Chapter 142: — "The Accountant"

Seraphina made contact at the north corner of the square, in full view of about thirty people, because there was no version of this that worked quietly.

She stepped out of a doorway directly into Erenna’s path.

Petta made a small sound and grabbed Erenna’s sleeve.

“You.”

“Sir—”

“Where have you been.”

“I’ve been—”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” said Seraphel of North Aldera, in a voice that carried further than it needed to, “which I find extremely rude, and I’d like an explanation.”

And Erenna — who had six days of household sympathy behind her and a fifteen-year-old boy in front of her — did something Seraphina had not rehearsed.

She stood up straight.

“No,” said Erenna.

The square went quiet.

“…What.”

“I said no.” Erenna’s chin came up. Her voice wobbled beautifully, which was infuriating, because they had spent three days on the wobble and she had not been able to produce it once. “I’ve not been avoiding you, I’ve been working, because that’s what people do, and I’d thank you to stop appearing at me.”

Somebody at the fish stall said “hah.”

Seraphina, who had approximately four seconds to decide whether to be delighted or furious, went with furious, because furious was in character.

“You’d thank me—”

“I would.”

“You’d—”

“I would thank you,” said Erenna, “to leave me alone, and to stop giving me things, because I don’t want them, and everyone’s talking, and it’s humiliating.”

Petta, holding onto her sleeve, was staring at her with enormous eyes.

Seraphina understood, in the space of about half a second, that she was being handed something.

Everyone’s talking. It’s humiliating.

That’s for the house. That’s not for me. He’s building a reason for them to keep her indoors and off the street where I can reach her, which means something’s changed, which means he needs the house closer around him—

She let her mouth do something petulant.

“Fine,” she said.

“Fine?”

“Fine. Keep the shawl. Burn it. I don’t care.” She turned, and then, over her shoulder, in the exact tone of a boy who had never once been refused anything: “I’ll see you again anyway.”

Then she walked off.

Behind her, Petta said, in a voice like a bell across the whole square: “What a horrid little worm.”

Which Seraphina thought about for the rest of the day and which improved her mood considerably.

The drop came at the grain stall.

Erenna paid for two measures of barley and put her hand flat on the top of the sack for four seconds instead of two.

Four was different.

Four meant something, come tonight.

The wall behind Halven’s yard was nine feet, old brick, and the whole eastern side was in shadow after tenth bell.

Seraphina went over it at half past.

Out of costume. Dark. Hair off her face and a hood over it and nothing on her that would identify a lord’s son from North Aldera in the extremely unlikely and completely unsurvivable event that somebody looked out of a window.

Erenna was already in the yard.

Sitting on an upturned crate by the woodpile with a shawl round her shoulders, in the dark, in a place that a girl might plausibly sit if she couldn’t sleep — which was the sort of detail Eren thought about without being asked and which Seraphina had stopped being surprised by two years ago.

She dropped down beside the woodpile.

“You’re late.”

“I’m early—”

“You’re eleven minutes late.”

“I had to wait for the — how do you know it’s eleven minutes.”

“Because I’ve been sitting on a crate,” said Eren, “in the cold, for eleven minutes, thinking about it.”

He gave it to her fast and flat and without a single joke, which was how she knew it was bad.

“There’s a room on the north side that’s locked and I’ve never seen it open. Osha has the key on her and she doesn’t put it down.”

“That’s not—”

“Wait. Second thing. There’s a man who comes to the house every eleven days. He came on my third night. Nobody uses his name, they call him the accountant, and when he’s here Halven doesn’t come out of the study and nobody’s allowed up the north stairs.”

“Eleven days—”

“Which means he’s back in four.”

Seraphina crouched there in the dark.

“That’s the room,” she said.

“That’s the room.”

“That’s — Eren, that’s the whole thing, that’s what we came for—”

“There’s a third thing,” said Eren.

“Osha’s watching me.”

“How much.”

“Enough that I’ve noticed. Not enough that I know what she’s noticed.” He pulled the shawl closer, which was, she realised, not for effect — the yard was genuinely freezing and he had been out here eleven minutes waiting for her. “She sent Petta today instead of coming herself. That’s the first time she’s let me out of her own sight in six days. Either she’s stopped worrying about me—”

“—or she’s started watching the house instead of the street.”

“Yes.”

“Because she thinks whatever’s wrong is inside.”

“Yes,” said Eren.

The yard was very quiet.

“I said something stupid,” he said.

“You said several stupid things, I’ve had a report—”

“I said a grain of wheat.”

“…You said what?”

“I said I was so poor I couldn’t afford a grain of wheat.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “It came out of me and I heard it leaving and there was nothing I could do about it. And she stopped. Only for a second. But she stopped, Seraphina, and I’ve been in that kitchen six days and I’ve watched that woman not stop for anything.”

