Chapter 247: Paying Debts

Mira didn’t say a single word on the walk back from the market square, and Kai knew better than to ask her what was wrong. It was that look again, the same one she had worn on the road to the Vallen estate, when she had held her father’s deed so tightly that her knuckles turned white. When Mira had that look, it meant she was thinking something all the way through to the end before she said it out loud.

It wasn’t until that afternoon, at Hale’s dining table, while everyone else was arguing about the Conclave, that she finally spoke.

"I am going to pay him," Mira said.

The table went quiet, and every head in the room turned towards her.

"Pay who?" Garrick asked.

"The salesman," Mira said. "Two hundred gold pieces, and real ones this time."

Kai looked at her as if she had completely lost her mind.

"Mira, you don’t owe him anything," Kai said. "He put you in chains and stood you up on that stage like a piece of furniture."

"I know what he did," Mira said, and her voice was very calm. "I was there when he did it. But Draven isn’t going to use him to talk about what he did to me. He’s going to use him to talk about what you did to him. Once the debt is paid, there is no theft left to talk about, just a man who got his money." She pulled a heavy leather purse out of the pocket of her dress and dropped it on the table with a solid thud. "The King sent me this, this morning. It’s payment from the crown for my father."

No one said anything for a long while.

"That’s your father’s money," Kai said softly.

"Yes," Mira said. "And my father would have loved nothing more than to spend it buying his daughter back from a slave trader, fair and square, so that no one could ever say she was stolen." She met Kai’s eyes across the table, and hers were bright. "This isn’t for you, Kai. This is for me. I want to be free, and I want to own that freedom myself."

[Faith gained. Mira Vallen: +2%. Status: Free.]

Kai had nothing to say to that, so he just nodded, and Mira nodded back.

They made their way back to the market square an hour before dark, and this time all of them went together. The salesman was still sitting at his little table next to the auction stage, eating a sausage on a stick and counting his money for what was probably the third time that day. He dropped his sausage in the dirt when he saw Mira walking towards him with the Holy Champion on one side of her and Garrick on the other.

Mira didn’t speak at first, and instead she simply untied the purse and poured its contents out onto the salesman’s table, two hundred gold pieces, real ones this time, and they scattered across the wood and spilled over the edge into his lap.

"Bite them," Mira said.

The salesman looked up at her, and then back down at the pile of gold in front of him.

"Bite them," Mira repeated. "Bite every single one of them if you want to, and they still won’t turn into anything."

The salesman picked up one of the coins with shaking fingers and bit into it, and it stayed gold.

"Two hundred gold pieces, for Mira Vallen," Mira said, loud enough that half the market could hear her. "Paid in full, by Mira Vallen. And I would like a receipt, please."

The salesman looked at the gold in front of him, then at the crowd that was growing around his table, and then at Elowen, standing quietly behind Mira with one hand resting on the hilt of her sword. He pulled a sheet of paper and a small bottle of ink out of his coat, and he wrote out a bill of sale with Mira’s name on both the seller’s line and the buyer’s line.

He signed it and handed it to Mira without once looking up at her.

"The debt is paid," the salesman muttered, still staring down at the gold.

"Say it to the Conclave," Mira said, and she folded the paper and tucked it into her dress, right next to her father’s letter and the King’s warrant.

As they walked away from the market square, Kai heard cheering start up somewhere behind them, from the stalls and the carts and the people who had stopped to watch. He didn’t turn around, because he knew that if he did, his face would give him away in front of everyone.

[You are crying a little]

"I’m not," Kai whispered.

[Yes, you are. I always know when you cry. It is all right. I am crying a little too]

The second debt was harder for Kai, because he didn’t even know the man’s name.

The bearded guard had been the very first person in Veyrath to try to stick him with a spear. On that first day in the market, Kai had stood there in his taco boxers and told everyone he was a god, just so they wouldn’t kill him. He had humiliated that man in front of the whole market square, and the poor guard had ended up face down in a pile of cabbages.

It took Justiciar Hale only one question to the captain of the city watch to find out where the man was. Kai walked down to the watch house in the lower district by himself, because this felt like something he needed to do alone.

The guard was sitting on a bench outside the watch house, cleaning his boots, and he looked up when Kai’s shadow fell across him.

He was a big man with a thick brown beard, and Kai recognized him at once. Then the guard smiled at him, and Kai realized that he knew him from somewhere else too.

"You," Kai said slowly. "You’re the meat pie guy."

The guard let out a big, booming laugh, and the two watchmen playing dice on the other side of the street looked up from their game.

"It was a bad pie," the guard said. "Burnt on the bottom and raw in the middle. You saved me from having to eat it."

"You were at the arena," Kai said. "And outside Hale’s gate, holding the sign."

"I made that sign myself," the guard said, beaming. "My daughter helped me with the pie part."

Kai sat down on the bench next to the guard, because his legs were starting to feel shaky underneath him.

"I came to apologize," Kai said. "For that first day. I lied to you and humiliated you in front of the whole market, and you ended up in a pile of cabbages."

"Yes, you did," the guard said with a chuckle. "You told me you were a god, and I wanted to run you through with my spear for it." He set his boot down on the bench beside him. "A man came to see me yesterday, though. Silver hair, really nice shoes. He offered me twenty gold to stand up at the Conclave and tell them what you did to me."

Kai’s stomach dropped all the way to his feet, and he wished he had never come down here.

"What did you tell him?" Kai asked.

"That I would do it," the guard said, and when he saw the look on Kai’s face, he laughed again. "I will stand up there and tell them everything. How you lied to me on your first day here. And how you came down to the watch house to apologize for it, which no lord in this city has ever done for me in my whole life." He paused for a moment and scratched at his beard. "I didn’t take his gold, though. It didn’t feel right to get paid for telling the truth."

The guard held out one big, calloused hand, and Kai shook it.

"Bors," the guard said. "That’s my name, by the way. You never asked me the first time."

"I was a little preoccupied," Kai said. "Running."

"In those shorts, I would have run too," Bors said.

[Faith gained. Bors: +6%. Status: Amused.]

Kai made his way back up the hill to Hale’s house in the dark, and he felt lighter than he had since the fish woman had come screaming up to the gate that morning. By the time he got through the gate, it was well past dinner, and Princess Seris was sitting on the front steps with her notebook in her lap and a look on her face that he had learned to dread.

"I have been reading the old laws of the Conclave," Princess Seris said, without even saying hello. "Hale keeps a copy of them in his study."

"Of course you have," Kai said.

"I found one that I did not know about," Princess Seris said, and she held up her notebook to show him the passage she had copied out and circled three times. "The god who stands before the seven churches must give them a proof of his power, so that they can see it with their own eyes."

"Okay," Kai said. "What kind of proof?"

"The churches will choose," Princess Seris said. "Each church may offer a proof, and the Conclave will vote on which one to use." She swallowed hard before she went on. "Elder Voss is still considered the elder of the Iron Father under the old laws, because no one has removed him from his office in front of the Conclave. He has already sent in his church’s proof."

"What is it?" Kai asked, even though he really didn’t want to know.

Princess Seris looked down at her notebook and read it out to him in a very small voice.

"The god must strike the Sun Mark at the center of the Hall of Seven Doors," Princess Seris read. "With a single blow of his own divine power. From thirty paces away."

Kai slowly sat down on the step next to her.

[Kai]

"I know," Kai whispered.

[Aiming]

"I know," Kai whispered.

[343 days. 2 days until the Conclave]