Tallyman Greaves did not keep an office. He kept a vault.
Territory Five was a squat block of riveted steel that had once been an Imperial mint, back when the Crown still pretended the Undercity was a place worth taxing. Now it was the only building down here with clean windows. Through them I could see rows of desks, and at every desk a clerk with a green eyeshade, scratching numbers into books by lamplight.
"Don't touch anything," Marrow muttered as we climbed the steps. "Don't sign anything. Don't accept a drink. If he offers you a chair, stand."
"What happens if I sit?"
"You've agreed to hear his terms. And he counts hearing as consent."
"That's not legally binding."
Marrow gave me a look of such tired contempt that I stopped talking.
Kaelen had stayed behind with Lyra. A noble with a sword was a provocation in Greaves's building, and I wanted the first conversation to be only a conversation. So it was Marrow and me, climbing marble steps scarred with a century of boots, and a headache that had settled in behind my left eye like a tenant.
A clerk met us at the door without a word and led us through the rows of desks. Nobody looked up. The scratching of pens filled the air like rain on tin.
At the far end of the hall, behind a desk the size of a coffin, sat a man so thin he seemed folded rather than seated. Greaves was perhaps sixty, with white hair combed flat, spectacles on a chain, and fingers stained blue to the second knuckle. He was writing. He didn't stop when we arrived. He finished the line, blotted it, and only then looked up.
"Marrow," he said pleasantly. "You are three days early to pay and one day early to beg. Either way, I'm delighted."
"I'm not here to beg."
"No? Then who's the boy?"
"Aren," I said. "I'm going to claim the seat."
Greaves smiled. It was a very kind smile, which made it worse. "How wonderful. Please." He gestured at an empty chair across the desk.
I stayed standing.
"Ah," Greaves said, and I saw him note it, a small tick in some private column. "Someone's given you advice. Good advice, as it happens. Marrow, I'm impressed."
"Eleven thousand silver," I said. "I'd like to see the paper."
"Of course."
He didn't have to call for it. A clerk was already at my elbow with a folder, which told me this meeting had been scheduled before we knew it was happening. I opened it on the corner of the desk.
The loan agreement was three pages long. The first two were boilerplate. The third had a signature at the bottom, DESSIK, in a hand that looked steady, and a list of terms below it. I read them slowly, ignoring the pounding behind my eye.
Principal: 8,000 silver. Interest: 12% monthly, compounding. Collateral: the district of Cinder Row, including all structures, equipment, and persons residing therein.
I looked up. "Persons."
"Standard language," Greaves said.
"It's slavery."
"It's collateral," Greaves corrected gently. "No one is a slave. They simply cannot leave until the debt is settled. And since the debt cannot be settled by the current leadership, and the previous leadership is deceased, it passes to whoever claims the seat." He steepled his blue fingers. "Which is, if I'm reading my own paperwork correctly, you."
I didn't answer. Beside me, Marrow went very still. She had known. She had been walking me toward this the whole way, and she hadn't told me, and I understood why: she'd wanted to see what I would do when I read it for myself.
"Eight thousand principal," I said slowly. "Twelve percent monthly. Dessik borrowed for the furnace repair. The furnace burned two weeks later. How long ago was that?"
"Fourteen months."
I did the arithmetic in my head. It was ugly, and not for the reason I expected. At twelve percent monthly compounding, eight thousand silver over fourteen months came to roughly thirty-eight thousand. The paper said eleven.
"That doesn't add up," I said.
"No?"
"By your own contract, the debt should be three times what Marrow told me. Why is it eleven?"
For the first time, something moved behind Greaves's eyes. It wasn't alarm. It was more like the quiet satisfaction of a man watching a student find the right answer.
"Because I adjusted it," he said. "Dessik was a friend. I did him a courtesy, which I extend to the holder of the seat as a matter of tradition. Eleven thousand, fixed, due on the day of the Sitting."
"And if it isn't paid?"
"Then the collateral transfers to me. The Row becomes a Territory Five holding." He spread his hands. "I have no appetite for cruelty. I'd simply be taking back what was borrowed."
Persons residing therein. Forty families. Children among them.
I thought about lying. It was the first time in days I'd thought about it seriously. The words were already half-formed: I have the silver, I'll bring it Thursday. It would have been so easy. It would have bought me a week, maybe, before Greaves discovered I didn't.
And my head would have paid for it.
Don't use the ability until it's the only thing that works, I'd told Kaelen. This wasn't that. This was a man with a ledger, and I had a better idea.
"I'd like to propose a trade," I said.
