"Forty percent," Swift said. As long as Attika thought he was getting the better deal and Swift was conceding everything would go according to pn.

  Attika's expression went through several stages. It was terrifying to watch. "Forty percent of what the ledger produces in a month is." He smiled like we were friends.

  "Unknown." Swift picked up the report again. "Mox's assessment is complete. We know she has three categories avaible. We know she has a Sacrifice Ledger with a monthly cap. She's confirmed both. And don’t tell me you didn’t have your own information scribe check. Might even have a spell running that monitored if she was lying.” Swift tapped his finger to the cup, his adjunct moving to refill it. “We don't know the volume she can produce within those categories, and we don't know the exchange rates." He set the report down. "I'm not negotiating forty percent of a known quantity. I'm negotiating forty percent of whatever she produces, which may be very little."

  "And if it isn't very little?" Attika didn’t look happy with the compromise yet. Good.

  "Then forty percent of a great deal is still a great deal."

  Attika was quiet for a moment. The energy in the room intensified briefly and then eased. "Fifty to my division. Fifty to yours."

  "Forty to yours. Forty to mine. Twenty to the girl,” Swift said.

  "That's…" Attika stopped. "Why twenty to her?"

  "Because she needs to believe she's operating with autonomy, to any degree, or she'll make herself less productive and we'll end up arguing about percentages of nothing." Swift had been pnning this since he'd read Mox's summary. The girl was sixteen. She was also, by every behavioral indicator in the report, someone who was controlled and exploited for the entirety of her life before Cinderwild, and who had developed an extremely finely calibrated sense of when she was being owned. Give her nothing, and she'd become difficult in ways that were hard to predict. Give her enough that this arrangement was a choice. "It's standard management, Attika."

  Attika's expression made it clear he had not risen to his position by sharing twenty percent of anything with anyone. "Fifty to my division. Thirty to yours. Twenty to her."

  That didn’t bode well for Caron or Swift should Caron come out on top. It was clear there’d be a regime change.

  "Forty-five to mine. Forty to yours. Fifteen to her."

  The silence stretched.

  "Fifty to mine," Attika said. "Forty to yours. Ten to her."

  Swift looked at the map table. They’d marked the new territory in red. It sat at the eastern edge. A significant ndmass, newly appeared three months ago, rich in mineral deposits that made both the Khanate and the Caliphate willing to bleed over it. The other seven great powers wanted their share, but it was between two major groups that were strong enough that they didn’t need to share. He thought about Halverson's face when he heard about the territory. The careful mask of a man trying not to look hungry. That was why Halverson had the same information about Mia that Attika did.

  "Forty-five to yours," he said. "Forty to mine. Fifteen to her."

  Another silence. Then Attika picked up his cup. "Agreed."

  Swift agreed. He pretended not to feel good about it, but it was within the range he’d prepared to concede.

  It was all going according to pn.

  ***

  The location changed. The map table disappeared, the report disappeared, the specific menace of Attika's contained aggression disappeared, and the smaller and more honest atmosphere of Mox's working tent repced it.

  Three folding chairs and a low table, and low lighting that came from a single mp, which was the only lighting Mox tolerated because Mox, in Swift's long observation, had no interest whatsoever in impressing anyone past his own comforts.

  The face of his adjunct morphed into Senric’s, and he sat to Mox's left. On the little table, he set about making his tea. He was, as far as Swift could tell, the only person in Ashfall who reliably had tea at any hour of the day, which said something about either his organizational competence or his priorities, and Swift had decided long ago not to question which.

  "Start with what you know," Swift said.

  Mox opened his ledger. "There is no upper limit to the number of points she can accumute. The ledger doesn't have a monthly cap, unlike most ledger types. It doesn't fill, it doesn't lock, and that leads me to believe it doesn't restrict. The points she gets, she can spend."

  "Points per kill?" Swift drew in a sharp breath. She was only the third recorded Life Ledger. The first created Cinderwild’s organizational structure. The second almost destroyed it. And both had clear limits where hers did not.

  "Unknown. She's been conservative. She's also been collecting points faster than she's letting on. The battlefield kills don't match the credit accumution if you run the numbers, but she's managed the optics well enough that you'd only notice if you were specifically looking. And there’s nothing solid, nothing to question her on." Mox was always looking. "She's smart about what she does in front of Dan and me." He stroked the cover of his ledger.

  "What does Dan report?" Swift asked.

  "Two kills per battlefield, then poison, consistent, methodical. Which is either her actual kill rate or the rate she wants me to believe." Mox adjusted his gsses. "I believe the second."

  Swift looked at Senric.

  Senric trailed his finger around the rim of his cup. "She's healthy. No signs of the debt symptoms since the first month. She paid on time." He turned his cup. "She's also buying from her ledger. I know that much because Nessa’s food situation is better than her income from the Ravagers should allow. Nessa is also a liability."

  “Nessa is necessary,” Mox said.

  Mox thought in information, numbers, and equations. Sendic knew people.

  “She gives away food. In a camp where people are starving, she shares her food. That was before the ledger. While she was starving, she gave away her food as if she felt guilty for having it. With her improved situation, what she shares has increased.” Senric looked at the mp’s glow. “Ben was aware of the tension in camp. The way the other scavengers watched, but what he wasn’t aware of was why.”

