Alexander came up after Mstislav and stopped beside the long table. For several moments he stood motionless, looking at the wax tablets and scattered parchments laid out before him. The chill of the trade treasury still clung to his clothes.
Radomir was the last to come up. The keeper immediately lowered the hatch and leaned his weight against the bar. Behind them the undercroft closed with a dull, heavy sound.
In the treasury room, work had never stopped.
Scribes scratched quietly with their styli across wax tablets. One counted rolled parchments. Another carefully moved lead seals from one place to another, dropping them into a wooden bowl. Somewhere off to the side a chest thudded shut.
Radomir returned to his table but did not sit.
He stopped beside it, resting his palm on the edge. The old man waited. The prince might leave now for the princely Terem, or he might continue the conversation here - it was not yet clear. So Radomir did not hurry to take his seat.
Alexander did not even look at him.
He touched one of the tablets, studying the scattered records. His thoughts moved quickly from one to the next. What should he do now? Go to the palace and prepare for the midday meal with the senior druzhina or continue here, in the treasury.
He had not come here merely to learn how much silver lay in Kiev.
He needed to understand more. What brought income besides fur and wax. How it might be controlled. Who handled it. Too much still remained unknown.
Mstislav noticed the prince standing motionless and glanced toward Mirnomir. The man gave a short nod and stepped forward.
"My prince, Voivode Stanislav asked that I remind you the meal will be at midday, as before."
Alexander turned to him. He understood why those words had been spoken and gave a small nod.
"I remember."
Mirnomir bowed his head slightly and stepped back.
Radomir watched them in silence. He ran a hand slowly through his beard and then frowned.
Instead of leaving to prepare for the meeting with the druzhina, the prince walked around the table and sat down in Radomir's place. The bench creaked heavily beneath him.
Out of the corner of his eye Alexander noticed the old man straighten.
Something in Radomir's gaze changed heavier now, sharper.
Alexander did not immediately understand what exactly had shifted, but the air in the room suddenly seemed thicker. Some older instinct told him a boundary had just been crossed, though the young body he now wore could not fully grasp the feeling.
He picked up one of the small weights from the scales and turned it slowly between his fingers.
"Good. We still have time before the meal. Let us come to the reason I came."
Radomir raised his eyebrows slightly. From the prince's tone it was clear the conversation about the treasury itself was over. Now he intended to speak about how it should be run.
"And what would that be?" the old man asked calmly.
Alexander ran his palm across a wax tablet, smoothing several lines, and let his fingers rest a moment along its edge. Then he looked at the table again. Before him lay tablets, birch bark sheets, and rolled parchments - records, but each standing alone.
He lifted his head and set the stylus down.
"Bring me the book where it is all counted. Income and expense together. I have seen the treasury. Now I want to see the account."
He looked at Radomir, expecting the old man to nod quietly and order a heavy leather book brought out - one where everything was gathered in one place.
But Radomir did not move.
The old man stood beside the table, leaning lightly on his staff, looking at the prince without hurry - like a man who had heard many orders in his life and did not rush to obey those that made little sense.
"My prince," he said evenly. "There is no such book."
He gave a small nod toward the tablets spread across the table.
"There was none even in the days of Grand Prince Yaroslav."
Alexander froze for a moment, still holding his gaze.
"What do you mean - there was none?"
His eyes narrowed. He did not believe it.
"You mean the entire account lies scattered? Tablets, scrolls… By the time you gather it all together, the devil himself would lose the thread?"
Radomir's face did not change.
"We manage well enough. Otherwise there would be no treasury left."
Alexander thought for a moment, running a hand across his lips, covering his mouth. Then he lowered it again and spoke with clear irritation.
"The Romans have it. The Franks have it. Even the Saracens keep their accounts in books. Does Rus truly have none?"
Radomir did not answer immediately.
He studied the prince carefully. During this conversation Alexander had already said several things that sounded strange to him.
At the far table one of the scribes lifted his eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched too visibly. The man beside him coughed at once and nudged him with an elbow.
The scribe turned his head in confusion, as if to ask what was wrong.
