I Audited the Demon King's Castle, and He Won't Let Me Leave novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Page Forty
A Tokyo accountant is pulled through the floor into the Demon King's cellar, strikes the rigged clause in the Collector's contract, and finds on page forty that the missing nine thousand crowns paid for her own summoning: 'You are not leaving this castle.'
At ten past one in the morning, Nanami Mizuno was three entries away from closing the year's books.
Then the floor of the office turned white.
It did not feel like falling.
It felt like the chair and the desk and the whole building being pulled away at once.
She landed on cold stone with her pencil in one hand and her glasses crooked on her nose.
The only light came from a ring of dying blue chalk marks around her knees.
"Oh, no," said a man's voice above her. "Who lit that?"
She looked up.
He was very tall, and he was holding a candle in a saucer, and he had horns.
One was long and swept back from his left temple.
The other had been broken off at half its length.
He wore wire reading glasses and a black coat with patches on both elbows.
He looked thoroughly, deeply exhausted.
"Who sent you?" he asked.
"Nobody sent me," Nanami said. "I was at work."
Behind him a huge green-grey orc in a clerk's apron put a hand over his mouth.
"King Dravan," the orc whispered. "The old circle lit itself."
"I can see that, Gorund."
Footsteps came down the cellar stairs, quick and neat.
A slim man in a plum coat arrived, with a gold chain across his chest and rose-gold spectacles.
He smiled at Nanami.
"Seleth Marn, Collector of the Council of Nine Thrones," he said. "You are the king's auditor, madam."
"I'm what?"
"The Open Ledger Law. A summoned stranger audits the king's books and signs at the full moon, thirty days from tonight."
He held out a sheet of paper, already inked.
"After you sign, our circle sends you home. Your engagement letter."
Nanami took it, because she could not help taking paper.
She read all of it, standing in a cellar in her office shoes.
The fee line was blank.
The scope line said "all books." The return line said "on signing."
The third clause said that the auditor's finding shall be that the treasury was robbed by the king.
She took the pencil from behind her ear and drew a line through it.
"A finding comes after the work," she said.
The Collector's smile did not move.
"The clause is customary."
"It's a conclusion written before the audit. I won't sign that."
She turned the page over and wrote on the back.
One fee in advance, paid from the first coin in the vault. Full access to every book. No finding until she had checked every line.
"Initial here," she said, and held it out to the king, not the Collector.
The king looked at the paper, then at her.
He took the pencil from her fingers, and his claws were ink-stained at the tips.
He initialed it without reading it.
"You didn't check my terms," Nanami said.
"They are the first terms anyone has written down in this castle in a year," he said. "I'll take them."
The vault book was heavier than a child.
Gorund carried it up to a stone counting room that smelled of candle wax and old paper.
He set it on a desk with a thump.
"I'm sorry about the room," he said. "We sold the chairs."
Nanami sat on a stool and opened the book.
By the time the windows went grey she had stopped being afraid.
The mistakes were the usual kind, and she was good at the usual kind.
A bad total on page nine.
A copied line on page twenty-two.
Five months of wages, entered, never paid.
At page forty she stopped.
One line was written in a neat old hand, with a double check mark in the margin.
"Paid in advance. One summoning of one who counts. Nine thousand crowns. Drawn on the old king's seal."
The date was three months old.
Nanami read it three times.
She put her finger under the words.
"One who counts," she said out loud.
A hand came down on the page beside hers.
The king had been standing behind her for some time.
He was reading over her shoulder, and he read the line twice, slowly.
"Nine thousand crowns," he said. "My vault has six hundred and forty."
"That's the hole in your books, Your Majesty."
Her voice came out thin.
"And I think I'm it."
His hand moved from the page and closed around her wrist.
It was warm, and very careful, and it did not let go.
"Someone in my castle paid nine thousand crowns to bring you here," he said.
"You're not leaving until I know who."
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