Greaves's eyebrows rose. "I don't accept trades. I accept payments."
"A payment, then. But not silver."
"I only deal in silver."
"You deal in leverage," I said. "Silver is how you keep score."
The scratching of pens had slowed. Not stopped, but slowed, as if the clerks were listening with their whole bodies. Greaves set down his own pen.
"Go on."
"You buy debts," I said. "That's your whole business. Other people lend, you buy the paper, and now you own the borrower. That's why you hold Cinder Row. You didn't lend to Dessik. You bought the loan from whoever did."
Greaves said nothing. His expression didn't change, but his silence did, and I knew I was right.
"Which means you never see the borrowers coming. You only see what they owe. You don't know who's solvent, who's lying, who's about to be rich or ruined. You find out when the paper lands on your desk." I tapped the folder. "I can tell you, before it lands."
"How?"
"By telling you what people actually want. Not what they say. What they want. Hask wants a stalemate. Sister Vell wants her mercy unquestioned. Ossel wants leverage. Drum wants a war. I've spent two nights learning them. By the end of the Sitting, I'll know them better than you do."
"That's a lot of arrogance for a boy with no silver."
"It's an inventory," I said. "You hold the debts of three territories. I know what each of those debtors needs to stay alive. Every loan you've bought is a bet that they'll stay alive. I can tell you which ones will."
Greaves leaned back. For a long time he studied me, spectacles catching the lamplight, blue fingers tapping a slow rhythm on the desk.
"And what do you want in exchange?"
"Forgiveness of the principal. The interest too. Cinder Row walks out of this clean."
"Impossible."
"Then half."
"Still impossible."
"Then the interest only, and you give me a year on the principal."
Greaves smiled. This time it was a real smile, thin and sharp.
"Now you're negotiating," he said. "Here's my counter. The interest is forgiven. The principal stands at eight thousand silver, not eleven. Due in twelve months, not three days. And in exchange, you give me the first reading. Before any Council vote, before any alliance, I hear what you've learned about the other five. Every time."
I felt the shape of it before I understood it, a lock turning somewhere behind my ribs. It wasn't a bad deal. It was a good one, which made it suspect.
"That makes me your informant," I said.
"It makes you my partner," Greaves said. "Informants are paid in coin. Partners are paid in position."
"And if the information hurts one of the others?"
"Then they should have been more careful." He shrugged, a small elegant motion. "I'm not asking you to lie to them. I'm asking you to tell me the truth first."
It was the cleverest trap I had ever seen. It required me to lie to no one, and bound me to a man who would use the truth against everyone.
Marrow, I thought, and glanced at her. She was staring at the floor.
"I need a day," I said.
"You have until the Sitting."
"A day to answer," I said. "Not three."
Greaves inclined his head. "A day, then. I'll hold the paper."
He rose, and the interview was over. Halfway to the door, with Marrow already ahead of me, I stopped.
"One question, Tallyman. Off the ledger."
"I answer very few of those."
"The furnace fire. Fourteen months ago. Two weeks after the loan."
Something flickered across his face, faint as a flaw in glass.
"The fire," Greaves said evenly, "was unfortunate."
"Unfortunate for who?"
He picked up his pen. "For anyone who thought it was an accident."
I walked out into the red haze of the Undercity with Marrow at my shoulder, my headache like a drum, and the answer to a question I hadn't known I'd asked: he knew. Whether he'd set it or only profited by it, Greaves had known the Row would burn, and he had bought the debt anyway.
"You knew," I said, when we were far enough from the vault.
Marrow didn't deny it. "I knew the paper said eleven thousand. I didn't know he'd offer you a way out."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant." She stopped walking. "I suspected the fire. I never had proof. If I'd told you, you would've gone in angry, and he would've known."
"You tested me."
"I tested whether you'd lie to save us," Marrow said. "A lot of people would've. You almost did. I watched your face." She exhaled, and for the first time her scarred, exhausted face looked her age. "You didn't. That's why I'm still standing here."
I wanted to be angry. I was too tired. And she was right.
"Tomorrow I need to know everything about the other five," I said. "Not what they've done. What they're afraid of."
"That's a different list."
"It's the only one that matters."
Marrow nodded slowly. Then, almost to herself: "Dessik used to say the Row was a fire that wouldn't stay lit. He never said who kept blowing it out."
She walked on.
I stood in the red haze a moment longer, thinking about a thin old man behind a coffin-sized desk, a contract with persons in the collateral clause, and a fire that someone had wanted people to think was an accident.
Slow burn, I reminded myself. Don't rush it. He's given you a day.
A day was enough to get started.