Cael Ashveil Varissen hadn't meant to end up here.

Truly. It had started two days ago, when he'd caught Jorlan standing too stiff after another flawless spar. That same tautness in the shoulders, the iron-clad smile... Fear. Real fear, hiding just beneath the shine of gold.

That had stuck with Cael. Not the bout, not the cheers, but the crack behind the mask.

Once he saw it, he couldn't stop seeing it. Even now, as he crept through the empty stairwell, the image lingered in his mind.

If even Jorlan feared something, then maybe everyone else did too.

And if Cael could learn what they feared and why, then maybe… maybe he wouldn't have to stand in his brother's shadow forever.

Jorlan was back to performing for the court, charming ladies with exaggerated tales, drawing laughter from minor knights and stewards alike, but Cael's mind had wandered already, not to swords or the attention that came with being a prodigy at it, but to the numbers... the coins.

Because none of them laughed like that for House Varissen.

They laughed within it, ate its bread, drank its wine but beyond these stone walls? House Varissen was barely a whisper.

That thought carried him quietly down the last set of stairs and into the lower corridor.

So here he was, crouched behind a column in the hall that led toward the estate's lower wings, where the counting house was.

The counting house was forbidden. Not by decree, Lord Edric hadn't bothered to speak the word aloud, but by habit. No one of Cael's rank and fragility was ever expected to know how coin moved through the family veins.

Well, he was tired of not knowing.

He hesitated just once outside the counting house door.

There was light spilling from the crack.

He nudged it open slowly.

Warm lamplight pooled over ledgers, inkpots, and rows of coin trays that glimmered dull bronze and pale silver. Three scribes sat at their long desks, heads bowed in the mechanical rhythm of tallying. A master of coin paced behind them, muttering to himself in sharp bursts.

Cael didn't step in.

He slid into the alcove just beside the door, crouching so he could peer through the lower gap between hinges.

It was quieter than he expected. No shouting merchants or dramatic ledger slams. Just scratching quills and the soft clink of metal.

"Four hundred kephs to the Larkspur Guild for grain levy, two crates short of last winter's weight," one scribe muttered.

"Noted," the overseer snapped. "Double-check the weight ratio, they've lied before."

Cael furrowed his brow.

Kephs. That was the copper coin. The smallest unit. One hundred kephs to a silver firen, ten firens to a gold crown.

He'd heard that before. From Matilde long ago, but here, now, it meant something.

The scribe scribbled something fast, then adjusted a small weight on the brass scale before him.

The coins had to be weighed.

Cael leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing.

The copper coins: dull, worn, with some barely readable were stacked in rows by weight. They weren't counted individually. Not anymore, that would be too slow and crude.

The scribes used balance weights marked with crests of old kingdoms, sliding them beside scoops of coin until the beam leveled.

The master of coin was speaking again. "We need to renegotiate the tarriff on grain next moon-cycle. The Larkspur lot are cutting into our margins. Again. If we let them gouge us next harvest, we may as well hand the Ridge to House Erran."

Cael tensed.

House Erran.

He knew that name. The girls in the kitchen whispered about Erran's silvered halls and proud banners. Their heir had won three tourneys before his fifteenth year. Their coffers were deep.

But here, in the counting house, even a boy with weak eyes could see the truth.

House Varissen was poor.

Not destitute but poor by noble standards.

Cael let the thought settle.

They held land, sure. Rocky hills, brittle soil, a few mines so depleted even the dwarves of legend would have abandoned these hills. They had the Ridge, but not the roads. And that meant they had to pay others to bring them grain, goods, even stone.

No wonder Edric clung to Jorlan's sword like it was their last heirloom.

"Baron Varissen will want full margins before midsummer," the master of coin continued. "If the wheat doesn't come in early, we'll be pressed to even pay the guild dues."

Cael swallowed hard.

So we're balancing losses between wheat and warhorses.

He watched the second scribe move a finger down a ledger, tallying side profits from wool and stone shipments. The lines were tight, spidery, efficient.

And then, there it was.

The moment.

A mistake. Barely visible. A double-entry in the side column. A decimal too high.

Cael caught it without thinking.

He didn't know how. It wasn't some magic spark. Just a flicker. A shape in the numbers that didn't belong. Like when a single tile is misplaced in a mosaic.

That doesn't balance, he thought.

Then another.

Not an error this time, a lie.

One of the merchant contracts. Signed with a blood crest, had been recorded as five hundred kephs more than the true weight tallied beside it.

Not a slip.

It was theft.

Cael's fingers clenched around the edge of the wall.

That scribe is stealing from us.

No one else in the room had noticed. The master of coin walked right past it. The scribe himself adjusted his collar and dipped his quill again, calm as still water.

Cael felt his breath hitch.

So this is what they meant when they said power lived in books as much as blades.

Not all battles happened in the yard.

He stayed crouched for another hour, watching them tally the cost of ferry rights, forge fees, and livestock claims.

All of it spun a pattern.

