veyron found the clause inside the engine.

SURVIVAL MAY BE OWNED BY ANY BUYER.

DEVOUR opened. The clause tasted like someone selling your life on a ration ticket.

He consumed owned.

The trade engine let out a scream and began to break away from the pipes that connected it to the walls of the vault. Contracts burst out of the pipes and fell into the water as blank pieces of paper. The floating tablets stopped sinking and showed only the food facts listed on them. The whole vault glowed a soft white instead of the red of the debt that had been stored in the engine.

The broker stumbled backward as the engine began to fall apart.

"You can’t take hunger away from the world," he said.

"No," Austin Veyron told him. "But I can take away the debt people owe for being hungry."

The broker ran toward the debt chime.

Nyra’s shard tightened its field around the debt chime, and the chime let out one last ring before the entire sea vault shook.

The broker let go of the chime and ripped himself out of Nyra’s blue-black field by opening a red conduit in the wall behind him. He was pulled into the wall as water began to pour out of the opening.

"Vordessa will open a bigger engine for the debt," he called. "The Sunken Kiln will be where all hunger and debt meet as one."

The broker disappeared into the wall, and the vault began to cave in around them. Debris from the ceiling fell into the water, and a thin stream of water began to pour down from above.

Ysara stood next to the engine as it began to shut down. She looked at Tessa, the debt chime still held in Nyra’s field above her.

"I can’t fix all the debt I have created."

"No," Tessa told her. "But you can stop creating more."

The water was rising in the vault around them.

"Exit!" Joren pointed to the wheel that opened to the north dock pumps. "The red wheel!"

Orena grabbed the wheel and pushed against it with her whole body. It took a few seconds, but the wheel finally gave way, and water began rushing out through the pipes in the vault. Joren let out a small laugh when he realized the wheel still worked.

Tessa took the route information from the tablets and packed it into waterproof containers. Ceryn took the chime’s records and kept them as proof of what the ports had been doing.

The team escaped the rising water of the sea vault, with Veyra keeping her hand on Austin Veyron’s shoulder and Rin leading Joren out of the cave. The current pulled them through the water toward the light above.

Behind them, the abyssal trade engine kept turning slowly as it sank beneath the water.

The sea vault began to collapse around them.

Above them, the workers of Glasswake were still holding the open count on the docks.

Below, the Sunken Kiln waited for them in the depths of the ocean.