Two Vales

The Red Ledger kept its house on Coin Street, three doors down from the Lantern Guild, which Hesper Quill said was no accident. "Moneylenders like to be close to the people who owe them," she told Tamsin over breakfast, "and we owe them. Go and pay the note before the interest turns over at noon. Second-class note, forty crowns, in the guild's name. Here."

She slid a purse across the table. Tamsin weighed it. Two gold sovereigns, which at twenty silver crowns to the sovereign made forty crowns exactly, and a scatter of brass marks on top for whatever the Red Ledger charged for the privilege of being paid.

"And then?" Tamsin asked.

"And then you come back and I give you a job that is actually a job."

Tamsin had been a Second Circle mage for three years, since the spring she turned sixteen. In the ordinary way of things a hedge-mage stayed Second Circle for a decade or more. She had stopped expecting anything else. But Hesper had a look about her this morning, and the Duke's party was still in the guildhall, and the signet ring was still missing, and Tamsin walked to Coin Street faster than she needed to.

The Red Ledger was a guild of lenders. Its master was Oswin Drake, who had led it for as long as Tamsin had been alive and who was said to own a third of Harrow on paper. The guild ranked its loans the way the Circles ranked mages, which Hesper thought was a joke in poor taste: a first-class note was secured on land, a second-class note on a guild's seal, a third-class note on nothing but a signature and a threat. Tamsin had heard apprentices confuse a "third-class note" with "the Third Circle" and had once done it herself, to her lasting embarrassment.

The clerk at the counter was a thin, tidy young man with ink on his cuffs. "Lantern Guild," he said before she had opened her mouth. "Second-class note, forty crowns. You're early. Good. I am Edric Vale, clerk of the Red Ledger, and I will take your sovereigns and give you a receipt, and we will both be happier."

Tamsin blinked at him. "Vale?"

"Yes." He had clearly had this conversation before. "Edric. Not Edran. Edran Vale is the Duke's steward, and he is standing behind you, and we are not related, and I would thank you not to ask whether we are, because he will not like it either."

She turned. Edran Vale, the steward, was indeed standing behind her, thin and grey and holding his ledger case as if it might be taken from him. He gave the clerk a look of deep distaste.

"I have told Master Drake twice," Edran said, "that the similarity is a nuisance. The clerk is Edric Vale of the Red Ledger. I am Edran Vale, steward to the Greater Duke of Westmarch. We are two different men with two different masters, and I would be glad if the town could keep that straight."

"The town is trying," said Edric, counting her sovereigns. "Receipt, mage. Forty crowns, paid in two sovereigns, note cleared. Three brass marks for the seal." He took three marks from her pile and pushed the rest back. "Steward. What can the Red Ledger do for the Hand's purse?"

"Nothing for the purse. I am here for Master Drake. A raven came to me at dawn with a letter sealed in black wax with a Haldane raven pressed in it, and the letter was unsigned, and it told me where to look for the Duke's ring. I want to know who in this town uses that seal besides the Count, because the Count swears on his father's bones that he did not send it."

Edric's hands went still on the counter for a moment. Then he smiled. "Master Drake is upstairs. I'll fetch him."

Tamsin left with her receipt and the question lodged in her like a splinter. Who had sent the raven with the Haldane seal to the Duke's steward? Count Varro denied it. The seal was the Count's. Someone was either lying or stealing, and in Harrow both were possible.

On the guildhall steps she nearly walked into the Haldane children.

Soren Haldane was twenty-two, the Count's heir, with his father's heavy shoulders and none of his father's temper. Wren Haldane, his sister, was a year younger and all temper. They were arguing in low voices and stopped when they saw her brass token.

"Lantern Guild," Wren said. "You were serving last night. You saw the steward leave the table."

"I saw everyone leave the table at one time or another, my lady."

"Did you see my brother leave it?"

"Wren," said Soren.

"I'm asking the mage, not you."

Tamsin thought about it honestly. "Lord Soren left once, before the cheese. He came back before the Duke finished speaking about the law. He wasn't gone long enough to open a strongbox."

Wren looked at her brother, and something in her face eased, and Soren Haldane let out a breath. "Thank you," he said, which was more than Tamsin had expected from a Haldane, and the two siblings went down the steps together, still arguing, but more quietly.

Hesper was waiting in the guild's inner room with something on the table in front of her, wrapped in oilcloth.

"Sit," she said. "Sir Aldous Crane rode in an hour ago. You know him?"

"The Warden of the Ford." Everyone knew Crane. He was a Knight, the lowest rung of the nobility, and proud of it: a Knight held a ford or a tower or a stretch of road for the Crown, a Baron held a manor, a Count held a county, a Duke held a march, and the King held the lot. Sir Aldous Crane held the Harrow ford, six miles downriver, and had held it since the treaty. He was the only noble in the county who had ever bought Tamsin a drink.

"The ford beacon has gone out," Hesper said. "Not blown out. Gone out, the way a lamp goes out when the current under it dies. Crane has asked the guild for a mage to relight it and keep it lit, because the Mirefold storms are coming and the ford is the only crossing between here and Vesk. Baron Pell of Mirefold has already lost two carts in the bog this month."

"You want me at the ford."

"I want a Second Circle mage who can keep a cantrip burning in a gale for three nights running, and I have exactly one of those who isn't drunk or seventy. Yes. I want you at the ford." She unwrapped the oilcloth.

It was a lantern. Not a river-wall lamp but a true guild lantern, brass-cased, with a wick-stone the size of a hen's egg set in the base and the Lantern Guild's mark worked into the glass. Tamsin had seen it in the guild's locked cabinet every day for three years.

"The Harrow Lantern," Hesper said. "The guild's own. It has been in that cabinet since I was Second Circle myself. A lesser spell poured into it will burn for a night without feeding. A greater spell would burn for a week, but neither of us can give it that, so you will feed it a lesser every evening and cantrips in between. I am giving it to you because the ford needs it and because I can't go. When the storms pass, you bring it back."

Tamsin took the lantern. It was heavier than it looked. "Guildmaster. If I lose it..."

"Then you will owe the Red Ledger a first-class note for the rest of your life, and so will I. Don't lose it."

Hesper walked her to the door. On the step she stopped and said, more quietly, "The Duke asked me last night what Circle you were. I told him Second. He asked whether that was the best Harrow had. I told him it was the best Harrow had that could be trusted. Go and prove me right at the ford, Rook."

Tamsin went out into Coin Street with the Harrow Lantern under her arm and the Duke's question in her ears. The Crown counted its places in tiers for taxing: a hamlet like Thistlecombe paid in marks, a town like Harrow paid in crowns, a free city like Vesk paid in sovereigns, and the capital, Caerlan, paid in nothing at all because the King lived there. Harrow was a town. It had one guild of mages and one of lenders and one bridge, and now it had a missing ring, a stolen seal and a dark beacon, and a Second Circle hedge-mage carrying the only true lantern in the county out to a ford in the rain.

She did not look back at the Red Ledger as she passed it. But she noticed that Edric Vale was standing at the upper window, watching her go.