A slow, grinding truth.

House Varissen was surviving.

But only just.

…but then Cael didn't move to leave just yet.

His fingers stayed curled over the ledge as the last merchant packed up and left the room in a swish of cloak and muttered curses about "levies" and "guild cheats."

The counting house quieted, just the scratch of a scribe's quill and the faint clink of coins as a clerk stacked them into neat columns.

Cael's eyes fixed on the table where the money lay.

Three piles gleamed in the torchlight.

The copper kephs: dull, brown-orange disks, stacked a dozen high. The silver firens: cool and bright, each one stamped with the crowned falcon of the realm. The gold crowns: heavy, fat, and perfect. There were only three of those on the table.

Even from up here, Cael could read the weight written beside them:

Thirty-seven crowns, two hundred and ten firens, five thousand and eighty kephs — House Varissen holdings as of midsummer.

"Five thousand kephs," he murmured under his breath.

Sounds impressive. Until you think about it.

If memory served him, and it always did. Lately, a loaf of bread cost between 2 and 3 kephs in the village market. A pair of good boots? Maybe 50 kephs if you bargained well.

Cael pressed his thumb to the ledge as he worked it out.

That meant… five thousand kephs could feed the entire house for maybe three months — if no guests came and no repairs were needed.

Pathetic, he thought. And Father pretends we're still a pillar of the Ridge.

He glanced at the gold again.

He remembered Matilde once saying in her way of slipping lessons into scoldings, that one crown could pay a common man's rent for a year. To a peasant, a crown might as well be the moon. Most would live and die without ever touching one.

The scribes worked silently below him.

One murmured to another without looking up "Guild dues have gone up again. Twelve firens for every wagon now. Might as well bleed us in the street."

Cael caught that and tucked it away in his mind.

So a wagon's worth of goods… twelve firens in fees. Enough to feed a family for months. No wonder they all complain.

His gaze drifted back to the ledgers.

On the open page, he could just make out the exchange rates scribbled at the margin.

100 kephs = 1 firen. 20 firens = 1 crown.

That, at least, was the law. Everyone knew a crown was worth 2,000 kephs, or 20 firens. But everyone also knew merchants cheated that number whenever they could, claiming "short weight" or "guild taxes" to shave off a firen here and there.

He chewed the inside of his cheek and ran the numbers again in his head.

1 crown = 20 firens = 2,000 kephs.1 firen = 100 kephs.

It seemed simple but the ramification of earning any coin was heavy.

He'd heard the steward snarl once that even a minor tournament knight. One of those swaggering fools who chased fame on the lists, might only earn 3 firens for a whole month of service if he was lucky.

A common craftsman, Cael reckoned, might earn a firen every two months if he worked like a dog. And yet here the scribes were, pushing stacks of firens around as though they were pebbles.

He clenched his fist.

Ah, so that's why no one took House Varissen seriously anymore. Five thousand kephs… thirty-some crowns. Not even enough to buy a banner at the king's tourney. No wonder they laugh behind Father's back. If only I could change our situation…

The thought swirled in his mind.

The scribe below spoke up again, breaking his train of thought."…Varissen can't keep ducking the king's levy either. Even the lesser lords have sent at least twenty crowns for the war chest. If they delay another season, someone's going to notice."

The other clerk just grunted.

Cael froze at that.

Twenty crowns. That's more than half what we have in the strongroom. No wonder Father's face is always carved from stone these days. If we paid what they expect, we'd starve by winter.

The faint scrape of chairs warned him the scribes were finishing for the night.

Cael eased back into the shadows, careful not to dislodge a single pebble as he slipped down the narrow stair again, leaving the counting room behind.

He kept the numbers turning in his head as he walked the cold hall back toward his tower.

Thirty-seven crowns. Five thousand kephs. Peasants scraping for bread. Merchants bleeding us dry with guild dues. The royal war chest swallowing crowns by the handful.

And here they all were. Edric, Jorlan and the others, still pretending they could roar like lions while they starved like dogs.

He shook his head faintly, the faintest smirk tugging at his mouth.

If only they bothered to actually count.

The numbers didn't lie.

If you looked closely enough, you could see everything.

And if you listened closely enough as he did now, hearing the faint brittle hum of fear and pride even in the silence. You could hear the whole house cracking, coin by coin.

...

By the time Cael crept back to his tower room, the hallways were quiet.

He sat by the narrow window, thinking.

So this is why no one takes House Varissen seriously, he thought, bitterly. We haven't won a tournament in years. We don't control a main trade route. And we're leaking coin at every seam.

His breath fogged the glass.

If only I could change our situation.

He turned, crossed to his desk, and pulled out the half-empty ledger Matilde had given him for "letters and learning."

He dipped a quill, hesitated, then began to draw a simple table.

Line by line.

Weights. Coin values. Expenses. Profits. Scribe names.

By moonrise, his hand ached.

But the columns balanced.

For the first time, they balanced.

And that, Cael thought, felt better than any sword ever had.

***

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