Chapter 6: Present Your Accounts

The vault door had a black wax seal across it, two hands wide.

Nanami stood in front of it in her stocking feet with a candle, and the king stood behind her with his coat half buttoned.

"He can't do that," she said.

"He's done it."

"Section twelve of the Open Ledger Law. Nothing in the castle may be sealed or seized while an audit is open."

She took the paper knife from her pocket and slid it under the edge of the wax.

Gorund held the lamp, and the thin clerk who had been left on guard watched with his mouth open.

The seal came away in one dry piece.

She wrote on the back of a wage slip, "Seal broken under section twelve, four ten a.m.," and had Gorund sign as witness.

"Tell your master the vault is open," she said to the clerk. "Tell him I have a receipt."

The clerk fled up the stairs.

Gorund said, thickly, that he was going to bed, and went away with the lamp shaking in his hand.

That left the two of them in the dark of the vault corridor, with one candle between them.

Nanami's pulse was loud in her ears.

She was shaking, and not from the cold.

"You broke the Collector's seal," said Dravan, "in your socks."

"I'm not finished."

She took his coat in her fist and walked him backward up the stairs to the counting room.

She shut the door and turned the key.

He watched her do it.

His eyes had gone dark green, and the pupils were narrow as slits.

"Auditor," he said carefully.

"Stand there."

He stood, with his back to the long desk.

She set the candle on the corner of it, and the lamplight ran up the side of his face and caught his broken horn.

"Present your accounts," said Nanami.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your personal expenses. Line by line. What do you spend on yourself?"

His mouth twitched.

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