King Sylvarresta looked up at Chemoise, a certain sadness, a certain pleading in the troubled creases around his eyes. Chemoise’s tears had dried, yet Iome’s father looked as if he could see the sadness still burning there. “I am sorry, Chemoise. You trust me, don’t you? You trust I am doing the right thing? If I am right, you’ll have that murderer’s head on a stick by the end of the week—plus a thousand silver hawks of the ransom money.”

“Of course, as you please, milord,” Chemoise said. She could hardly debate the matter.

“Good,” Sylvarresta said, taking Chemoise’s words at face value. “Now, Master Hollicks, let’s consider that ransom. A thousand pieces of silver, you say? Then it’s good you’re not king. We’ll start by demanding twenty times that—along with fifty pounds of mace, fifty of pepper, and two thousand of salt. And I’ll want blood metal. How much have the traders weighed in this year?”

“Why, I don’t know for certain!” Hollicks said, all abluster at the King’s outrageous demands.

King Sylvarresta raised a brow in question. Hollicks knew how much blood metal was available—to the ounce. Ten years before, in recognition of Hollicks’ service to the King, Sylvarresta had granted the merchant a petition to take out an endowment of wit. Though an endowment of wit did not make the merchant any wiser or more creative or let him think more clearly, that endowment did let Hollicks remember trivial details almost faultlessly.

Taking an endowment of wit was like opening a door into another man’s mind. A man who got an endowment of wit suddenly had the capacity to enter a mind and store whatever he liked, while the man who gave the wit had the doors of memory barred and was forbidden to even peek at the contents hidden within his own skull. Now Hollicks stored his tallies in the mind of his Dedicate.

Indeed, it was said that the guildmaster could quote every contract he’d ever written, word for word; Hollicks always knew to the moment when his loans came due.

Certainly, he knew how much blood metal the Southern traders had weighed out in the past week. As Master of the Fair, he was in charge of assuring that all goods were properly weighed, that products sold were of highest quality.

“I . . . uh, so far, the Southern merchants have weighed in only thirteen pounds of blood metal. They . . . say the mines in Kartish have not produced well this year. . . .”

Enough to make less than a hundred forcibles. Hollicks cringed, as if Sylvarresta might fly into rage at the news.

Iome’s father nodded thoughtfully. “I doubt Raj Ahten knows that so much made it across his borders. We won’t see any more, next year. Then to our tally of damages, add a ransom of thirty pounds of blood metal.”