What Sinks and What Sells
"As I have said repeatedly, my word is the law."
This was the fourth day since Lysias had arrived at the Western District Temple.
He was carrying a water bowl. He'd borrowed it from the kitchen.
Ah, this thing is a little embarrassing to walk around with.
As he climbed the stairs, people stared. They'd seen an inspector with a slate before, but never one with a water bowl.
Anton was already out in the courtyard.
"Welcome, junior. Right on time."
Ah, this man's already waiting for me.
"Yes. Good day to you, Senior Priest."
"With a ten-day deadline, I imagine the review hasn't—"
"No, I'll do that later. Today I'd like to see the warehouse."
Anton's face stiffened for a moment, then smoothed over.
"…The warehouse."
"Yes. I went to look last time, but wasn't able to."
"…"
"The second bay, wasn't it?"
Anton smiled.
"Go right ahead. Not that there'll be anything to see."
Squeeeak—
The warehouse door opened.
The interior was dark. Lysias stood a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
Sacks were stacked inside. Along one wall, about twenty of them.
Wheat.
Lysias untied one sack.
He set the water bowl down and poured in the water he'd carried from the courtyard.
He scooped up a handful of grain and dropped it in.
It sank.
All of it.
…
Lysias watched it for a while.
Ah. This is the stuff.
He added another handful.
Again, it all sank.
Two out of every ten should float.
Not a single one is floating.
"What are you doing?"
Anton was standing in the doorway.
"…Ah, yes. Just running a check."
"With a water bowl?"
"Yes."
"…"
Anton stepped a few paces inside.
"Well then. What did you find?"
Lysias looked at the water bowl.
Not one grain of wheat was floating.
Oh, it turned out, all right.
"…No. Nothing yet."
Lysias retied the sack.
"I'll look at the other bays as well."
He went through all six.
The second bay. Nothing floated.
The third. Nothing floated.
The fourth, the fifth, the sixth.
Nothing floated in any of them.
As Lysias tied off the last sack, he looked at the wheat.
Plump, uniform kernels. Heavy in the hand when you squeezed a fistful.
This is good wheat.
Agria was not a place with good wheat fields. The soil was thin and the water was far away. Nothing like this could come out of that land.
And yet all six bays are like this.
One sack would be a coincidence. All six bays meant someone had sorted them.
So where did the bad wheat go?
Lysias opened his slate.
And he wrote.
– Western District Temple warehouse, six bays. Approx. one hundred twenty sacks of wheat.
– No floaters in the entire lot.
– Agria Village wheat: floaters minimal.
– Agria's offering portion should be present in the warehouse; the grade does not match.
He set down the brush.
That should be enough.
That was as far as an inspector could write. That the grade was wrong.
But there's no next step.
Where had the bad wheat gone? That didn't appear anywhere.
Lysias looked around the warehouse.
…
Wait a moment.
Why is only the good stuff here?
Lysias opened one more sack.
Plump and uniform.
This is the stuff to sell.
Offerings belong to the god. What is offered gets burned or poured out. Destroyed.
So why sort it, if it's going to be destroyed anyway?
If you're going to burn it, any wheat would do.
…No. Wait.
Lysias looked at the sack.
This stuff isn't going up to the altar.
This stuff is going out.
But where?
Lysias looked toward the warehouse door.
There were marks on the threshold. Two parallel lines.
Wheel ruts.
So carts come all the way in here.
Anton saw him off to the courtyard.
"Shall we call it a day, then?"
"Yes. I'll stop here for today."
"Hard work, I'm sure. Did you turn anything up?"
Lysias picked up his water bowl.
"No. Nothing at all."
"Heh heh. I thought as much."
Lysias paused partway down the stairs.
"Ah, Senior Priest. Just one question, if I may."
"…Ask away."
"Do carts enter the warehouse?"
Anton's face stopped for a moment.
"…What?"
"There were wheel marks on the threshold. I wondered whether carts came in when the offerings were delivered."
"…"
"…They do come in. The sacks are heavy."
"I see. Thank you."
Lysias bowed his head.
"Then I'll be going."
Not coming in. Going out.
Back at the court, Lysias opened his slate.
The cart.
It was the villagers who carried the offerings into the temple. On their backs, sack by sack, over half a day's distance.
If they were going to use a cart, they'd use one in the village.
But the village had no carts. Not one of Agria's twenty-three households owned one.
So that cart came from outside.
Lysias unfolded a map.
A district map. Six temples and a handful of villages marked as dots, with empty space between them.
The roads aren't drawn in.
It didn't matter. Carts needed roads, and there was only one place in this district a cart would be going.
Over the hill from Agria lay Charon Ferry.
…Huh?
Lysias pulled out the Charon registry.
Dion had organized it for him.
