Chapter Three
Later that afternoon before dinner service, I join the line for the creditor’s counter, a niche carved into the bedrock wall of the Nest. Kassandra needs more time alone; when I stuck my head into her chambers an hour ago, I had to dodge a silver-backed hairbrush she hurled at me.
Jae should be back from his extra Scarp work soon, and normally I wait for him to collect our paydays together, but in case Kassandra leverages a complaint against me—
Someone throws arms around my waist, and blond curls brush against my nose. “Got you!”
“You did.” I smile. “How’s it going, Benji?”
“I got to scoop horse shite today.” The young faerie pulls away, cheeks shining.
I laugh. “Don’t let your brother hear you say that.”
“Hey, you think I’m gonna get this one off today?” He points to the first of his six debt rings. Such a rarity to have so little.
“Do you know which House it belongs to?” I ask.
“It’s my birth debt, so Healing.”
“It could! My first Reign ring disappeared last year, and you have fewer tattoos.”
The boy counts the three on his small wrist. “The birth ring to House of Healing for delivering me. Then the additional Healing ring for general care. This one is for Reign, for ruling over us and fixing things like the roads and wells.” He points to the three debt rings on the other wrist. “This one is House Illusion for the arts and the parties. And this is to House of Death, for protecting our borderlands and…” He looks up, puffing out his cheeks.
“What is it?”
“I heard that the Death faeries have to fight white scorpions, and that the giant sand turtles can swallow us whole.”
Suppressing a smile, I say, “Well, those creatures remain in the Amyrian Desert, and besides, it’s like you said. House of Death protects us from them.”
Benji nods, gaze dropping to his final debt ring. “And this one’s…from my mom and dad.”
My arm wraps around his shoulder and he grasps it, attention shifting to the bands of black along my limb.
“You have a lot from your mom and dad. Like Jeremee has,” the child says, voice small.
I squeeze him closer. “That was his choice, and he wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t okay with it.”
Only to stay in accordance with the law did Jeremee let Benji inherit one debt ring from their parents, whereas most siblings divide them evenly.
For only children like me, there isn’t a choice.
Regardless of the rings, it’s a surreal feeling to earn a salary larger than my parents’ combined now that I’m a Day Crest.
“What if Jeremee never gets his rings off because of me,” Benji mumbles.
“Hey.” I spin him in my arms so he’s facing me again. “It’s not because of you.”
“But what if he can never work it off?”
“Have you heard about the laundry Scarp named Nova?”
He shakes his head.
“Well, Nova cleaned clothes better than anyone else. He was fast, too. They get tipped for going above their quota, and he turned in more garments than required every single day. By the time he reached five hundred, he had worked off all his rings.”
“Really? So you think I can get off my birth ring today?”
“Maybe,” a voice says behind us. “Just don’t focus on that too much.”
Jeremee loops an arm around my shoulder, then tugs Benji from my side to his. Though he beams down at his sibling, I catch the weariness in his eyes. How can I blame him?
Nova left the palace inkless but marked in other ways.
He had no wife or children; his hands shook constantly, fingers gone numb long ago; and a nasty cough always rattled his chest. An older laundress once told me he traveled west to Remiti, the Healing capital, to live in the constant sun.
She also told me he was a great tale spinner.
We all shuffle closer to the front, Benji moving ahead of us.
“Let him hope,” I murmur to Jae.
“They’ll crush it.”
“Better them than you.”
“I should be the one to let him down easily. It’ll happen either way.”
I know. Planes, believe me, I know, I want to cry.
I remember the gut-wrenching years of hope and defeat as the interest compounded on debt I was born into, that my parents were born into, that their parents were born into.
We cannot control where the tattoos will appear or how many.
All we can do is work until we earn our way out.
Or take on more rings so that others do not.
“How was prepping the coronation hall?” I ask.
Jeremee shrugs. “The room hasn’t been touched in centuries, so while we weren’t the first cleaning crew, it still needed to be scrubbed down, windows washed, chandeliers dusted.”
The corners of his mouth pull tight. Turning my head into him, I whisper, “What’s wrong?”
He leans down, and for the second time today, we look like secretive lovers.
His breath tickles my ear as he cups a hand over it.
“The grout was pink, and no matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn’t get the color out.
Thought it was some strange fae fashion, but an older guard told me something else.