“Nobody’s going to hang you for a grain of wheat—”

“Nobody’s going to hang me for one thing,” said Eren. “That’s not how it works with a woman like that. She keeps a list. And she’ll never say a word about it until the list gets long enough, and then she’ll say all of it at once, to Halven, in a kitchen, and I’ll have about four seconds.”

Seraphina looked at the house.

Lamps out on the first floor. One still on at the north end.

“Come out,” she said.

“What?”

“Come out. Tonight. You’ve got the room, you’ve got the accountant, you’ve got the eleven days — that’s enough, we take it back, we tell them, they send someone who does this properly—”

“And then what.”

“Then it’s not you—”

“Then it’s nobody,” said Eren. “Sevrid said four attempts. Every one of them failed at the approach because somebody warned him. If I come out now, the house closes, and in four days the accountant walks up those stairs and out again and nobody ever gets near this again.”

“Eren—”

“Four days.”

“She has a list—”

“She has a list that isn’t finished,” said Eren. “I’ve got four days before it matters. I need three.”

Seraphina stayed crouched by the woodpile for a long moment.

“You’re doing the thing,” she said.

“What thing.”

“Where you decide something and then present it as though we’re discussing it.”

“That’s not—”

“You did it with the girl role. You threw the argument. You picked facial hair.”

Silence.

“Mira told you that.”

“Mira told me that.”

“Mira,” said Eren, with feeling, “has an enormous mouth for someone who says eleven words a day—”

“Was she right.”

He didn’t answer.

The lamp at the north end went out.

“Three days,” said Seraphina.

“Three days.”

“And if she says one word to Halven—”

“Then I’ll go over the wall and you’ll be extremely annoyed with me for the rest of your life,” said Eren. “Yes. Understood. Noted. Formally noted.”

She stood up.

Got a hand on the top of the wall.

And then, because she could not help it and had never once been able to:

“You were good today. In the square.”

“Was I.”

“You did the wobble.”

“I’ve been doing the wobble all week—”

“You’ve been doing nothing, you couldn’t do the wobble in the storehouse for three days—”

“Yes, well,” said Eren, from his crate, in the dark, pulling the shawl in. “There wasn’t anybody watching in the storehouse.”

She went over the wall.

The list got to four items on the second day.

Osha had not intended to keep counting. It had simply continued.

One. Grain of wheat.

Two. The water barrel.

Three. She had watched Erenna come down the back stairs in the dark on the fifth night, at a quarter past eleven, moving so quietly that Osha — who had been standing in the passage for entirely unrelated reasons involving a suspected mouse — had not heard her until she was four feet away.

Nobody moved like that by accident. Osha had been in service twenty-six years. Frightened girls were loud. Frightened girls bumped into things.

Four. Erenna had come back in from the yard on Tuesday night with cold hands and no explanation, and had said, before anyone asked her anything at all, “I couldn’t sleep.”

Nobody volunteers a reason for something nobody’s questioned.

Osha put the onions down and looked out of the window for a long time.

Then she went and found the second-best knife, and put it in her apron, where it had not lived for nine years.

Two streets away, Seraphina was going quietly insane.

“Three days.”

“Yes.”

“He said three days.”

“He did.”

“Mira, it’s been one—”

“It’s been one day,” Mira agreed, “and you’ve walked past that house four times, and if you go a fifth I’m going to break your ankle and explain it to Sevrid afterward.”

Seraphina sat down.

Then stood up.

Then sat down again.

“You’re doing a thing with your hands.”

“I don’t do a thing with my hands.”

“You do a thing with your hands,” said Mira, “and you’ve been doing it since the wall, and I would like you to know that I’ve never once mentioned it and I’m only mentioning it now because you’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

The accountant came on the fourth day, one day early.

That was the first thing that went wrong.

He arrived at second bell in a plain coat on a plain horse and went in the front door like a man visiting an uncle, and Mira — who had been watching that door for eleven days from a window she was paying too much for — swore in a way Seraphina had never heard from her.

“That’s him.”

“You’re certain.”

“Nobody’s used that door since we got here except Halven.” Mira was already moving. “Eleven days. He said eleven days. He came in ten.”

“So Eren doesn’t know he’s—”

“Eren’s in the kitchen,” said Mira. “Eren has no idea.”

He found out about four minutes later, in the worst possible way, which was that Osha said:

“North stairs are shut. Nobody up them. Nobody near them. You hear me?”

And Erenna, who had been scrubbing a pot, said, “Yes,” in a completely normal voice — while her entire operation collapsed and rebuilt itself inside her head in about a second and a half.

He’s here. He’s ten days. I’ve got tonight or I’ve got nothing.

And Osha, drying her hands, watching that face very carefully:

“You’re not curious.”

“About what?”

“About why the north stairs are shut.”

Erenna looked up.

And then said the single most useful thing she had said in eleven days, which was:

“…Should I be?”

Nothing. Blank. Faintly worried. The exact face of a girl who has been told a rule and is anxious about breaking it and has not thought one inch past that.

Osha stood there for a moment.

