The Necessary Journeys

The second hearing began badly for Ada's side.

Dessa could not attend. The infirmary had refused her request to exchange shifts, and her mother had woken with a fever. Her absence left the bridge account represented by a page Ada had copied and a journey Ada had never needed to make with a sleeping child.

The Chancellor noticed.

“Your examples appear not to have found the matter sufficiently urgent to be present.”

Pella stood up before Ada could answer.

“She is washing sheets for people who are ill. We haven't designed a hearing that pays her for not doing that. Her work doesn't become evidence against her because it continues.”

“Your name?” Sile asked.

“Pella. River carriers' office. And if the next question is my family interest, yes, Tomar is my grandfather.”

A few people in the audience smiled. The Regent did not, but she asked the clerk to record Pella's explanation beside the absence.

The day was devoted to essential travel. It was more difficult than the first hearing because every example complicated another.

A physician needed reliable passage to two outer wards. A charcoal merchant needed his loads to arrive before the workshops ran out of fuel. A carrier needed the road to remain open after dark, which a northern witness opposed because the proposed bearing path passed beside houses whose occupants already slept badly when loaded carts travelled through.

Ren did not resolve the conflict by calling one need more human than the other. She asked about wheels, hours, alternate gates and the cost of making the rougher lane usable in wet weather. The answer was a mason, six labourers and more stone than the town had ready.

Hald knew a nearby stock that could provide the stone. Its release would require the Chancellor's office to relinquish material reserved for a ceremonial approach.

Everyone looked at Sile.

“The approach is part of the annual court route,” he said.

“Does it take grain?” Meral asked.

“No, Your Grace.”

“Then examine the release.”

The Chancellor bowed his head. The hearing moved on. Ada marked the decision, including who would inspect the stock and by when. She had already learned that a gracious instruction could vanish into the space before anyone had to perform it.

At the afternoon break, Beren found her beside a window.

For a moment she knew only that his face belonged somewhere less exhausting. Then she remembered the boy in the new clerk's coat beside her on Tam's wagon, touching the brass clasp at his throat.

“Your hen,” she said absurdly.

“Not mine. It objected to all of us equally.”

She laughed.

His coat no longer looked new. There was ink at one cuff and a place where he had rubbed the clasp until its brighter surface showed beneath the polish.

“Are you working here?”

“In the warehouse accounts. I passed the copying examination.”

“Congratulations.”

“It's mostly sacks.”

“Still.”

He glanced towards the chamber door.

“I heard the dates you gave for the northern deliveries. Some are gate dates, not release dates.”

“We've started separating them.”

“There's another kind. Assured arrival.”

He showed her a small copy in his own hand. It recorded shipments as available to the capital from the moment their fast-road tokens were issued. The grain could still be standing in a provincial store. The account treated it as though reliability had made distance irrelevant.

Ada followed the columns.

“That makes the reserve look larger.”

“Yes. Until the carts don't come.”

“Who knows?”

“The senior clerks. It's the approved method.”

He said the last words without believing they settled the matter.

“May I show this?” she asked.

“Not as a stolen ledger. It isn't. I've copied a method from a public instruction. Anyone with access to the accounts can check it.”

Ada looked at him properly.

“You've thought about how they'll answer.”

“I saw what they did to your first question.”

He left before the session resumed. Ada took his page to Neris, who compared its headings with the warehouse descriptions she had brought. It was not proof that the capital had no reserves. It was proof that nobody in the room could responsibly claim the reserve figure without separating grain present from grain promised.

When the hearing returned, Cal asked for that separation.

Sile called it an established accounting convention.

Meral asked how much grain was physically inside the city's stores.

No one at the table had the complete answer.

The silence lasted long enough for the public scribes to stop writing.

At last the Regent ordered a count. Warehouse keepers would attest to actual stores, and carriers to cargo already under way. The reports were to be kept separate.

As they left, Neris touched Ada's sleeve.

“Find your friend a better place to work if this goes badly.”

“If it goes well too,” Ada said.

Beren's little copy stayed beneath the larger maps that evening. Its neat columns had made no road change direction. They had changed what the people responsible for the roads could safely pretend to know.