26. Torgan #2
That sounds more likely.
On the second day, couriers begin arriving from Starling Vale.
Arabella sends mill receipts and statements from three suppliers.
Lyra sends June's accounts, two lease letters, and a note informing us that Petra at the flower stall has panicked quite usefully.
Noemi sends her inventory record for the stolen draught along with a signed statement describing its effects, and then Noemi herself arrives, because Ma refuses to trust magical evidence to paper alone.
Pa writes to the trade council. Duran Ironhoof's cousin brings us a Crown auditor who has wanted an excuse to inspect the Merreach books for two years. Kenna rides from dockmaster to dockmaster and collects statements from every captain forced to accept Voss prices.
Brynna builds the figures. Lissy makes them understandable.
Every morning another section of muslin appears across the library table. Lissy pins each new account into place while Brynna checks every total twice, and they work together disturbingly well.
"Your number is wrong," Lissy tells her on the third afternoon.
Brynna looks up slowly. "My number is not wrong."
"This invoice is for twelve bolts. You recorded twenty-one."
Brynna takes the page. The silence goes on long enough that I put down my pen. Lissy waits, and Brynna scratches out the figure. "I was testing you," she says gruffly.
Lissy smiles. "Of course."
I look down at my own papers before either of them notices me smiling.
On the fourth day, we rebuild the days after Saskia's wedding. Noemi gives us the window. Mirelle was dosed after the wedding and before she gave Caden back his ring.
"Where did she eat?" Lissy asks.
"At home," Ma says. "She hardly went anywhere."
"Who visited?"
"Half the clan."
"Anybody from Valeforth?"
Ma starts to answer, then stops.
Caden lifts his head. "The welcome supper."
Everyone looks at him.
"The evening after the wedding," he says. "My father wanted a formal dinner before Mirelle, and I announced the betrothal." Ma's face changes while he's still speaking. "Princeton poured the drinks."
My stomach turns.
"What did Mirelle have?" Lissy asks.
"Elderflower cordial. I had wine."
"Did he touch both cups?"
"Yes."
"Did he pour them himself?"
Caden closes his eyes. "Yes."
"How long after that did she return the ring?"
"Two days."
The room goes quiet. How did none of us think of that supper? We have gone over that week a hundred times.
Because it looked like nothing. Mirelle came home from that dinner perfectly well and stayed perfectly well for two days, and a male poured a cup for his future sister-in-law and made a joke while he did it, and everyone at the table thanked him for the toast.
I would have thanked him, too. It was completely innocent. There shouldn’t have been anything amiss.
"We still can't prove he put the draught in it," I say.
"No," Lissy agrees, looking down at the timelines. "But he knows whether he did." She sounds smug. I looked at her, curious.
Meanwhile, Pa frowns. "Knowing and admitting are separate matters."
"Then don't accuse him," she says.
"What?"
"Tell him less than he expects. Let him tell us where we're wrong."
I understand before Pa does. "He'll correct the accusation."
Lissy nods. "Princeton came into my shop once. He couldn't stand that I knew more about my own lease than he did. Men like that need everybody to understand how clever they are."
"Will he speak in front of his father?" Ma asks.
"He shouldn't," I say.
Lissy looks at me. "But he will."
Yes. He will, and he'll enjoy doing it.
On the fifth day, a rider comes from Grammy's cottage with the letter I sent after Lissy. The envelope is still sealed. Grammy has written across the front of it in large, unhurried letters.
SHE LEFT BEFORE THIS CAME. TRY NOT TO MAKE ME RIDE THERE.
Lissy reads it alone in the library window while the light is still good. I stay on the other side of the room with Brynna and pretend to understand a column of warehouse numbers.
Does she believe any of it? Does it make one thing better, or have I only handed her something else to carry? Should I ask her?
No. Not while the Vosses are still standing.
"You aren't reading that," Brynna says without lifting her head.
"I am."
"You've had that page a quarter of an hour, and it's a list of barrel weights." She turns her own page over. "She's read yours three times. I counted."
My chest goes tight. "Why would you count?"
"Because you won't ask her, and one of us has to know where things stand." Brynna dips her pen. "She put it in her apron, not her satchel. People keep things in an apron when they intend to keep touching them."
"Brynna."
"I'm telling you what I observed. I don't draw conclusions from insufficient data." She writes a figure down and underlines it. "Draw your own."
When Lissy folds the letter, she puts it inside her apron. She doesn't look at me for a long time.
Then she brings me another statement to sign, and we keep working.
The Crown enters the warehouse on Tanner's Row on market day.
I am nowhere near it. Neither is Lissy. That decision takes three arguments, one threat from Ma, and Pa saying my name in the tone that ended disagreements when I was eight years old.
"If an orc lord is standing there when the warrant is served, the story becomes the orc lord," Pa says.
He's right. I hate it.
The auditor goes in with two magistrates and Kenna's angriest dockmaster as a witness.
Harek watches from a fish stall across the row and tells us afterward that Princeton doesn't run.
He is sitting inside the clerk's cage with the true ledgers open in front of him when the magistrates come through the door.
He closes the largest book beneath one hand, smiles, and asks whether his father knows they are there.
The auditor is a small gray male with spectacles and no interest whatsoever in being impressed.
"His Grace's knowledge is rather the question," he says.
Princeton's smile stops working.
The warehouse is sealed before noon. Copies of the private accounts reach the Hall the next morning, and Brynna and Lissy sit side by side at the library table working through them while the auditor watches. What if there's nothing in there? What if he was careful for once in his life?
It's Lissy who finds the payment.
She goes very still, and when I ask her what she's found she turns the book toward me instead of answering. A payment from Princeton's private account to a spell-broker in Valeforth, made the morning after Saskia's wedding.
The notation reads identification and discretion.
"He didn't buy anything," Lissy says quietly. "He paid a man to tell him what he already had. And to keep quiet about it afterward."
Brynna checks the account number. "It's his."
The auditor writes down the broker's name.
"Can you compel him to speak?" Lissy asks.
"I suspect I won't have to." He closes his gray ledger. "Discretion is often less appealing once shackles become involved."
By evening the broker has confirmed that a young nobleman brought him an unlabelled draught in a pale glass vial and paid to learn what it did.
So Princeton went through my coat without knowing what he'd find. He took a vial with nothing written on it, carried it to Valeforth, and paid a stranger to tell him what he was holding.
Why empty an orc lord's coat pocket at all?
Then I remember the gallery. The Duke beside that cold window, asking whether there might be something on Mirelle's side instead. Watching my face while he asked it.
The vial was in my breast pocket the whole time he did it.
He read me the way he reads a schedule, and then he sent his son to find out what I was carrying.
It isn't enough on its own. A payment proves Princeton handled the stolen potion. It doesn't prove where he put it. For that we still need his mouth.
Two days after the warehouse falls, the Duke requests a meeting between the families to resolve all outstanding matters. The request comes through counsel, in writing, and with enough courtesy to poison a horse.
Pa agrees.
The Duke thinks he's coming here to negotiate. He has no idea Lissy built the table he'll be sitting at.