Chapter 22: Debtless Fourteen!!
Renn counted people the way other men counted coins. Not because he loved numbers. Because numbers lied less than fear. He crouched beside the dead cart while pressure rain tapped the broken roof above them.
The group had moved three alleys from the ash stable, then ducked into the shell of an old furnace weigh station. Its scale pit was dry. Its walls were black with soot handprints. Somebody had once scratched three words above the weighing hook.
The living had become numbers with pulse, and numbers only survived when someone stubborn kept touching them back into order. The old crews kept curses for Veyrath, for the sink chain, and for every clean-handed master who had never stood under pressure rain. Down here, scale was not learned from maps. It was learned from how many bodies a single order could spend before breakfast.
Living count made the room ugly in a different way: not through bodies dropped, but through bodies almost priced out of being counted. Renn’s bone strip turned trembling breath into record.
GULP!
A small knock traveled through Furnace Sink Nine and ended near Kael’s knee, dry and deliberate. He did not chase the sound. He set his stance where the sound wanted him nervous.
PAY BEFORE DEATH
Renn ignored the writing and pointed with a strip of bone.
"Fourteen workers alive."
A woman with one clouded eye spat onto the floor.
"Fifteen."
Renn did not look up.
"I am not counting Brak until he wakes."
"He is breathing."
"So is a leech sack if you squeeze it. He wakes, he counts."
The woman moved like she might hit him. Orrek shifted where he sat against the wall, and the movement made the chain wrapped around his uninjured fist scrape stone.
SCRAPE!
The woman stopped.
Orrek looked half dead, but half of Orrek still looked like it could ruin a face.
Renn continued.
"Fourteen alive. One maybe. Three can carry weight. Six can walk without help. Four can walk if they stop pretending pain is a debate. One child. Two old. One fever. One belly wound. No clean water. Food enough for half a meal if we hate each other politely."
Vaela leaned near the doorway, watching the lane through a crack. She had cut the edge of her cloak into strips and tied them around the brightest blood marks on the workers. It made them look less like fugitives and more like trash bundles. In Furnace Sink Nine, that was camouflage.
"Say the bad part," she said.
Renn held up the bone strip.
"That was the polite part."
Kael stood under the old weighing hook with his marked hand wrapped in furnace cloth. Black pressure had soaked through the cloth in branching lines. Every few breaths, the mark tugged north and down. Every tug tightened the skin across his palm until red leaked through the black.
He did not unwrap it or spend shards.
He listened.
Renn tapped the floor once for each point.
"We cannot feed fourteen workers. We cannot hide fourteen workers. We cannot move fast with fourteen workers. We cannot fight clean while carrying Brak and the fever girl. The dead road toll keepers will smell the weak first. Black Ledger will smell the hungry first. Hollow Court will smell him first."
He pointed the bone strip at Kael.
Nobody argued.
A boy near the cart hugged his knees and stared at Kael’s covered hand like it was a lit fuse. Orrek’s jaw worked.
"You saying leave them?"
Renn sighed.
"I am saying numbers. You can hate them after."
"I hate them now."
"Efficient."
Vaela gave a tired snort.
The sound almost became a laugh. It died in the room before it reached anyone else. Kael looked at the workers. They looked back with different kinds of fear.
Some feared him. Some feared the Court. Some feared being abandoned more than dying. That last fear was the heaviest.
It made eyes shine too bright in dirty faces.
He had not asked to lead them.
They had followed because the Chain Yard gate had broken and the old order had cracked around him. People chased cracks. They thought any break in a wall was a doorway. Sometimes it was only a deeper pit.
"Who knows the dead road?" Kael asked.
Nobody answered.
Vaela lifted two fingers.
"I know the first throat. After that, only corpse handlers, tax cutters, and Court dogs know the bends."
"Can we buy a route?"
"With what? His famous bleeding hand?"
Orrek grunted.
"Might be worth plenty."
Vaela looked at him.
"I already considered it."
"Course you did."
"And rejected it. Temporarily."
The old woman with the clouded eye made a low sound in her throat.
"You people joke while they come for us."
Vaela did not soften.
"We joke because they come for us. Crying costs water."
