The Cart Ledger

The scroll was a supply tally, marked two days before the ambush. It listed eight scouts. Only five returned. One wounded. One dead. One… unmentioned.

Alric wasn't written in.

Raive leaned against the supply tent, arms folded.

"Your dead friend got forgotten," he said.

Darin didn't look up.

"I want him written in."

"Not how it works."

"Then change how it works."

Raive gave him a long, unreadable stare. "You're not wearing steel thread yet, field boy. You don't get to speak like a lord."

"I'm not asking as one."

They went to the cart.

The ink-wagon was manned by a bored-looking clerk with sand-pocked skin and a voice like spoiled vinegar.

"You want a name added post-death?" the clerk snorted. "There's no casualty coin. No writ. No pre-commissary enlist. If I write that name, I get fined."

"I'll pay it," Darin said.

The clerk blinked. "You're serious?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

Darin reached into his belt and dropped the entire chit from his last patrol—the same one the scribe had given him in Chapter XV.

It clinked.

The clerk stared.

Raive whistled, soft and low.

"Name?" the clerk asked.

"Alric. No family. Carried front bow. Died bleeding to cover our exit."

"And your name, for the witness field?"

Darin hesitated. Then:

"Darin of now."

The clerk squinted. "That a place?"

"It is now."

He stamped the scroll.