Accounts of Useful Children

Venn's office contained three ledgers for the same workers.

One recorded rations. One recorded wages. The third recorded advances and deductions. The numbers were not directly contradictory. They had simply been arranged so that every useful comparison required a person to carry one ledger across the room and keep asking questions.

Ada recognised the method.

Cal opened Perrin's account. The original advance was small enough that he could have paid it from the travel purse. The deductions added later more than doubled it. When he asked for the basis of the cart-wheel charge, Venn produced a general rule about shared transport costs.

“Was Perrin on the cart when it broke?” Ada asked.

“The party used the transport.”

“Was he on it?”

“That isn't the basis of the charge.”

Cal turned another page.

“The same wheel appears in eleven accounts.”

“It carried a party of eleven.”

“At the full replacement cost in each account.”

Venn looked at him for a long moment.

“A copying error, perhaps.”

“Then correct it.”

The quartermaster took the ledger reluctantly. Ada watched him cross out the charge and initial the change. She copied the original amount, the corrected amount and the time. Venn noticed.

“Is that necessary?”

“Yes.”

They found other errors. Some looked careless. Some did not. Food charges continued during a period when several workers had been assigned to a separate crew fed from another budget. A tool fee had been charged to a girl who sorted by hand and had never received the tool in question.

Her name was Nessa. She was fifteen, with close-cropped hair and an old burn mark on the back of one wrist. Perrin said she had helped him when he first arrived and shown him which foremen would answer a question without making it a punishment.

Venn called her difficult.

Ada wrote that down too, then crossed it out of the account record because it wasn't evidence about the money.

By afternoon, Cal had reduced the disputed advances enough to make release possible for several workers. Venn introduced a new problem.

“Completion of the assigned period is required unless a recognised guardian or district authority approves departure.”

“I'm his sister,” Ada said.

“Not his guardian.”

“Our parents are in Sable Fen.”

“That settlement does not appear separately in the current district register.”

Ada felt the room narrow.

“You took him from there.”

“The recruitment record uses Quiet District Nine.”

“Then use it to send him back.”

Cal put a hand flat on the table, not touching her.

“The family identity is not in dispute,” he said. “We have the local household record and the boy's account. Captain Rusk can confirm the worker.”

“The release requires the proper authority.”

Venn's voice had become smoother as the facts became less defensible. He had moved from numbers Cal could correct to a rule whose meaning depended on who was allowed to interpret it.

Rusk entered carrying a broken stone blank.

“Upper ramp's moving,” he said. “I want the new trial stopped until the supports are checked.”

Venn looked irritated. “The Hall's schedule—”

“The Hall's schedule isn't standing under the platform.”

Ada looked at the blank. A crack ran through the anchor channel, fine enough to disappear beneath ink.

“Was that approved?”

Rusk nodded towards the yard. “Not by my cutters.”

Cal stood.

“We need to see the ramp.”

Outside, the air had changed. Workers looked towards the upper quarry more often than the tasks in front of them. A new route line had been painted on stones beside the haul track. The outgoing stone wagons would use the fold. The foot path beside the sorting sheds would carry part of the added distance.

Pella was talking to the food-cart drivers. She joined them at the ramp, her expression grim.

“They've already moved the evening foot route. The walk from the lower shed to the gate takes longer than it did this morning.”

“Without telling the workers?” Ada asked.

“A notice is being written.”

Rusk pointed out the supports beneath the upper platform. They had been shifted to make room for more stone, leaving a load-bearing brace resting on ground loosened by the recent rain. The physical problem had nothing to do with ink. The shortened haul route had simply allowed the overseers to move more weight through it than the old arrangement could safely bear.

Ada could see the connection because the two records were finally in front of her at once: the clever route and the ordinary wood beneath it.

“Stop the wagons,” Cal told Venn.

The quartermaster hesitated.

Rusk shouted the order before he could decide whether Cal had sufficient authority. Men ran to the upper gate.

Then a brace cracked.