Kharos

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

The sack was lighter than its tally said it should be. Seraya lifted it off the scale, checked that nothing had caught beneath the pan, and set it down again. The beam rose to the same position. Behind her, Selvek was scraping frost from the shutter with the edge of a wooden rule, letting a narrow strip of morning light into the storehouse.

“Have you changed the weights?” Seraya asked.

“The cord on the small one. Nothing else.” He turned, still holding the rule. “How far out?”

She put the sack on the floor beside the others. “Enough that I want to weigh the rest.”

Selvek looked at the rows against the wall. They had shifted those sacks twice already, once to raise them clear of meltwater and again when a roof seam opened above the northern corner. His hands were cracked across the knuckles, and he had wrapped a strip of cloth around one thumb. Seraya had promised him yesterday that this morning’s count would be quick. “I know,” she said. “Bring the book.”

They worked in the light from the shutter until it reached the edge of the table and stopped. Selvek read each mark aloud before she opened the sack, inspected the grain, and weighed it. He had been careful with his entries. Every household issue carried a date and a second mark from the person receiving it; the sacks purchased from the last coastal trader had been entered together on a clean page. It was that page she kept returning to.

Outside, someone broke ice from a water trough. The blows came slowly, with long pauses between them. Seraya could hear people arriving at the outer door, setting down containers and stamping warmth into their feet. She had left Vaeren with Delsa before dawn, promising to collect him when the morning distribution was finished. Bale should have returned before she woke.

She pushed that thought aside and untied another sack. This one was sound. The grain ran dry between her fingers, smelling faintly sweet beneath the cold, dusty air of the room. She weighed it, checked the number Selvek had written, and drew a line beneath her own figure. “These were entered by the trader’s measure,” she said.

“He used the same sack for all of them.”

“The same size of sack.” She lifted the empty corner so that he could see how much loose cloth lay above the grain. “Did we weigh his measure?”

Selvek stared at the open book. “Two of them. Bale weighed two.”

She remembered the arrival now: sleet, an exhausted driver, the trader desperate to leave before the track closed. Bale had brought the first sacks inside while she found space for the rest. The two they checked had matched the trader’s account. Everything after that had been carried in by people glad to see food. “Then those two were full,” she said.

Selvek put his rule flat on the table. “You think he knew.”

“I think we paid for grain that isn’t here. We can decide what he knew when we see him again.”

The steadiness of her voice took effort. Bale had paid most of the cost himself. The trader had complained of the risks of the road, of lost animals and damaged runners, and Bale had listened before agreeing to a price Seraya considered excessive. She had accepted it because the sacks were there, at last, and the settlement needed them. Now she wanted the man’s face in front of her, his hands empty on this table, while he explained every missing measure.

There were people outside waiting for breakfast. She took up the next sack.

By the time the count was finished, her shoulders ached beneath her coat. The discrepancy amounted to twelve days at the present rate of issue. Two sacks at the back had also taken damp through their bases. She spread a sample from one across the tabletop, separating sound grain from clumps that broke into a greyish powder beneath her thumb.

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.