” Jeremee grimaces. “It was blood that had soaked into the floors during the Dark Rebellion.”
“Halfling prick,” I breathe. In front of us, Benji giggles, and we gesture him along.
“How many stones are in this room?” Jae asks.
“It must be hundreds,” the child says.
“Then you better get counting. Practice your numbers and I’ll get you a chocolate at the next Full Moon Festival.”
The boy gasps before getting started.
“The guard was jesting,” I whisper, though not quite convincingly.
Even with only one fae parent, some halflings can live as long as the High Fae themselves, almost a thousand years, so it’s possible the guard could have been telling the truth.
Halflings tend to hold prestigious positions over faeries—guards, tellers, accountants, and so on.
Jeremee leans forward. “Says he survived the palace massacres as a child.”
“That was seven hundred years ago. Times are different now.”
“There hasn’t been a new king in seven hundred years, either.”
“House of Death isn’t invited to the coronation. There can’t be a second Dark Rebellion.”
“What if the Houses are shifting?”
“Who cares? Debt or death, those are our options. Does it matter who the creditor is?” Jeremee shakes his head, pulling away, but I grasp his ringed forearm, drawing him back. “Nothing is going to happen,” I say, glancing at Benji still loudly counting the stones. Jae follows my gaze.
“And if it does?”
Pulling his pointed ear down to my lips, I whisper the treasonous thought I should snip into submission. “Then let them eliminate each other. It’ll be easier for our kind.”
I squeeze his shoulder, his dark auburn hair grazing my knuckles. His gaze locks with mine. “Don’t you understand, Avery? The High Fae will not kill one another first. They will kill one another last.”
I flinch.
“I’m up!” Benji proclaims, and we break apart and watch as the young faerie steps up to the teller.
He’s barely tall enough to see over the stone ledge serving as a counter.
A wrinkled halfling sits in the niche, quill in hand, only one ring on each wrist, a stack of empty parchment next to his elbow.
Like all halflings, his mother was a faerie, his father a fae.
If the parentage were reversed, the halfling would’ve been killed after known conception, and the High Fae female severely punished and wed off immediately to another noble House to live in the countryside, far from high society.
He waves the quill. “Hand.”
Benji grips the counter edge. The teller clucks his tongue, grabbing the young faerie’s wrist to jerk him closer. Jeremee stiffens but remains where he is, and so do I. It’s illegal to harm a teller; the sentence is death.
The halfling pricks Benji’s finger. The quill touches the parchment, and numbers and symbols scroll across the page.
“I spent extra hours in the stables this week,” the child says. “Maybe I can get one of my rings removed?”
“Not this week.”
“Next week?”
“No.”
Benji hums. “But it’ll happen. You have less than me and you’re old.”
I bite my lip to stifle a laugh.
The teller raises his fluffy gray eyebrows. “You need to learn to manage that mouth.”
Jae winces next to me.
“This is why faeries accrue so much,” the halfling mutters, putting down the paper.
“You earned ten copper coins this week. Three go toward your room and board here at the palace, two toward maintaining public resources, one toward your birth debt, one toward military protection, and one toward the free entertainments and yearly celebrations. That leaves you with two copper coins. Would you like to pocket them or use them to pay down your debt?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Benji says.
My heart sinks.
“I’ll repeat myself. You earned ten copper coins this week…”
Jeremee bends down, whispering something in his ear. The child straightens. “I’d like to pay toward my debt, please.”
“See, this is why you have so few rings,” he says.
Jeremee blows out a breath. Benji seems to accept this, skipping to the side as the teller wipes down the quill and shouts, “Next!”
I step up, prick my finger, hold my breath as the parchment zings with writing.
It will be bad this time, I know. The longer hours, the hand-done chores—these are not true defenses against the complaints that High Fae like Kassandra can sling our way.
I wanted to do this without Benji or Jeremee around, but sometimes we can’t hide the horrors of our world.
“You earned fifty copper coins this week,” the teller says. After room and board and taxes to all the Houses, and my significant interest, I’m left with ten copper coins.
“No complaint against me?”
“No complaints.”
Hmm. Maybe Kassandra’s threats were empty. So I pay five toward my debts and pocket the remaining five to spend at the next festival for Jeremee’s shoes.
“Congratulations,” the teller grunts. “You’ve made a significant enough dent in one of your debts. Enough to thin it.”