Prologue: Market Morning
Dawn in the grain market begins with a flood of rich aromas.The tart, warm scent of freshly baked rye bread. The oily tang of smoked herringscooped from wooden barrels. The steaming odor of manure from the horses pullingheavy carts. All these scents knead together into a single thick atmosphere thatdrifts unceremoniously through the open doors of the Guild Headquarters’first-floor reception windows. Amidst this sensory deluge, Liesel Marquardt wasreviewing her twenty-sixth mission report of the day.the queue at the window swelled with the rising sun. Adventurers returning fromhunts hurried to collect their bounties, caravan guards scoured the boards forthe next day’s work, and the cries of market vendors wove through the gaps inbetween. It was noisy. It smelled delicious. It was alive. Liesel had neverdisliked this cacophony. She didn’t trust quiet government offices. In a placewhere only numbers move and the scent of humanity is absent, falsehoods can passthrough with a serene face. It was far harder to make a mistake when measuringin the middle of an uproar. It was more human.She flipped through the stack of documents one by one using only her right hand.Her left hand was under the desk, unconsciously pressing down on her knee. Theclouds were low this morning. On the day before rain, her old injury alwaysthrobbed. She refused to use a cane at the window. It was a matter of pride, ofvanity. One who placed a value on adventurers could not appear dragging a leg.She had decided she would not touch the slender cane leaning against the back ofher chair until noon.Her hair was tied back high in the morning. She had perfected this knot over theeight years since her retirement—a style that ensured not a single strand wouldfall onto her cheek during an audit. The bangs that used to be a nuisance whenreading the wind as a scout were now brushed aside in the same way to trace thefine print of request forms. Habits, once formed, linger in the hands ratherthan the head, even when the profession changes.At the adjacent desk, a young scout was messing up a request form.“Loch, you’ve reversed the numbers again.“The veteran, Domas, laughed, his portly belly shaking. The boy called Lochturned red in his freckled cheeks and laughed back with a gap-toothed grin.“Whoops, you’re right. That’s the third time.“”Not the third, the fifth this week. By the way, the sausages at the back marketstarted using garlic today. That’s lunch sorted.“Liesel didn’t look up from her papers, her lips twitching into the faintest ofsmiles. Domas’s mind was occupied by food for eighty percent of his workinghours. Yet, the eyes of the man who had anchored this window for twenty yearscould accurately spot trouble anywhere in the line even while he chattered.On the corner of the audit documents in Liesel’s hand was a faint oil stain.Yesterday, on market day, she had bought fried river fish and pickled cabbagefrom her usual stall and eaten right over the paperwork. She repeated this everyweek, much to the dismay of the younger staff. Her theory was that a stain ortwo didn’t dull the precision of a verdict.The potted plant by the window was wilting again. The third? Or the fourth? Shewatered it. It got sun. Yet it always died. No plant had ever survived under hercare. Liesel gave the pot a single glance and immediately returned to herdocuments.In the afternoon, the annual audit statistics arrived.It was a day when her knee ached. It had been overcast since morning; rain wasnear. She shifted her seat to protect her left leg and began examining thestatistical tables from the top down.Liesel trusted statistics. People lie, but a sequence of numbers, given enoughtime, will eventually show the seams of a deception. False subjugation reportsinvariably created beautiful sequences that were too well-balanced. The realthing was always more irregular. It dipped with the weather, surged with theseasons, and blurred with fatigue. In the irregularities of the numbers, sheread the breathing of the humans who lived and worked. For twenty years, she hadmade her living with that reading.That day, she was reading the tables as usual, searching for the irregular.Mission completion rates. Mortality rates by rank. Toll collections at thegates. Every column was properly chaotic, following the waves of the seasons.Her eyes moved from one irregularity to the next. It was tedious work. And thatwas exactly why the opposite—something too regular—caught her eye.Her gaze stopped at two specific lines.First: The quality report for healing medicines from the frontier village ofHalden. The numerical value had remained above the capital average fortwenty-six years without a single exception.The second was a standard tally just below it.F-Rank Stagnants. Kingdom average tenure: 11.4 years. Longest record: F-0117, 26years. Remarks: None.Liesel read that line twice. Remarks: None. The system hadn’t overlooked thisman. For twenty-six years, it had seen him clearly, and yet it could only write”None.” There was no box in the tally for what he was. She pressed her pen tiplightly against the margin of the table, but then lifted it without writing aword.Outside, the voices of the market grew louder. It seemed the sausages werefinally ready.