Occupations: Fishermen, twenty-four households. Boat repairers, three households.
Not a wheat-farming place.
Then he opened the offering ledger.
Charon Ferry. Last year. Wheat: sixty-two mal.
A fishing village produced sixty-two mal of wheat?
Lysias laid the two documents side by side.
This was always wrong.
How did nobody catch this before?
Of course nobody had. No one had ever looked at the two documents together.
The census registry went to the population clerk, the offering ledger to the offerings clerk. And in this country, no one had ever put the two side by side.
This should have surfaced ages ago.
Lysias wrote it down.
Charon Ferry: no wheat production. Offering ledger records sixty-two mal of wheat.
So where did that wheat come from?
Lysias looked at the map again.
Agria. The hill. Charon.
It came over from Agria.
And Charon was a ferry crossing.
A place where boats launch.
Lysias set down his brush.
Ah.
It's not being stockpiled in the warehouse at all.
It's going out.
Lysias traced a finger down the river.
The river flowed south, and at the southern end a single dot was marked.
A port.
Load it on boats and ship it to the port.
But who?
Lysias turned the question over for a moment.
The temple couldn't do it itself. A priest going to market to sell wheat would look wrong to anyone who saw it.
It would take carts, laborers, boats, and a buyer waiting at the port.
Who has all of that?
A merchant guild.
…
But I can't look at guild ledgers.
A guild's books belonged to the guild. The court couldn't demand them.
Lysias set down his brush.
No, wait.
If they sold it, they paid taxes on it.
Writing the request to the administrative office took half a gak.
Merchant guilds passing through the Western District: three-year grain export tax ledger.
This one they have to give me.
Taxes collected by the administrative office belonged to the office, and the court could examine them in the course of an investigation. He'd learned that at the academy.
The records came in two days.
Oh. Fast.
Lysias opened them.
Nine guilds.
For each one, how much grain they exported per year and how much tax they'd paid, all written out.
It's all just… written here.
Lysias ran his eyes down the page once.
Clean numbers. Nothing missing, and the arithmetic checked out.
Everyone paid their taxes just fine.
Naturally. Fail to pay your taxes and that is what catches you first.
But this—
Lysias looked at the page again.
There's nothing about where they bought it.
Lysias pressed a fingertip to the line.
Export volume. Tax paid. Export date.
That was it.
No purchase records. Nowhere did it say where the grain had been bought before it went out.
Where have I seen this before…
A line he himself had written, a month ago.
A collection record exists, but no receipt record. Cross-verification impossible.
This time it's the reverse.
A selling record with no buying record.
But isn't this exactly the same problem?
Record only one side, and nothing can be cross-checked. That was why the temple had slipped through, and the guilds slipped through for the same reason.
Except this time, I'm holding the other side.
Lysias pulled out the offering ledger.
All right. Let's have a look.
He wrote down the nine guilds' grain exports for last year.
Then the year before.
How much did they grow?
He raised his brush and laid the columns side by side.
…Huh?
Six out of nine had grown.
Why did so many go up?
If only one had doubled, he'd have pounced immediately. But six had each gone up a little. None by much. All of them, a little.
Lysias looked at the six.
They split it cleverly and loaded it well.
One place doubling stands out. Six places inching up doesn't.
Even this was part of the calculation.
Lysias set down his brush.
Then he looked at the tax column.
Dion came over.
"What are you looking at?"
"Guild taxes. Nine of them."
"…Nine?"
"Yeah. But six of them went up last year."
Dion looked at the line.
"They went up a lot."
"No. They went up a little. One place doubling turns heads. Six places creeping up doesn't."
Dion jabbed a finger at the neighboring column.
"Wait, aren't these dates?"
"Yeah. Export dates."
"…Then why are all six of these in spring? The other three are in fall."
Lysias's hand stopped.
"…What?"
"Here. Look."
Lysias looked.
Six in spring. Three in fall.
"…When's grain cheapest to buy?"
Dion shrugged.
"Harvest season, obviously. That's when the most of it comes out."
"…Right. And spring?"
"Spring's the most expensive. The storehouses are empty and the new crop hasn't come in yet. Even the kids know that—"
Dion's voice stopped.
"…What grain merchant buys at the most expensive time of year?"
"None."
Lysias set down his brush.
"Unless there's somewhere you can buy cheap. In spring."
"…"
"And where exactly would that be?"
Lysias didn't answer.
He pulled out the offering ledger and set it down beside the tax records.
Offering season was spring.
"…"
Dion's voice dropped low.
"…Then this—"
"…Bought it from the temple."
"Yeah."
"…No, wait. But why would a temple sell grain? That's an offering."
"…"
"Selling an offering means that's—"
"Yeah."
Lysias gathered up his slate.
"Which is why, officially, nothing was sold. They told me it was all burned."
