The Clerk Who Counted Twice

The auditor came on the next courier, which told Edran his queries had been noticed before he had decided what to do with the answer. Her name was Halse, and she was old, and she did not look like an executioner, which Edran found more alarming than if she had. She sat across his narrow desk, declined the bad tea, and said, "You added up the column." "I did." "Nineteen years and you never had before." She almost smiled. "Most people never do. The page is designed to be read across, not down. Tell me what you intend, and I'll tell you whether it's worth dying for." Edran had rehearsed righteousness all the long night. Now, facing the patient old face of someone who clearly already knew everything he knew, the speech deserted him. "The Throne should be told the truth," he managed. "It's built on a fiction." "It is," Halse agreed mildly. "And the fiction feeds nine hundred billion people. The phantom tribute backs the currency that pays the grain fleets that keep worlds like yours from starving in the dark. The day the column tells the truth, the credit collapses, the fleets stop, and the lie that was keeping children alive becomes a famine that kills them." She folded her hands. "I have carried this number to the throne-room door three times in my life, clerk. Three times I turned around. Now I carry the names of those who find it instead. So. Knowing what it does — do you