The woman stared at her, then looked away first. Kael stepped from beneath the hook. His body protested. The hound bite in his side had closed ugly, not clean. The intake backlash still rang in his bones. His back carried hook wounds that stuck to cloth every time he moved.
But his feet were steady.
That mattered to the room.
"Renn. Who dies first if we move?"
Renn’s eyes flicked to the fever girl. Then Brak. Then the belly wound.
"Fever if pressure rain hits her long. Brak if carried wrong. Belly wound if he walks."
"Who can fight?"
"You. Her. Him if he ignores sanity." Renn pointed at Vaela and Orrek. "Three workers can swing something. Badly. The cloud eyed woman will bite before she runs."
The old woman raised her chin.
"I have teeth left."
"Barely," Vaela said.
"Enough for your nose."
This time the laugh did escape. Small, rough, and ugly, but real. It moved through the room like a little heat from a dying coal.
Kael let it breathe for one moment.
Then the mark pulled.
His wrapped hand snapped toward the floor.
BANG!
His fist hit stone hard enough to crack soot from the walls.
Everyone froze.
Black pressure spread through the cloth. It crawled down his knuckles, touched the stone, and drew a thin line toward the northern wall. Renn whispered, "It heard us standing still." Vaela’s face lost its dry edge.
"No. It counted us."
The line on the floor split into small hooks. Fourteen hooks. One dim hook. Then three brighter hooks around Kael, Orrek, and Vaela. The Court mark had counted the living too.
The fever girl began to sob.
Orrek pushed himself up, chain fist trembling.
"I vote we stop letting the hand make decisions."
Kael lifted his fist from the floor. The black line stretched like spit before snapping back into his palm.
SNAP!
Pain flashed white behind his eyes.
For one breath, the Sovereign Root stirred. Not an alert. Not a reward. A cold readiness, waiting for impact that had not yet arrived.
Kael refused to spend.
"We move in two lines," he said. "Fast walkers ahead with Vaela. Injured in the cart with Renn. Orrek stays beside the cart. I stay behind."
Vaela turned.
"Behind is where the hunters bite first."
"Fine, then we set the rear."
"That is not strategy. That is your skull being loud."
"Then make the front smarter."
Her mouth tightened, but she did not argue again. Renn began assigning bodies with the same cold numbers he had used to count them. The old woman took a rusted meat hook. The three workers who could fight took broken scale rods. The boy was placed between two adults. Brak was lifted into the cart with a wet groan that did not become speech.
The fever girl clutched Renn’s sleeve.
"Are we dying?"
Renn looked at Kael before answering.
Kael looked down at the black pressure soaking through his fist.
"Not for free," he said.
The weigh station went quiet.
Outside, the dead road lay under the old sink levels, and somewhere beyond it Hollow Court ledgers had already counted them as property in motion.
Renn made them show hands next.
It seemed small until the hands came out. Split nails. Missing fingers. Old cuff scars.
Fresh rod bruises. Burns from pressure pipes. A young woman had wrapped two fingers together because one had bent backward in the Chain Yard and never straightened. The boy had palms too smooth for heavy labor, which meant he had been kept for running messages, squeezing into vents, or stealing food from places adults could not reach.
Renn sorted them without mercy. He also counted silence. That mattered more than anyone liked. A worker who complained still had room for fear. A worker who went quiet could drop, run, betray, or simply stop obeying the body. Renn marked three silent ones and put them where other hands could touch their shoulders.
"You pull cart left. You hold fever girl if she drops. You do not touch weapons because you will stab the wrong back. You, cloud eye, stay near Vaela. Bite only enemies unless told otherwise."
The old woman showed her remaining teeth.
"I choose my own biting."
"Then choose usefully."
The workers listened because Renn sounded like someone who had watched people die from bad assignments. Not heroic deaths. Stupid ones. A weak man told to carry weight until his heart failed. A panicked girl handed a blade and cut the medic. A fever body placed in rain because no one counted breaths.
Kael saw the shape of it. Empire was not banners. Not yet. It was this ugly thing: knowing who could stand, who could carry, who would break, and who might still matter if given the right task. The thought felt too large for the room, so he pushed it away.
Kael stepped into the lane last.
Behind them, the soot writing over the weighing hook cracked, split, and dropped one word onto the floor.
The fallen soot struck stone with a dry little tick.
TIK!
DEATH