Then said, “No. Finish the pot,” and went out, and Erenna scrubbed the pot for four more minutes with her hands not entirely steady.

She went up at half past one.

Not the north stairs. The north stairs were watched. She went up the back and along the upper passage and came at the north side from the wrong direction, on the grounds that nobody guards the way somebody won’t come.

The locked room was open.

That was the thing. That was the whole reason for eleven days of scrubbing pots: the accountant came, and the room opened, and for one night in eleven there was a door with a light under it.

She stood in the passage.

Voices. Two. Halven and someone with a dry flat delivery who spoke in numbers and place names and never once used a full sentence.

She got eleven minutes.

Eleven minutes flat against a wall in the dark, memorising, because writing was not survivable and because she had never in her life needed to write anything down.

Then the chair moved.

She got four steps back down the passage before the door opened behind her, and the light came out into the corridor, and a voice said:

“Girl.”

She stopped.

She turned around with her face already doing something — small, startled, apologetic, entirely useless — and Halven stood in the doorway with a lamp, and behind him a thin grey man was standing up from a table.

“I’m sorry,” said Erenna. “I heard — I thought someone called—”

“What are you doing up here.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

And there it was. The same sentence. The one she’d used in the kitchen four days ago and had regretted immediately, because it was the sentence that answered a question nobody had asked.

Halven looked at her.

And the thin grey man behind him said, without looking up from his papers:

“Where’s she from.”

Downstairs, in the dark of the yard, something hit the wall.

Not loudly. A single flat sound, like a stone, from outside.

Then again.

Then a third time.

Halven’s head turned.

“…That’s the yard.”

“That’s the wall,” said the accountant, sharply.

And then, from outside, at a volume that carried through two floors of an entire house, a young man’s voice — furious, cracking, and absolutely unmistakable to every single person in that building:

“ERENNA! ERENNA, COME OUT HERE, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE—”

What happened next took nine seconds and Osha would describe it afterward as the worst nine seconds of her professional life.

Halven went past Erenna at a speed she would not have credited in a man that size.

The accountant swept the table into a case in one movement and was through a side door before the lamp had stopped swinging.

Osha came out of the kitchen with a knife and got as far as the yard door.

And out in the dark, standing in the middle of Halven’s own yard, was a fifteen-year-old boy in a coat that cost more than the house, red in the face, absolutely incandescent, holding a rock.

“WHERE IS SHE—”

“You’re on my property—”

“I DON’T CARE—”

“Son—”

“DON’T SON ME—” The boy’s voice cracked upward, appallingly, in the manner of a boy whose voice was still deciding what it wanted to be. “SHE’S BEEN AVOIDING ME FOR ELEVEN DAYS—”

Petta, from an upstairs window, in genuine awe: “He’s got a rock.”

Osha stood in the yard door with a knife in her hand and watched the most powerful man in Vellmark spend four full minutes negotiating with an enraged child.

She watched him take the rock off him.

She watched the boy nearly cry and then get furious about nearly crying.

She watched him be walked to the gate and shoved through it and shout one last thing over his shoulder that nobody could make out.

And at some point during all of that, standing there with a knife she was not going to need, Osha’s list quietly stopped mattering — because the list had been built out of small strange things, and a lord’s son throwing rocks at your wall in the middle of the night about a kitchen girl was not a small strange thing.

It was an enormous stupid obvious thing.

And enormous stupid obvious things have a way of eating everything smaller.

Poor mite, she thought, watching Erenna come down the back stairs white-faced with her hands over her mouth. Poor mite. He’s mad about her.

Erenna came out over the wall two nights later, at the end of the eleventh day, with nothing in her hands and everything in her head.

Mira had a cart.

Nobody spoke until they were four streets out.

Then Seraphina said, “Well?”

And Eren said, “Nineteen names, four dates, two river routes, and the reason the second attempt failed four years ago.”

Mira stopped the cart.

“…Say that again.”

“Nineteen names.”

“You memorised nineteen—”

“I had eleven minutes and nothing to write with and a very strong incentive,” said Eren. “Also, I’d like it noted that I nearly died, and that I was saved by a rock.”

“That was the worst improvisation I have ever seen in my life,” said Mira, some time later, in the dark, on the road.

“It worked.”

“It was appalling, Seraphina. You screamed a woman’s name into a house at two in the morning holding a rock—”

“It worked—”

“You did the voice crack,” said Eren, from the back of the cart, with enormous feeling. “You did the voice crack deliberately.”

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did—”

“It happened naturally—”

“You’ve never once in four years—”

“It happened naturally, Eren,” said Seraphina, “under stress, because I was standing in a murderer’s yard at two in the morning having decided in about four seconds that the only way to empty that house was to become the most embarrassing person in Varen.”

There was a pause.

“That’s the best thing anyone’s ever done for me,” said Eren.

“Don’t.”

“No, I’d like to—”

“Don’t.”

“You threw a rock at a wall—”

“I threw three,” said Seraphina. “The first two didn’t carry.”