  Mox opened his ledger. “A significant portion of her points goes towards food, which she gives away. Her only other significant transfer was where she bought a man’s life, presumably for Ben.”

  Swift listened to both sides. “A non-negotiable liability. We can’t separate them without damaging an already fragile retionship. The only option is to take a step back and watch. We can intervene if necessary.”

  They both nodded.

  "Next topic, her categories," Swift said. "She told Attika food, herbs, and unprocessed materials."

  Mox set down his pen.

  "That's not accurate?" Swift asked.

  "It's accurate in the sense that those categories exist in her ledger," Mox said. "But they aren’t the only categories…no." He was quiet for a moment. "She's changed what my ledger sees when it reads her. The information is clean, it passes basic verification, and there's nothing obviously wrong with it. But she purchased something that would produce that result."

  "Scrolls," Senric said quietly. “It’s been years since anyone could purchase scrolls. We’ve figured out how to produce many of the common types, but…”

  “Scrolls…” Swift’s mind turned over the possibilities.

  "Scrolls," Mox said. "It was a test. A gamble. The unaltered and the altered information in my ledger." He closed his ledger. "She edited her information to match my lie. Our pns to control the information others could access about her were rendered moot. Methodical. Intelligent. Determined. She understands that I have access to her records, and she's managing what I see."

  The mp produced a small spitting sound: oil settling, wick adjusting.

  Swift listened to it. "She's sixteen," he said.

  "Yes," Mox said.

  "She's been in Cinderwild for—"

  "Six weeks. She'd had the ledger for approximately four days."

  Swift sat with that for a moment.

  Senric said, "She's not manageable the way the others have been. You can work with the edges of what they need, apply pressure at the margin, and guide them toward what's useful. She's…" He turned the cup again. "She sees the pressure. She sees the guidance. She adjusts for it, and then she does something…adjacent to what you want. Rebellion enough to preserve enough of her position that arguing about it is counterproductive."

  "What does she actually want?" Swift asked.

  "To survive," Mox said immediately. "Control. Not to be owned. To her, being a scavenger is half a step up from being a sve. Once her debt clears, she might change her mind. She manages the tension and uncertainty by moving faster than the people trying to control her." He picked up his pen again. "The arrangement with Attika will hold; she'll understand the structure and work within the confines."

  "Any way to get her on our side?"

  "The short answer is no," Mox said. "The longer answer is that she already views herself as part of our group. The lesser of two evils. There is no loyalty. She doesn’t trust herself or us. But we can ensure that when she finds the way, she finds it in a direction that's useful to us." He paused. "That's what I've been doing."

  Swift looked at him. “She knows you're doing it.”

  “They’ll come a point when she isn’t reacting to my game, where she’s actively challenging me. If she can grow into her potential, she’s a partner we can bring on board.” Mox looked back with the expression he always wore: patient, faintly entertained by the distance between what people thought was happening and what was actually happening.

  "The spell," Swift said.

  "She knows, I know."

  "You let her buy it." Senric sipped his tea.

  “I didn’t let her do anything. I had an assumption that she confirmed and provided me with useful data. There’s no way to know the categories of her ledger, even my ledger can’t do that. And, I don’t know what she's hiding from my ledger. But, she is not hiding from me." A pause. "There's a difference."

  Senric smiled into his tea.

  Swift thought about the percentage Attika had walked away with and thought about what forty-five percent of a ledger with no upper limit looked like over the course of a war, and thought about Halverson's careful face, and thought about Dross's sons sharpening themselves against each other in the shadow of a dying man.

  He thought about a sixteen-year-old girl who had been in Cinderwild for six weeks and had learned to survive.

  "Don’t push her. Unless we have a desperate need, don’t push her," Swift said. "Expin the deal with Attika, let her know the lies that we’re telling, and why we're telling them. Keep her here. Show her she can trust us."

  "That was already my intention," Mox said.

  "I know," Swift said. "I'm saying it anyway." He turned to Senric. The medic was much better at subtlety and surveilnce. “Keep a close eye on Nessa, knowing Mia’s personality, she’ll handle it, but if she’s too soft or it’s taking too long, we might have to make arrangements.”

  “Mia saved her from the st arrangements I made.” Senric lifted a small dagger to the light. “I’d pnned to appear in time to save her. After the man was finished with the girl and moved onto her.”

  “Any other pns? We’re expecting an attack on the camp this week.” Swift felt uneasy about the knife. Senric was built on obsessions; he liked Mia, which could be bad or good.

  “No. I can get away with it once, but she is observant, and the pattern would make her ask questions. It’s not worth it if trust and cooperation are our ultimate goals.” Senric took out another knife, a dull bde still covered in blood. “I thought she was a rabbit, but she’s not.”

  When nothing further was said. “Okay then.” Swift stood, straightened his coat, and looked at the mp for a moment: the small, steady fme, doing its work. "Brief me after your talk," he said.

  "You'll be the second to know," Mox said.

  Swift left without asking who the first would be. He already knew. They were all cousins, but there was an order to things in Mox’s mind.

  Senric just smiled into his cup.