“Ten years of your life, or the memory of your mother,” the clerk said. “You may divide the pledge between them.”
My sister’s hand stopped above the contract.
I woke with a cough lodged in my chest and a body too weak to sit up. The room smelled of boiled roots and damp wool. Through the open door, I could see Neris at the temple counter, her thin shoulders squared toward the clerk. A silver Balance hung behind him, its pans level and empty. The polished thing had more guards than our whole street.
“Could the loan be smaller?” Neris asked. “Just enough for the physician and the medicine.”
“The physician’s fee is twelve crowns. The treatment is six. The smallest approved loan is twenty.” The clerk tapped the form. “The extra four covers administration and the first month’s interest.”
It was a neat arrangement. The institution charged a sick girl for the privilege of borrowing enough to keep her brother alive, then secured the debt against the part of her life that made her worth borrowing from.
I pushed myself onto one elbow. My arm shook. Useful body, I thought. Limited term.
Neris glanced back at the sound. “Reyn? You’re awake.”
The clerk watched her face, measuring whether the new development would improve his position. “Your brother’s condition doesn’t alter the terms.”
“I know.” She turned back to him. “I’ll pledge the years.”
The pen was already in her hand. The contract specified which years the temple could take: the decade from her twenty-first birthday to her thirty-first. A default would let the Balance tear through her soul and convert what remained into Holy Marrow. The public wording called it recovery. I had seen more honest names for slaughter.
“Stop,” I said.
Neris moved toward me. The clerk laid two fingers on the contract, holding it in place. “The applicant must make the choice without interference.”
“Then let her hear the whole instrument before she makes it.”
That earned me a thin smile. “It has been read.”
“Not the consolidation provision.”
His fingers lifted from the paper. The smile vanished by a fraction. “You have read temple instruments before?”
“No.” I let my head sink back against the pillow. “But your clerk’s mark on the lower margin means there’s another party involved.”
There was. A small red seal, pressed beside the words PRIOR CLAIM. Neris had borrowed four crowns from Dask, a gang boss who collected rent and interest for half the block. I knew his kind. They made small debts heavy, then waited for the debtor to mistake weight for inevitability.
Next
With Dask’s soul bound to him and the temple audit less than an hour away, can Reyn turn his first captured asset into leverage before the contract is examined?
Dask stood near the entrance with two men behind him. He had been watching Neris sign. His coat was clean enough to suggest a man who stole from people with dirty hands.
The clerk read the provision aloud. “A registered creditor may assume the applicant’s new obligations and receive all rights to listed collateral. The original applicant is then discharged. Any disbursement remains payable to the named beneficiary.”
Dask’s eyes moved to the four crowns beside his seal. “I could take over the loan.”
“You could,” the clerk said. “The applicant’s pledged years would secure your position.”
Neris looked at Dask. “You’d be taking the debt?”
“And the collateral.” He came to the counter. “A decade of a healthy young woman’s life has value. More than four crowns.”
“I haven’t pledged it yet.”
“You were about to.” He rested one hand on the counter. “I’m offering you a way out.”
A reasonable lie, delivered at the usual rate.
Neris looked toward me. Her fingers tightened on the pen. She wanted to refuse him. She also wanted the physician. That made her predictable, which made her useful.
“Ask him whether he’d accept the debt without the collateral,” I said.
Dask laughed. “I’ve got no reason to.”
“You’d receive the temple’s twenty crowns. Four repay your registered claim. Sixteen go to the named beneficiary.” I kept my voice soft; every breath scraped. “That leaves a clean profit before you collect a single year.”
The clerk’s gaze sharpened. Dask stopped smiling. Neris watched me, trying to decide whether I was helping her or calculating something she couldn’t see.
“Who is the beneficiary?” Dask asked.
“Me,” I said. “The loan is for my treatment.”
“You’re a boy in a bed. What could you offer?”
“Nothing you can appraise.”
That answer interested him more than a promise would have. Dask valued people by what they could be made to surrender. He had survived by recognizing that desperation often hid a better price.
He turned to the clerk. “If I assume the loan, the girl is released from every obligation?”
“Once the Balance records the transfer.”
“And the collateral becomes mine?”
“Your rights would be those stated in the instrument.”
There it was: the empire’s favorite trick. A sentence narrow enough to sound safe, broad enough to hold a life.
The clerk laid a fresh sheet over the original. “If you wish to proceed, the assumer signs here. The beneficiary confirms receipt. The applicant signs the discharge.”
I could barely lift my hand from the blanket. When Neris came to my bedside, she held the pen out to me. I took it, and my fingers closed around hers for one second. Her grip was warm. I had no use for warmth, but I noted the strength in it. A pure soul could command a substantial price below the empire’s foundations. Neris did not know that. She also did not know I had no intention of letting her keep a claim on my decisions.
“Sign the discharge,” I told her. “Dask takes the debt.”
She hesitated. “You’re sure?”
“Do you want the medicine?”
“Yes.”
“Then sign.”
Her name crossed the line. The clerk stamped it, and the Balance chimed once. A white thread of light ran from Neris’s signature to Dask’s seal.
Dask took the pen. He glanced through the contract’s final lines, saw his name listed as assumer, and signed with a flourish.
The temple did not teach its clerks the First Abyssal Script. The temple did not even know it existed. I had put three marks in the blank space where the instrument joined principal, creditor, and beneficiary. They looked like scratches from a trembling hand. Beneath the contract’s public language, they made a different claim: the assumer accepted both the debt and every claim incorporated into it; any soul made both debtor and creditor under the same instrument vested in the named beneficiary.
Dask had inherited the temple’s debt. His old claim against Neris remained incorporated in the same contract. My name stood as beneficiary. The contradiction had teeth.
The Balance chimed a second time.
Dask’s hand jerked. His face went slack, then pinched as if he had bitten down on something sharp. A black filament rose from his chest and wound around my signed name. Only I could see it. The soul was there, pulled into the contract’s hidden seam, living and furious.
The public record showed Dask as the new borrower. Neris was discharged. The temple’s twenty crowns were counted into a purse and handed to me.
Neris stared at Dask. “Are you hurt?”
He swallowed and looked down at his hands. “No.” He sounded less certain than before. He reached for the purse, but the clerk placed his palm over it.
“Disbursement goes to the beneficiary.”
Dask looked at me. For the first time, he seemed to notice that the boy in the bed had been listening to every word. The two men behind him shifted their weight. One of them glanced at the exit.
The clerk checked the contract’s seals. His expression remained professionally blank, but his thumb stopped on the third mark. “This instrument will be reviewed at first bell.”
“Why?” Dask demanded.
“Routine audit.” The clerk pressed the Balance’s release lever. “Consolidations involving multiple registered claims are flagged.”
The black filament tightened once around my name. Dask flinched. His soul had accepted the transfer. The audit could still expose the script and bring the temple’s attention down on me, but the asset was already mine.
Neris took the purse from the counter and brought it to my bed. “I’ll get the physician.”
“Get the medicine first,” I said. “Pay only what he asks for. Keep the receipt.”
She nodded, still watching my face as if looking for the brother who had been here before I woke. I let her look. Her concern cost nothing, and it kept her moving.
The clerk lifted the contract to inspect the seal. Dask took a step toward the door. I felt the filament pull with him, a new instrument in my hand and a creditor’s soul at the end of it.