Millennial Mage novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Forged in His Name

By the third ledger, I knew what I was looking at, and I wished I did not.

Sallow Ford, autumn, day one through day eleven.

Every ration line the Hall had booked to the Fourth Company felt hollow under my thumb.

Flour, oil, dried meat, salt, boots.

All of it entered as delivered, and every line had been written by a man who knew it was not.

At the bottom of each page was a receipt, signed in a looping, careful hand.

I knew the hand.

"Teo Kell, Captain, Fourth Company," it said. "Received in full."

I shut the ledger and sat for a while with my palm flat on the cover.

Then I went and woke him.

He took one look at my face and sat up.

"Tell me," he said.

"I have to show you."

He read the page by lantern light, standing in the stores tent in his shirt.

I watched him go through every stage of it: the first line, then the receipt, then his own name.

"I never signed that," he said.

"I know."

"I never saw a wagon. I never held a pen."

"I know. Sign something for me."

He took the pen and wrote his name on my legal pad: a quick flat T with a hard cross.

I put my thumb on it.

It was warm and whole.

I laid it next to the ledger's receipt, with its curl.

"Yours is yours," I said.

"The one in the book is not."

Teo stared at the two signatures.

"Vesk," he said.

"That's why the Hall could call you a deserter, Teo.

There was no hold order, no wagons on their way and no ration at the ford."

He sat down on a crate.

He sat as if a rope had been cut.

"Eleven days," he said. "I thought... if I had waited one more day."

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