Chapter 11 Rathok
ELEVEN
RATHOK
Ileave Ivalys resting in the safe room and slip into Gravebind’s streets.
Gas lamps flicker at intersections, their light swallowed by shadows that pool in doorways and alleys. The smell of ink hangs everywhere—fresh contracts being signed, old debts being collected, the endless machinery of obligation grinding forward.
I need answers. And I know where to get them.
Zera works the Hall itself—a human scribe who’s survived three decades in the Ledger Master’s direct service by being useful and invisible. She knows things no one should know. Secrets that would shatter families, topple merchant houses, bring down half the power structures in Gravebind.
She meets me in the bone-garden behind the Healer’s Temple—a quiet space where the dead are honored and the living come to grieve. No one watches grievers. It’s the one courtesy Gravebind extends.
“You’re asking about Maren Vane.” Zera’s voice is barely a whisper, her face hidden beneath a mourner’s veil. “That’s a death sentence, Grimshaw. Even for you.”
“I need to know how she died. I was there when the Ledger Master ordered her death, but don’t know the details.”
“The records are clear.”
“Zera.”
Wind stirs the bone-chimes that hang from the garden’s frames, a soft music of the dead.
“Poison disguised as medicine. Her own healer, paid in coin and threatened with his family’s lives. The Ledger Master has no direct power over her. Your truth-sayer has to be willing to give herself to him. Be careful of what you do.”
I think of Ivalys. Of her mother’s eyes, the strange light that catches in her depths. Of the power waking inside her, the gift the Ledger Master fears above all else.
“The children.” My voice is strained. “He knew about them.”
“She’s stronger than her mother was, Grimshaw. And she doesn’t even know it yet.”
Stronger than her mother. Stronger than the woman who nearly brought down the Ledger Master with a single truth.
“Thank you.” I turn to leave.
“Grimshaw.” Zera’s voice stops me. “Why are you doing this? You’ve served him for centuries. Collected souls you knew were wrongfully claimed. Why does this one woman matter enough to throw everything away?”
The question hangs in the bone-garden’s silence.
I don’t have an answer. Not one I can explain. Not one I’m willing to speak aloud.
I walk away without responding.
? ? ?
Ivalys is awake when I return to the safe room.
She sits at the scarred table. Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders—she must have unbraided it while I was gone—and the sigil on her palm casts faint light across her features.
She looks up when I enter. Studies my face with those perceptive depths that see too much.
“You found something.”
Not a question. She’s learning to read me, which should be alarming. No one has been able to read me in ages.
I cross to the table. Sit across from her. The cramped space forces proximity—our knees nearly touch beneath the scarred wood, and I can smell her scent beneath the dust and old chalk of the safe room. Clean. Fierce. Uniquely her.
“I know your mother nearly destroyed the Ledger Master fifteen years ago—spoke a truth so powerful, it cracked his authority and nearly brought his entire empire down.
“I’m sure she lied to protect you. Changed your names, moved you to a quiet district, built a cover story so complete that even you believed it.” I reach across the table. My hand stops short of hers—the gesture I can’t seem to complete, the touch I don’t trust myself to make.
“This seven-day window isn’t mercy. It’s observation.
He’s watching to see how powerful you are before he claims you.
” I force myself to say the rest. The truth she needs to understand.
“If your gift is strong enough, he won’t just take your soul.
He’ll bind you to his service. Force you to use your power for him.
With a truth-speaker at his command, he’d be able to void any contract that threatens him, rewrite any debt, claim any soul. He’d be unstoppable.”
“And Gror?” Her voice cracks on her brother’s name. “What’s happening to him while we sit here talking?”
“You already know.” The words come out flat. We both heard what the marks said—transformation in progress. “Every hour we wait, more of your brother disappears. We can’t afford to waste another one.”
She stares at the table, but I don’t think she’s seeing it. She’s somewhere else—in the past, maybe, remembering a mother who told fortunes and lied about everything that mattered.
“Poison.” I owe her this much. The detail Zera gave me, the truth of how it happened. “That’s how the Ledger Master had her killed. Disguised as medicine. Her own healer, bought and threatened.”
“He murdered my mother without a single care. He couldn’t even do it himself.” The words come out cold. Controlled. Dangerous in a way I recognize. “He stole my childhood. He wants to cage me the way he couldn’t cage her.”
“Yes.”
She looks up. Meets my gaze. Her eyes are burning now, truth-light building behind them.
“Then we kill him first.”
The declaration hangs between us. Simple. Absolute. Impossible.
And exactly what I was hoping she’d say.