Dion said nothing.
Lysias stood up.
He drafted a summons.
To the Master of the Thais Merchant Guild: You are hereby summoned to appear before the court regarding the matter of grain exports.
Within three days. The hour is at your convenience.
Lysias handed it to the clerk.
The clerk spoke.
"…Inspector."
"Yes."
"…This summons is for a merchant guild?"
"Yes."
The clerk looked at the slate.
"…The court has never summoned a merchant before."
"Is there anything written anywhere saying we mustn't?"
"…"
"Then we'll summon them."
It was the afternoon of the third day.
A woman entered.
"Inspector."
The woman stopped in front of the desk.
Then she set down an armful of ledgers. The sound was heavy.
"I brought three years' worth."
"…Three years of what, exactly?"
"The ledgers."
She sat down.
"It's the tax matter, isn't it? You'll have seen the export tax ledger already."
Lysias looked at her face for a moment.
"…No."
"…Pardon?"
"I didn't call you here about taxes."
The woman's hands stopped on top of the ledgers.
"…Then why did you summon me?"
Lysias picked up his brush, then put it down.
What had he written on the summons, again?
Regarding the matter of grain exports.
That was all.
He hadn't used the word "tax" a single time.
And yet she brought three years' worth with her.
"…Excuse me."
"…Yes."
"Did I write the word 'tax' anywhere?"
"…"
"I only wrote 'the matter of grain exports.'"
"…"
The woman looked down at the stack of ledgers.
Lysias watched her hands.
He'd sent word of grain exports, and she'd put her finger on the tax ledger. Then she'd gathered up three years' worth.
So she assumed this was coming at her from the tax angle.
Which means there's something rotten hiding behind that angle.
"…Inspector."
The woman raised her cup.
"When a guild gets called in by the authorities, it's one of three things. Taxes, goods, or people."
"And taxes are the most common."
She takes it well.
Lysias listened.
…But she was a beat late.
She'd brought three years' worth. Someone bracing for the usual would bring a single year.
Gathering three years means you counted three years.
Which means there was a reason to count.
Lysias picked up his brush.
"…Very well. Then let's begin with the taxes."
"…Pardon?"
"Since you brought them."
Lysias drew the stack of ledgers toward himself.
"…Inspector. You're going to look at all of that now?"
"Yes."
"…It's three years' worth."
"I know."
Lysias opened the first volume.
Immaculately kept.
Dates. Goods. Quantities. And weights.
Lysias studied that column for a while.
It took him about half a gak.
The woman said nothing the whole time. She raised her cup twice, and both times set it down without drinking.
Lysias closed the last volume.
"…I've finished."
"…"
"You didn't miss a single tax."
"…No."
"Three full years, and not one error."
The woman looked at Lysias for a moment.
"…Then we're done here?"
"The taxes are done, yes."
Lysias pushed the stack aside.
"…Then I'll take my leave—"
"No. Please sit."
The woman froze, half risen from her chair.
"I told you the taxes were finished."
"…Yes. I heard you."
"But I didn't call you here because of them."
"…"
The woman sat back down.
Lysias looked at her face.
"…Then what did you call me here for?"
Lysias opened a slate.
"Last year's export volume. Not a question of taxes — a question of quantity."
"Last year, one hundred forty-eight mal left this district. Under six guilds' names."
The woman raised her cup.
This time, she drank.
"…Six guilds means six different places."
"Yes. It does."
Lysias picked up his brush.
"But those six paid their taxes on the same day, every year, for three years."
"And five of those six don't own a single boat."
"Grain leaves this district by boat, from Charon Ferry. No boat, no export."
Lysias raised his head.
"There is exactly one guild in this district that owns boats."
"…"
The woman set down her cup.
It made no sound.
"…Inspector."
"Yes."
"…Where did you see that?"
"The administrative tax ledger."
Lysias wrote it down.
"There was a payment-date column. A column nobody ever looks at."
"Which is why you never bothered to erase it."
The woman raised her cup.
She took a single sip.
"…That's correct."
She's just admitting it?
"…All six of them?"
"Yes. All six are mine."
Lysias picked up his brush.
"…You concede quickly."
"Clinging to something you can't hold only drives the price down."
Lysias wrote that down too.
"Then my question."
Lysias opened a slate.
"One hundred forty-eight mal last year. Where did you buy it?"
"…"
The woman set down her cup.
"That I cannot tell you."
"…I beg your pardon?"
"Do you know why the purchase records aren't written down?"
The woman rested her hands on the desk.
"It isn't that we don't write them. It's that we can't. If that gets recorded, the next time around, those sellers stop selling to me."
"Trade is entirely a matter of who sells what to whom, and at what price. If you're told to write all of that down and hand it to the authorities, what business would be left?"