Then he noticed Radomir looking toward them and the others at the tables as well. At once he lowered his head and bent back over the tablet. The stylus scratched faster now, carving uneven grooves into the wax. The man beside him did the same.
Radomir kept his gaze on them for another moment.
Only then did the old man look back at the prince, who sat waiting for his answer, paying no attention to the scribes at all.
He slid a wax tablet closer to the prince and placed a rolled sheet of birch bark beside it.
"The accounts are kept in bundles, my prince," he said evenly. "Rough tallies are kept on wax tablets. Receipts are written on birch bark. Final records go onto parchment under seal."
He touched the cord tied around the birch bark.
"These are kept here and in Saint Sophia. The rest remain in the towns where tribute and myto are collected."
Radomir tapped the lead seal with his finger.
"Each valuable comes with a tag and a seal. Silver is counted by weight. Everything else by lists - fur, honey, grain, horses."
"That is how the account is kept. That is how the treasury stands."
Meeting the treasurer's heavy gaze, Alexander lowered his eyes to the records that had been placed before him.
They lay one beneath another, yet each lived alone. None connected with the others. The whole tablet looked less like an account than a scatter of separate marks.
Apparently Rus had simply never gone further than this.
His father, Yaroslav, had already built much of the structure: scribes, parchment, tablets, seals, scales. There were men who gathered and counted - tiuns, ognishchans, toll collectors, collectors of fines. Each kept his own account and answered for his own share.
But all of it existed separately.
There was no single account.
Alexander set the stylus down on the table and slowly ran his finger along the edge of the wax tablet, feeling the softness beneath it. The wax bent slightly under the pressure.
The problem was not the tablets. Nor the parchment.
The problem was the people - their habits, the fact that each man guarded his own records and had no desire to reconcile them with another's. Boyars counted in their own way, while scribes merely wrote down what they were given.
"My prince… is something wrong?" Radomir asked at last, breaking the silence.
The old man watched him closely. In the treasury every word had weight: either the conversation would end here, or the order that had stood for years would have to change.
Alexander lifted his eyes. He looked straight at the treasurer, calm and steady. The confusion had vanished from his gaze; only clarity remained.
"We will do it as the Romans do."
Radomir did not blink. He merely leaned a little more firmly upon his staff.
"And what exactly do you wish to do, my prince?"
"In their empire the treasury rests not on sacks and chests but on books. Every household is recorded: how much land, how many animals, how much silver it owes. Taxes are gathered from those books. Above all stands a single treasury that gathers the income. Below it are the men who pay the army, count gifts to the churches, oversee the markets. Everything goes through records and seals."
He spoke calmly, as though recalling something long familiar.
At the far table the scribes slowed their hands for a moment. One raised his eyes. Another turned his head slightly, listening. What the prince was saying sounded strange.
Mstislav frowned. The words were unfamiliar. Mirnomir watched the prince as well, trying to grasp the meaning, though he understood only one thing - the conversation was no longer about sacks and chests.
"In Constantinople even markets and crafts are under supervision," Alexander continued. "Guilds, prices, tolls - everything is written down. And over it all stands the emperor's treasury."
Radomir listened without interrupting.
For a moment something like surprise flickered in his eyes. He remembered this prince differently - a boy who had loved the sword far more than the pen. And now the same man spoke of the Roman treasury as if he had sat inside their counting halls himself.
But the thought passed quickly.
He rested both hands on his staff and answered evenly.
"The Romans count that way, my prince."
Radomir let his gaze pass across the scribes. They had nearly stopped writing. When the old man looked at them, their heads dropped at once and the styli began scratching across the wax again, faster now.
"If such a thing could be made in Rus, Grand Prince Yaroslav would have done it while he still lived. But he did not."
Alexander stared at the old man in open surprise.
He truly did not understand.
Rus under Yaroslav had lived in strength, wealth, prosperity. Vast lands, standing cities, trade flowing, tribute gathered. Why then had they not done the simplest thing - brought it all together into a single account?
Because it was unnecessary? Or because no one had thought of it?
