Chapter Ten – A Bargain in Ash

Night fell by the time Cael reached the riverfront. He did not go far, just to an old jetty where black barges came to unload their cargo of grain and coal.

He sat at the edge, feet dangling over the water. The ledger lay in his lap, its cover slick with cold dew.

He could still feel the echo of Aurel's voice in his skull: "There is no bargaining." But a thief's life was built on finding purchase where others saw only walls. And if the Spire was a vault, then somewhere within it must be a key.

For the first time in days, he allowed himself to rest.

His dreams were jagged, full of fractured memories. He was a child again, darting between rain barrels. He was older, a hand clamped over his mouth as he watched a collector drag his mother away. Then he was in the Spire's halls, surrounded by doors that would not open, each marked with a single word: Owed.

He woke before dawn, heart hammering.

The city was slow to rouse, but he had no patience for caution anymore. He made his way to the Counting House, that fortress of ledgers and iron-banded chests.

At the threshold, he paused. He had always avoided the place, preferring to watch from afar but today, he intended to walk through the front door.

The clerk behind the desk did not look up as Cael entered.

"I need to see your record," Cael said flatly.

The man looked up then - thin, bespectacled, with the stooped posture of someone who had spent too many years hunched over parchment.

"Name?"

"Cael Vey."

The clerk flipped through a set of vellum folios, tracing each entry with a slender iron stylus.

His brow furrowed. "Ah. That record."

"Bring it," Cael said.

For a moment, he thought the man might call the watch, but instead the clerk only inclined his head and vanished into a side chamber.

Cael waited, forcing himself not to pace, he stared at the cracked mosaic beneath his boots, trying not to imagine the chains that would soon circle his wrists.

At last, the clerk returned, bearing a long, narrow ledger bound in dark hide.

He set it on the counter and drew back, as if afraid it might leap up and bite him.

"Sign here," the clerk murmured, sliding over a brass stylus.

Cael signed, the characters looping in a hand steadier than he felt.

He opened the ledger.

It was worse than he'd expected.

Page after page, debts were enumerated in crisp, remorseless script. Amounts owed by Ennos Vey, compounded with the forfeitures of his children and their children in turn. Entries marked inherited, each carrying a seal of the Spire.

And at the bottom of the last page:

Final Settlement: Pending. Collection Authorized.

His chest felt hollow.

"How much?" he whispered.

The clerk cleared his throat delicately. "Adjusted for penalty, interest, and the cost of attempted evasion… three hundred and seventy-eight crowns."

Cael nearly laughed. It was more coin than he could hope to see in ten lifetimes.

He closed the ledger.

"There has to be recourse," he said.

"No recourse," the clerk replied in a tired voice. "The Spire claims what is owed. If you cannot pay in currency, it will take… other compensation."

Cael glanced at the man's hands, noting the way they trembled as he closed the record.

"You've seen it happen."

The clerk did not answer.

Other compensation. Memory. Identity. The very substance of who he was.

He took a step back from the counter.

"You've been helpful" he said.

Then he turned and walked out into the brightening dawn.

In the market square, Cael leaned against a pillar, trying to steady his breathing. He thought of Aurel; a half-man, half-Spire being and wondered if that would be his fate. A warden of memory, no longer truly alive.

He needed leverage, a secret, a hidden precedent, anything the Spire could be made to honor.

And there was only one place such a thing might be found.

He returned to the abandoned garden where he'd spent so many nights. The gallery stood silent, the ivy shifting in the dawn breeze.

Here, he laid out his meager possessions: the ledger, his sword, the satchel of resin wards. Then he withdrew the fragment of darkroot and crushed it between thumb and forefinger, inhaling the bitter fumes.

The haze that followed was not quite intoxication, nor clarity, some in-between state that made the boundaries of his thoughts feel thin.

He closed his eyes.

The Spire's halls unfolded behind his lids: a labyrinth of vaults and chambers. A voice whispered, not in words but impressions: "Inheritance… precedent… sealed records…"

If there were any leverage to be had, it would lie in those sealed archives. Records of debts so ancient they predated the First Charter itself.

He had never seen them, but he had heard rumor, stories traded in the back rooms of counting houses.

That beneath the Spire lay a level so old it had no proper name. The Deep Archive.

Then that is where I will go, he thought.

He opened his eyes, the last traces of the darkroot's haze fading.

If he was to end this, he would have to enter the Spire again. Not as a petitioner, but as a thief. Perhaps the last theft he would ever attempt.

By mid-morning, he had gathered what supplies he could carry. A coil of rope, a pry-bar, a flask of bitter brandy. Nothing that would save him if the Spire chose to devour him outright, but he had never relied on luck.

He paused on the threshold of the courtyard, staring up at the Spire's vast face. No banners stirred there, no sign that it even acknowledged his presence.

But he felt its attention, vast and indifferent as an ocean.

"I am coming," he whispered. "One last time."

And if he failed – if the Deep Archive was sealed against him, at least he would have tried. Better to die in pursuit of freedom than to surrender it inch by inch.

He did not enter immediately. Instead, he circled to a side door – a narrow iron-bound postern used by functionaries.

He had studied its lock months ago. It was no more complicated than a merchant's vault. A series of levers and tumblers. No wards, no sigils.

It took him less than a minute to slip the picks into place and feel the final tumbler click.

The door creaked inward, stale air pouring over him like the sigh of a grave.

He slipped inside and closed it behind him.

The corridor beyond was narrow, lined with old statues whose faces had been chiseled away. Some said the Spire devoured even the memory of those who displeased it. Looking at those faceless effigies, he believed it.

He made his way down the passage, boots noiseless on the flagstones. Every step felt like an act of defiance.

At the end of the corridor, a stairway spiraled down into darkness.

He drew his sword, though he doubted it would help him if the Spire itself rose to defend its secrets.

One step, then another. Deeper than he had ever dared.

Somewhere below, he imagined the Deep Archive waiting. A place of sealed records, of truths too dangerous—or too valuable—to be let free.

And in those truths, perhaps, a chance to sever the debt that had poisoned his bloodline.

When he reached the bottom of the stair, he paused, listening.

There was no sound. No hint of life.

Only the cold.

He pushed open the final door.

The darkness beyond swallowed him whole.