Lysias listened to the whole speech.
She's not wrong.
"…No. That's fair."
"Glad we understand each other."
"But that isn't why I called you here."
"…Pardon?"
Lysias slid a slate across the desk.
"Three shipments last spring, last year."
"And not a single one this spring."
The woman's hands stopped on the desk.
Lysias pressed a finger to the line.
"Grain merchants buy at harvest. That's when it's cheapest."
"Spring is the most expensive time of year. The storehouses are empty and the new crop hasn't come in."
"And yet last year, you shipped three times in spring."
The woman said nothing.
"Which means, last spring, you had somewhere cheap to buy."
"And this year, that somewhere is gone."
Lysias set down his brush.
"Last spring was offering season."
"And the senior priest of that district is currently before this court."
Lysias looked at her face.
The woman raised her cup.
Raised it, and set it back down.
"…That's correct."
"I bought from that temple. Last spring."
"…But, Inspector."
The woman looked at Lysias.
"I was the buyer. Not the seller."
Lysias picked up his brush.
"…Did you know it was offering goods?"
"No."
The woman raised her cup.
"I simply bought what the temple was selling. What the temple sells is the temple's affair."
To charge a buyer, you had to prove they knew what they were buying.
The woman set down her cup.
"And, Inspector. If buying from a temple were a crime, every merchant in this country would be guilty."
"The oil comes from the temples. The leather comes from the temples. If what goes in as offerings never comes back out, where do you think it all goes?"
"It rots."
The woman shrugged, just slightly.
"So the temples sell, and we buy. It's been that way for thirty years."
Lysias set down his brush.
She's widening the board.
She wasn't saying this one case worked that way. She was saying the entire country worked that way.
And if that were true, this couldn't be charged. To charge one, you'd have to charge everything.
And she's right about that too.
Lysias said nothing for a moment.
The woman watched the silence.
"…Inspector."
"Yes."
"Was anything I said wrong?"
"…No."
"…"
"Not a single word."
Lysias looked down at his slate for a moment.
"…But, Inspector."
The woman raised her cup.
"May I say just one thing?"
"Yes."
"What I bought was the rest of it."
"…Pardon?"
"I never received what was offered to the god."
The woman set down her cup.
"I never laid a finger on that."
Lysias listened to that.
His brush stopped.
How does she know that?
The wheat collected from the village arrived as one heap. Packed in sacks and carried into the temple.
Where the god's portion ended and the temple's portion began—
that's something the temple divides.
Divided in the warehouse. Divided inside.
And that's invisible from the outside.
Lysias looked at her face.
…She just tripped. Properly.
"…Excuse me."
"Yes?"
"What did you just say?"
"…Pardon?"
"That you never received what was offered to the god."
"…Yes. I said that."
Lysias picked up his brush.
"How do you tell them apart?"
"…"
The woman's hands froze above her cup.
"…Tell what apart?"
"The wheat from the village arrives as one heap, doesn't it? Sacks, all carried in together."
"…"
"Where the god's portion gets divided out — can you see that from the outside?"
"…"
The woman said nothing.
"…You can't."
Lysias looked at her face.
"Then you were there when it was divided."
"…"
The woman raised her cup.
Raised it, and set it back down.
"…Inspector. What exactly do you mean by that?"
"That you were present at the dividing. Otherwise, you couldn't know what was the god's portion and what wasn't."
"…"
She's not answering.
Lysias looked at her face.
She wasn't smiling anymore.
Lysias looked at the stack of ledgers.
She'd brought three years' worth. Without being asked.
Why did she leave the god's portion untouched?
Anyone chasing money would have taken that too. It was all divided in the same warehouse, with no one watching.
Because she couldn't. That must be it.
Touch the god's portion, and you've cheated a god.
And that is not something a mortal in this country gets to survive. No court needed, no Styx needed. It simply comes down from above.
So she never laid a hand on that part.
Which means the rest—
Lysias raised his head.
"…Excuse me."
"…Yes."
"You said you never received what was offered to the god."
"…Yes."
"Then that portion went up as the highest grade."
"What's offered to a god would be the best of it. You did say you never touched it."
"And the rest—"
Lysias pressed a finger to the slate.
"The rest got swapped out, top to bottom. Didn't it?"
"…"
The woman's hands hardened on the desk.
"The god's portion stayed exactly as it was, so before the god, the temple did nothing wrong. The ashes would show the highest grade went up."
"And only the temple's portion was exchanged for the good wheat. Because that was the part to sell."
"What was collected from the village stayed the same — but what the village kept was only what floated."
Lysias picked up his brush.
"The god lost nothing. The temple gained everything. And only the village paid."
"And the one who hauled all of it away is sitting in this room."
"........"
The woman raised her cup.
She lost her grip on it.
Water spread across the desk.