Millennial Mage novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Collar

Without my strings, I was a woman on a bench with a bucket.

I had been that woman for eleven years, and I knew exactly what she did.

She looked at what was in front of her.

The guard who brought my water was about twenty, with a bad shave and a pay chit sticking out of his belt pouch.

He pulled it out twice that morning, frowned at it, and stuffed it back.

"Problem?" I asked through the slot.

"No."

"You've read it four times."

"It's short."

"May I see it?"

He thought about that for a long time.

Then he pushed the slip through the bars, mostly because nobody else had ever asked him anything about it.

It was a Hall pay chit, crumpled soft.

Thirty-one silver for two weeks at four silver a day, less a levy.

I borrowed a stub of chalk from the bench seam and did the sum on the iron wall.

I had to do it the slow way, with my finger, carrying the one.

I had not done a sum without my strings in three weeks, and it was a little like walking after a long illness.

"Fifty-six for fourteen days," I said. "You're paid thirty-one."

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