Chapter 2
What the Eye Sees
The first rule Kaelen established for himself was simple: don't look at
anyone you don't have to.
It lasted until he reached the market square.
The square was the beating heart of Grimholt â€" fifty stalls, two hundred
people, noise like a physical thing pressing from all sides. Fishmongers.
Cloth merchants. A woman selling herb bundles who was also, according to
the readout that ignited above her head the moment Kaelen's gaze landed
on her, running the most efficient extortion ring in the eastern ward.
He looked away.
⟦ VERDICT PENDING â€" SUBJECT IN RANGE ⟧
[Pending. What does that mean?]
The text shifted.
⟦ A FORMAL PETITION IS REQUIRED TO ISSUE VERDICT ⟧
⟦ THE JUDGE DOES NOT ACT WITHOUT BEING CALLED UPON ⟧
⟦ THIS IS THE FIRST LAW ⟧
Kaelen stopped walking. A man bumped into him from behind, cursed, kept
moving. He barely noticed.
[So I can see everything but I can't do anything unless someone asks me.]
[That's either a restriction or a mercy. I haven't decided which.]
He pushed through the market with his eyes on the cobblestones and made
it to the other side without reading anyone else's soul by accident.
Progress.
The letter from Edric Soln's body was still in his coat pocket. He took
it out and read it again in the pale morning light.
The name on it was Crest Halvorn. A merchant. One of the seven who sat
on Grimholt's Council. The meeting place was a warehouse near the river
docks. The sum involved was enough to buy a small lordship. And the note
at the bottom, written in a different hand, said only:
It is done. The body will not be found.
Kaelen folded the letter.
Edric Soln had known something about Crest Halvorn that Halvorn hadn't
wanted known. Now Edric Soln was dead in an alley, and Kaelen was the
only person who held both facts at once.
[The smart thing is to drop this. I'm a debt-collector, not an
inquisitor. Not anymore.]
He stood at the edge of the market district and thought about what the
word anymore was doing at the end of that sentence.
[Right.]
He put the letter away and headed for the docks.
The warehouse was exactly where the letter said it would be â€" a squat
stone building backing up against the river wall with no windows on the
ground floor and a door that hadn't been opened from the outside in some
time. He found a broken crate across the lane, sat on it, and watched.
The God's Eye had been running all morning. He was starting to get a
feel for it â€" the readouts appeared automatically when his gaze settled
on someone, but he could push them to the background if he didn't focus,
the way you could choose to hear or ignore a conversation in the next
room. It took effort. He'd get better at it.
What he couldn't push down was the weight.
That was the only word he had for it. Every time he read a soul there
was a sensation in his chest â€" not pain, but pressure. Something that
registered wrongness and rightness on a scale he hadn't asked for. The
extortion woman had felt like a stone. The clean watchman had felt like
nothing. The priest had felt like swallowing glass.
He didn't like it.
[The old system was better. Don't know, don't feel. Take the coin, sleep
without dreaming.]
The warehouse door opened.
A man stepped out. Well-dressed in the way meant to communicate
importance without specifying what kind. He had the careful, unhurried
walk of someone who had arranged the world so he never had to move
quickly.
Kaelen looked at him.
⟦ SOUL APPRAISAL ⟧
Name : Crest Halvorn
Age : 57
Sins : 341 | Mercies : 4
Notable : Ordered the deaths of 6 individuals over 20 years to protect
commercial interests. Currently arranging a seventh.
Has not lost a night's sleep over any of them.
⟦ SOUL WEIGHT : HEAVY ⟧
⟦ VERDICT : PENDING â€" PETITION REQUIRED ⟧
Three hundred and forty-one.
Kaelen sat still on his broken crate as Crest Halvorn walked past the
end of the lane without noticing him and turned toward the nicer part
of the city.
[Three hundred and forty-one.]
He had carried a sword for the Church of the Eternal Scale for eleven
years. He had seen men condemned for less. He had carried out sentences
for less, with his own hands, and slept fine after.
[And I can't touch him. Not unless someone asks me to.]
The pressure in his chest was the weight of seven lives â€" six already
spent and one still turning somewhere in the dark.
He stood up.
He needed to find out who number seven was going to be.