“Knowledge,” Tara replied, turning a page as quietly as she could manage, “is power. I need all the power I can get.”
“You sound less confident than you did this morning.”
“I’m confident, but I also have, let’s say, renewed faith in my adversary’s strength. I need to be more than right, if I’m going to help the Church. I need to be right, and smart about it.”
“So, what kind of power can all this knowledge give you?”
The green leather-bound ledger before her, which was thicker than the holy writ of most religions, contained all of Kos’s registered deals and contracts for the last few months. A notebook lay open beside the ledger—a normal notebook, not the black book of shadows in which she had caught Shale’s soul. With her quill pen, she wrote a list of contracts that might have been responsible for Kos’s weakness. Progress was slow. The archivist’s handwriting was cramped and angular, and most of the ledger written in code. A prolonged search had revealed a table of abbreviations hidden within an illuminated invocation of the eternally transient flame on the flyleaf. With this she could interpret most of the entries, but not all.
She crooked a finger, and Cat bent close. Tara underlined an entry with the feathered end of her quill. “That’s the date of the contract. This line is the first part of the title.”
“What about the number? It’s not even a real number. There are letters in it and everything.”
“Filing reference. The full contract is somewhere in this building. If we tell the reference librarian that number, he can find it for us.”
“Why not use the contract’s name?”
Tara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It was a valid question from a woman who had never spent an afternoon in a library before. “You see these three entries?”
“They’re all the same.” Cat spelled the abbreviations out. “C-F-S-R Alt C.-KE to R.I.N.”
“Contract for Services Rendered, Alt Coulumb Kos Everburning to Royal Iskari Navy,” she translated. “Since the common names are all the same, each contract needs a unique reference so we can tell which one we’re talking about.”
“What about those names, there to the right?”
“These are the Craftsmen who sealed the contract, and this is the name of the hiring party, on each side.”
“So COK is the Church of Kos, and Roskar Blackheart was working for them. R.I.N. is Royal Iskari Navy, represented by…” Her forehead wrinkled. “Isn’t that the guy you fought this morning?”
“Yes,” Tara said. “Alexander Denovo.”
“Seemed like the two of you had met before.”
Tara tried to return her attention to the ledger, but Cat’s question hovered between her eyes and the page. “He was one of the best professors in the Hidden Schools. Taught me much of what I know.”
“You ever sleep with him?”
“What?” That squawk earned Tara an angry glance from the librarian. She did her best to look chastened.
“When you saw him in the court, you went all stiff and shivery. There’s history between you, and it’s not pleasant.”
“We did not sleep together.”
“But you had a falling out.”
“Sort of.” Her tone brooked no further discussion.
Cat gave her an odd look, and changed the subject. “This makes sense, anyway. He was working for the Iskari then, and he’s working for them now.”
“More or less. People take all sides in this business, because there aren’t enough good Craftsmen to go around. Last time Ms. Kevarian worked in Alt Coulumb, she represented the creditors, the people Seril’s church struck bargains with. Now, she’s on Kos’s side.” The nib of Tara’s quill pen scratched a black jagged string of letters in her notebook. “The problem, though, starts in Judge Cabot’s ledger.”
Tara pulled a fat book covered in marbled paper from the pile. “Here’s where he adjudicated Seril’s death, and that’s the formation of Justice.” The earlier pages were dark with age and ink, but whole lines near the ledger’s end were blank save for the word “redacted.” “Now, look.” She pointed to a line near the beginning of the redacted sections.
Cat squinted to decipher the handwriting. “CFA Alt C. New.A. by A. Cabot, J-, A. Cabot, J.- PS, New.A by S. Caplan.”
“Below that, too.”
“CFA Alt C. C.S. by A. Cabot, J-, A. Cabot, J.- PS, C.S. by S. Schwartz.” Cat grimaced. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“CFA is Contract for Acquisition. PS means pro se, ‘for himself.’ It’s an old Telomiri Empire term, don’t ask why we still use it. Judge Cabot purchased these two Concerns, Coulumb Securities and Newland Acquisitions.”
“A Concern is what, exactly?”
By now, Tara knew better than to be surprised at Cat’s ignorance. “It’s a system Craftsmen create to magnify their power. Kind of like a church, where everyone’s combined faith makes things happen, only with Craft, not religion. Craftsmen pool their powers to a particular end, say summoning a demon or razing a forest or ripping ore from the earth. If they manage the Concern well, they get more power out of it—from the demon, from the life essence of the forest, or the sale of the ore—than they put in.”
Cat still seemed lost, but nodded.
“Do the Concerns themselves have ledgers?”
“Yes, but they’re not much help.” The next two volumes off the pile were more folios than full books, maybe a hundred sheets each for all their gold binding and shiny leather. Initially, they looked like less-crowded versions of the Church’s ledger, or Cabot’s, but after three pages the descriptions of contracts signed and acquisitions made, enemies dispatched and victories won, gave way to empty space. The last note in each book was simple. “Acq. A. Cabot, J-, Rec. Red.”
“Records Redacted,” Tara translated. “These two acquisitions are the last works of public Craft Judge Cabot performed before he died, and they took place four months ago. At about the same time”—she turned back to Kos’s ledger—“we see the number of sealed records in Kos’s ledger rise dramatically. And if we count the number of sealed records in Kos’s ledger, and compare it with those in Judge Cabot’s, they’re the same.” Repeated lines marched across the page, “redacted” over and over again in elegant black letters. “I think Kos and the Judge were working together on something big, and secret, before they died. But I need to see their sealed records to learn more.”
“They’re restricted. You can’t read them.”
“I can’t, maybe. You can’t. But what about Justice?”
*
Abelard smoked by the window of the Deathless King’s foyer. Four plush red chairs squatted on the hardwood floor around a low table upon which lay a few old scrolls and a ceramic vase of dandelions. A fat red stripe climbed the white wall opposite the windows and ended at the ceiling for no discernable reason.
Had he expected a torture chamber? A lake of fire topped with a throne of skulls, upon which the ambassador of the Northern Gleb sat in grim judgment over demonic servitors?
Maybe. Certainly he hadn’t expected the waiting room to be this cheerful.
Dandelions, for Kos’s sake. They weren’t even in season.
He exhaled and waited, and wished Tara was here.
In the past, when sleep would not come, and he lay awake in bed unwilling to rise and check the clock because he knew dawn was still hours off, Abelard had comforted himself in prayer, and the contemplation of God. Fire touched his soul, and would not desert him.
For the last three days, he had been alone, with only his cigarette flame for a companion. Tara relieved his isolation, strange though she was, but she was gone and here he sat, smoking in silence again. With a sigh, he began to pray.
A quarter of an hour passed, enough time to chant through the Litany of the Unquenchable Flame, complete with colophon and optional sections. No inner warmth came, no communion. Smoke lingered in his lungs longer than usual. That was something, at least.