Nyrius
The town hall records are kept in a back room that smells of damp wood and old ink, maintained by a clerk who goes pale when I ask to see them and spends ten minutes finding reasons why today might not be convenient.
I wait him out. He produces the ledgers.
The gaps aren't subtle. Three consecutive quarters where collection figures don't match the reported levy totals.
Labor quota logs with entries crossed out and rewritten in a different hand.
A page missing entirely from the winter assessments, replaced with a loose sheet that doesn't align with the binding.
Someone did this quickly, or didn't expect anyone with authority to ever actually look.
I close the ledger and hand it back to the clerk, who takes it with both hands like it might bite him.
Outside, I try the farmers.
It goes poorly.
The first man I approach near the grain store listens to my questions with his eyes fixed somewhere past my left shoulder and answers in variations of I wouldn't know, my lord until I run out of questions.
The second farmer—a woman repairing fencing at the edge of her property—stops working when she sees me coming and doesn't start again until I leave.
The third actually backs inside his house and closes the door.
They're not stupid. They're afraid, and they've learned that talking to authority figures produces worse outcomes than staying quiet. That lesson doesn't get learned from one bad experience.
Cyran is waiting near the lane when I come back through.
"The records are altered," I tell him. "Multiple quarters. Significant discrepancies."
He nods, unsurprised. He's been with me long enough to read a village the same way I do. "What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know yet."
He walks with me for a moment, quiet in the way that means he's deciding how to say something. Cyran has served under me for decades and earned the right to say most things directly. He uses it carefully.
"You've been here several days," he says. "For horseshoes."
"The records—"
"Are a problem in a dozen border villages." He glances at me from the side. "You haven't personally reviewed any of those ledgers. You haven't questioned farmers in Denvara or Westhollow or any of the other settlements on this route." He pauses. "You came back here."
I don't answer right away. A cart rolls past us on the lane, the driver keeping his eyes forward.
"The pattern here is worse," I say.
"The pattern here has a blacksmith in it."
"Cyran."
"I'm not wrong, my lord."
He isn't. I know he isn't. That's the irritating part. "I can't unsee what the ledgers show."
"No one's asking you to." He stops walking. "I'm asking you to notice that you're unusually interested in one small human village, and to decide whether that's about the ledgers or about something else."
I let my thoughts wander for a moment. "Both," I say. "And I'm not prepared to apologize for either."
He dips his head, which is how he lets go. "What do you need?"
"Nothing yet. I want to speak with Edria first."
He says nothing.
She's alone at the forge when I arrive, working on something she covers with a cloth when she hears my boots on the threshold. A reflex, too fast to be casual. I file that away and don't mention it.
"You're still in Oxwood," she says.
"Still." I lean against the door frame. "I've been looking at the village records."
She pulls the cloth aside again and picks up a set of tongs. Whatever she was working on is gone from the table. "And?"
"They're incomplete. Several quarters of collection data don't align." I watch her hands. They don't slow. "You don't seem surprised."
"I'm not." She sets a bar of iron into the coals. "Why would I be?"
"Because it's evidence of exploitation under my governance."
She looks up at that—not sharply, but with the measured attention of someone deciding how honest to be. "My lord." She sets the tongs down. "Villages like Oxwood exist because dark elf nobles let them exist this way. The records being wrong isn't a surprise. It's a Tuesday."
"That's a broad accusation."
"It's a pattern." She moves to the bellows. "How many border villages have you ridden through in the last year? How many of them looked like this?"
I don't answer, because the answer is most of them.
"Dark elves talk about order," she continues, pumping the bellows in a slow rhythm.
"Order and stability and the importance of proper governance.
" She glances at me over her shoulder. "And then villages like mine go twenty years without a single inspection and everybody acts shocked when the records don't match. "
"I inspect my territories."
"You ride through them." She turns to face me fully. "There's a difference."
I straighten off the door frame. "I'm here now."
"Yes, you are." She crosses her arms. "Why?"
"Because I govern this region and something is wrong in it."
"Or," she says, "because you walked through this town and saw what happens when nobody with real authority actually pays attention, and it bothered you." She tilts her head. "Which bothers you more—that it's happening, or that it took you this long to notice?"
The fire behind her snaps, but she doesn’t move or look away.
"Both," I say, which is the same thing I told Cyran, and no less true.
She uncrosses her arms. "My mother died when I was nine.
" She says it plainly, without performance.
"We couldn't afford the healer's fees because the harvest tax that year took everything past the basic grain reserve.
Papa worked the forge seven days to try to make it up.
" She picks the tongs back up. "That's one family. In one year. Multiply it."
I am quiet. "I'm not going to tell you that's acceptable."
"No." Her voice hitches slightly. "But are you going to tell me it stops?"
"I'm telling you I'm looking at it."
"Looking at it isn't the same as fixing it.
" She wipes some sweat from her brow and leaves a streak of ash.
"If you want to prove that dark elves are capable of more than tolerance for human suffering, prove it.
Do something for this village." She turns back to the fire.
"Otherwise, we've had a very interesting conversation and nothing changes by morning. "
I watch her work for another moment—the set of her shoulders, the precision in her hands, the complete absence of the deference every other person in Oxwood shows me. She's not performing courage. She simply doesn't have patience left for anything less than honesty.
I leave without answering her.
Back at camp, I write two letters.
The first goes to the regional trade office under my seal—a directive reducing import and export tariffs for Oxwood and the three nearest settlements by thirty percent, effective immediately, citing an administrative review correction. It will process quietly, without announcement.
The second letter I don't write. I sit with the blank page for a while, thinking about what to say to the territorial council about Malrec, and then I fold it away. Not yet. I need more than altered ledger entries before I move against a sitting magistrate.
Cyran appears at the tent entrance. "Messenger ready."
"Send this letter tonight." I seal it and hold it out. "Don't log it through the regional post. Use our own rider."
“Is it urgent?”
“Yes.” I nod.
Cyran weighs the letter in his hand. “It feels official.”
“What does that even mean?” I toss my quill into my pack.
“Official orders could relate to the town, directly impacting a certain blacksmith who resides there.”
"Good night, Cyran." I nod to the tent flap.
I sit with the lamplight and the ledger copies long after the camp goes quiet, turning the numbers over until they stop looking like numbers and start looking like names.