“You call it looking at the ledger as a whole, Steward Osen,” Seyun said, his voice quiet, clear, and devoid of dramatic heat in the dim study. “But a ledger where the clerk gets to decide which names are too small to count isn’t an account book at all. It’s just a butcher’s bill written by the man holding the knife.”
Osen Tal’s eyes narrowed across the glowing birch coals. “I’m offering you your life, boy. The original First Examiner Council transfer order in your hand. Without this sheepskin scroll, you have no map into the Hollow Summit and no founding signed names to lay before the hall elders.”
“And with that scroll taken in secret under your bargain,” Seyun replied steadily, “I’d walk down the bakery drain tonight leaving four surviving foundation boys strapped to the outer benches of Vault Zero waiting for their chests to rupture in the next surge. I’d walk past the laundry back kitchen leaving Jesh to knit winter socks for a brother who has been dead for fourteen months. And I’d leave Hall Mistress Soran and two hundred valley refugees sitting on this ridge while Commander Keth Or and Chief Examiner Vaska Ren turn White Heron Hall into another quiet annex of their prison.”
