Chapter 4
Three Hundred and Forty-One
Rynn came back the next morning with a name.
Kaelen was at the table in his rented room above the cobbler's shop when
she knocked â€" two quick, one slow, a pattern he hadn't asked her to use
but apparently she'd decided on anyway. He opened the door and she came
in without waiting, dropped her satchel on the chair, and put a folded
piece of paper on the table in front of him.
"Pell Sorvane," she said. "Halvorn's grain broker. He's been skimming
from the Council's shared fund for two years â€" small amounts, careful
enough that nobody's noticed yet. Halvorn noticed three weeks ago."
Kaelen looked at the paper. It was a list of transactions, dates, sums.
Neat handwriting. She'd been busy.
"Sorvane is number seven," he said.
"Almost certainly. He's also the brother-in-law of Aldric Sorvane, who
sits on the city watch's senior council." She sat down across from him.
"Which is probably why Halvorn has been slow about it. He needs it to
look like something other than murder."
"It won't matter how it looks," Kaelen said. "The Eye reads the act,
not the appearance."
"I know that. Halvorn doesn't." She folded her hands on the table.
"Here's the problem. Pell Sorvane doesn't know he's being targeted.
I can't warn him without revealing that I have information I shouldn't
have, which puts me in Halvorn's ledger."
[Three hundred and forty-one,] Kaelen thought. [One more would be
three hundred and forty-two. The number doesn't actually change anything.
But it feels like it should.]
"What does a petition look like?" he asked. "Formally."
Rynn reached into her satchel and pulled out a thin document â€" pre-
printed, official Church letterhead, the kind that cost three copper
just to have stamped. "A written request, witnessed by one party not
involved in the matter, submitted to the Judge directly. The System
validates it." She paused. "I looked it up."
"Of course you did."
"Sorvane could petition you himself. If he knew to."
"And if he knew his life was at risk."
"Yes."
They looked at each other across the table.
[She's not going to say it. She's going to make me say it.]
"You want me to approach him," Kaelen said. "Tell him what I know.
Give him the option to petition."
"I want you to decide whether that's within the rules of what you are,"
she said carefully. "I'm the chronicler. I record. I don't tell the
Judge what to do."
He appreciated the distinction. He also saw straight through it.
[She has eighty-eight mercies on her ledger and she's trying to add
one more without technically breaking her contract with the Church.]
"I'll talk to him," Kaelen said.
He found Pell Sorvane at his counting house near the grain exchange â€"
a nervous, damp-handed man in his late thirties who clearly hadn't been
sleeping well. Kaelen didn't need the God's Eye to see that. The dark
circles and the way his eyes moved to every door in the room told enough.
He looked at him anyway.
⟦ SOUL APPRAISAL ⟧
Name : Pell Sorvane
Age : 38
Sins : 31 | Mercies : 19
Notable : Has been stealing from a shared fund for 26 months. Tells
himself it's owed. Knows it isn't. His wife is ill and the
physicians cost more than he admits to anyone.
⟦ SOUL WEIGHT : MODERATE ⟧
⟦ VERDICT : NOT REQUIRED ⟧
Kaelen sat down across from him.
"You're being watched," he said. "By someone who has killed before and
is deciding when to do it again."
Sorvane went very still.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Kaelen Drath. I'm the Judge." He said it the way you said
a thing you were still getting used to. "I can't act on what I know
unless you formally petition me. That means requesting a Verdict on the
person who wants you dead." He put the blank petition form on the desk
between them. "The choice is yours. I'm not here to force it."
Sorvane stared at the form. Then at Kaelen. His hands were very still
now in the way hands went still when a person was working very hard not
to let them shake.
"If I petition," he said quietly, "and you Judge whoever this is â€" what
happens to them?"
"That depends on what the Eye finds," Kaelen said. "I don't decide the
Verdict. I read the soul and the System determines the weight. I issue
what it tells me."
[That's not entirely true. The System presents the options. The Judge
chooses between them. But I'm not going to explain that today.]
Sorvane looked at the form for a long time.
Then he picked up his pen.