"Why did he not?" Alexander asked. "Rus is large as well. There is land. There are people."
Radomir drew in a slow breath, irritation touching his voice.
It seemed the prince still had not grasped what the whole conversation had been about.
For a moment the old man regretted thinking better of him earlier. Perhaps the prince truly understood the sword far better than he did the account.
He exhaled slowly and answered.
"My prince. Among the Romans taxes are paid in money. That is why they need books - land, cattle, fields, all must be counted. Our tribute is different: honey, wax, fur. Sometimes silver, but rarely. The account therefore is different."
He nodded to the scribe at the edge of the table. The man placed a tablet before the prince showing a summary: what had come in, what had gone out, what remained.
"We count by consignments. What was gathered, what was issued, what remains in the treasury. To keep books like those of the Romans would require hundreds of scribes and constant censuses. That would cost more than the tribute itself."
The old man fell silent and looked calmly at the prince.
He had said everything that needed saying. If the prince still did not understand, Radomir had no intention of repeating himself.
Alexander sat motionless. He turned the words over quickly in his mind. What had seemed simple was far more complex.
He ran a hand across his face and drew a slow breath.
If it could not simply be copied, then it would have to be done differently.
He lifted his head.
"I am not speaking of copying," he said, his voice harder now. "I am speaking of doing it better."
The scribes stopped writing.
Styli froze above the wax.
The room fell silent.
Radomir raised one eyebrow slightly. For a brief moment the old man thought he saw another face in the young prince - the face of Yaroslav himself. The same gaze. The same weight of decision.
But only for a moment.
The old man said nothing. He simply watched Alexander - heavy, attentive.
Alexander could see it clearly now: the whole room was listening.
He touched the tablets on the table with his finger, pushing them slightly apart.
"I propose we create a register," he said. "A single book. One for the year. A treasury book. Not hundreds of tablets scattered across tables, but one account. A clear order. What is owed and what has come in. Silver, honey, wax, furs. What has gone out to the druzhina, to the court, to the roads. Everything in one place."
Radomir said nothing.
For several moments he looked down at the tablets, then slowly shook his head.
"A book like that could be kept for Kiev, my prince. But the other principalities have their own treasuries. Chernihiv counts its own. Pereyaslavl its own. Novgorod its own."
The old man moved his staff slightly, as if indicating lands somewhere beyond the walls of the citadel.
"They would hardly agree to have their revenues written into a Kiev book."
He lifted his eyes to the prince.
"That would no longer be an account of the treasury. It would be Kiev placing all other treasuries under its hand."
Alexander covered his mouth with his fist. His fingers tightened for a moment.
He had not considered that.
For a brief instant he had forgotten that Kiev was not all of Rus - only its senior seat.
"Then we will begin in Kiev…"
"And even in Kiev it will not be simple. Your power is not yet settled."
The old man interrupted calmly, as though finishing an obvious thought.
He picked up one of the small weights from the table and set it onto one side of the scales. On the other he placed several different ones.
The heavier side slowly sank.
"The boyars will hardly welcome their revenues being counted in the prince's book."
He touched the scales lightly with his finger. They already leaned away from the prince's side.
"An account is power. And men do not share power easily."
Alexander remained silent.
For several moments he watched the scales on the table. The balance still hung uneven, and the prince could see clearly where the weight of that account lay.
In name the authority was his. But the weight did not yet rest in his hands.
He straightened slowly.
"Then I will begin with myself."
He ran his finger along the edge of one of the tablets.
"From this day forward, everything belonging to the prince will be written in a single book. Income and expense. What enters the treasury - silver, honey, wax, furs, myto. What leaves it to the druzhina, to the court, to the roads, to construction."
He lifted his eyes to the old man.
"That will be the order within the prince's own household."
Radomir watched him in silence for several moments. Then the old man slowly nodded. For the first time in the entire conversation, the prince had said something that could not be argued with.
Radomir shifted slightly on the bench and settled himself more comfortably, placing his staff beside him.
Then he inclined his head.
"I am listening, my prince."