Brenda called it a gift—the chance to sit at the Council’s elbow and gild their minutes. I called it a muzzle made of ink. We parted politely enough, but the tremor in her lip told me I had forfeited more than a stipend when I declined. Truth, she assured me, was best served from inside the chamber. I have eaten that dish before; it tastes of varnish and debt.

  So I bartered honesty for coin elsewhere. Will?writers are always flush when the horizon darkens, and Master Rogiers—solicitor by license, scavenger by instinct—was quick to hire a steady quill. He set me here at the west?gate intake station: a slanted plank wedged between the customs booth and the guard hut, its surface scarred by a century of bored sentries. My brief is simple: turn grief into numbers so the city can file it away.

  They come in ragged pairs and broken threes: wives clutching wool cloaks that still smell of tar and river wind; mothers gripping census tokens gone warm from the squeeze; apprentices in half?boots who should be sweeping sawdust instead of begging for proof that their fathers still breathe. Each must speak their loss into my ledger before the watch will even stamp the page.

  Name? "Klara Ottenfeld—wife to Bjorn."

  Trade? "Flat?bottom bargeman on the south canal. He left with a half?load of oak billets—said the river was clear enough for a night run."

  Last road? "Water, not road—the Hashafn line. Ten days gone now. No flag returned, no letter of passing either."

  I pause, let her thumb the wedding band until the skin about it pales.

  "Klara… have you any guess what he might have met? Storm? Patrol? Piracy?"

  She shakes her head once, sharp, then bites the word: "River’s cursed mute. No splash, no song. Just empty."

  The watchman at the gate steals a look—pity etched deep as the rust on his gorget. Behind me Rogiers tallies his entry, the scratch of his quill as unfeeling as a tax clock.

  Name? "Lars?Jutte. Apprentice to Master Schreiner—the carpenter, yes."

  When did he leave? "Vreche fair convoy, twelve carts strong. They forked south to the alder ridge to dodge the toll bridge—so the drover said. A fortnight and nothing, not even a broken wheel in the brush."

  Any oddities before they set out—weather, birds, travellers?

  "Only the crows—too many, and too quiet."

  Second notation of silent birds. I mark it with a small star. Wind slides over the river wall behind me; no ships ride the current, only driftwood and one shredded sail snagged on a pier post.

  Name? "Anette Edel, looking for Lieutenant?Rein Kolberg—my boy, sir."

  Regiment? "Reeve’s eastern patrol, six?hour circuit. They carry red banners for contact. We watched from the parapet—no colour, no hoof?beat."

  Any sign returned—horse, tack, cartridge box? "Just their bandolier, washed ashore—empty."

  I soften my voice. "How are you bearing it, mother?"

  She will not sit, only paces the width of the desk exactly three times between answers. "I pray by walking," she whispers, and continues her measured march.

  The queue behind her bends like a wounded millipede—cloth bundles, tear?slick faces, murmured hopes. Rogiers nods to me: "sixty?two missing before the noon bell, and the day is long."

  The stories blur, but the numbers hold their shape—every testimony a nail driven through rumour into fact.

  Just as I blot the last entry, the cathedral hammers the air: the Council Summons. Across the square a crier hoists a crimson scroll and recites in parade cadence.

  "By decree of the Grenzland Council, under sign manual of Commander Dreml, a provisional state of emergency is now in effect. Western couriers overdue; eastern roads unsafe. Reserve companies to muster at first light; curfew to sound at ninth bell. Citizens are to remain vigilant and report anomalies to the nearest patrol."

  Thunder rolls from the east at the exact moment he pauses for breath. I note the coincidence, then file it under doubt. History tolerates doubt better than certainty.

  "Our proud soldiers will secure the highways. Supplies will be requisitioned as needed. Trust in the bulwark of Grenzland!"

  Around me the queue mutters a different litany: no wagons since Hollow Spring, salt’s run short, who’ll guard the mills while they march. None of that makes the scroll.

  Rogiers looms, quill poised to countersign each plea. "Neat hand, Van Aarden," he says. "Neat hand saves lives." I nod, but in the gutter of the page I jot my own addendum: official tone confident to the point of farce; no mention of missing patrols south of the river or the seven Blemmyes seized last night. One copy for the city register, one for Rogiers’ fee, and one—folded twice—for my clandestine chronicle.

  By dusk the eastern sky is bruised purple, light pulsing inside like a heartbeat under skin. Gate guards whisper of roads that bend and fields that hum after dark. None will write it. I do.

  If the storm crosses the river, the bells will not warn us fast enough.

  Names unreturned: one hundred forty?three. Tomorrow the ink will crawl further down the page. My task stays the same: keep count when truth tries to scatter.

  Let the Council trumpet safety. I will ledger loss. The drum overhead kept a war-beat; I offered them a sun-beat instead. Ledger marks keep them present, but only story keeps them breathing inside me. Someone must be believed when the gates finally close.

  I press the ledger into Rogiers’ waiting hands. He weighs it first by heft—never by what bleeds inside—then snaps the clasp shut and slips it beneath his arm.

  “Every mark double?checked,” I tell him.

  “Which is why I hire you,” he replies, fishing a purse from his vest. Twenty silver Skies chits slide across the plank. The metal looks colder than the dusk.

  I palm the coins, but curiosity drags before gratitude can bow. “Your correspondents in the probate courts—are they hearing anything from the valleys? Any wills proved of late from the frontier towns?”

  Rogiers snorts. “No executors, no estates. A lawyer’s famine, you might say. When the mails go silent the dead stay legally alive, and their rents keep hanging in the air like unpaid litany.”

  “And on the eastern track?” I press. “Any summons served beyond the lime?kilns?”

  He glances at the purple horizon. “Bailiffs won’t ride that far now. One came back raving about trees that sang childrens verses. Another never returned at all. If you want orderly life, Van?Aarden, stay inside the third wall and pray the census clerks aren’t next to vanish.”

  I lean closer. “Then where are our people disappearing to?”

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  Rogiers’ quill taps the ledger spine—once, twice, like a gavel deciding sentence. “Off the page,” he says at last. “And until they land on parchment again, they are no one’s responsibility but their own.”

  A colder answer than any night wind. Yet the coins are real, the ledger heavier for being closed. I tuck both into my coat and step from the plank, the queue already forming for tomorrow’s roll.

  Rogiers eyes me over the rim of his spectacles. “Tell me, Van Aarden, does a man of the quill truly labour here for the thrill of wills and widow’s tears?”

  I let the purse jingle once in my palm. “Curiosity keeps its own accounts. The pay is a welcome accident.”

  He snorts. “And the theatre? Any stage fit for your tongue these days?”

  “I’m still barred,” I confess, the smile thin as rice?paper. “Now I write for myself—and for anyone patient enough to read the margins.”

  “Pity,” he mutters, snapping the ledger shut. “The city could use a good tragedy it can applaud.”

  Truly something an attorney and a writer can both agree on. "Good day, see you on the East Gate tomorrow." I say in a bow and a half turn.

  Behind me Rogiers calls, almost kindly, “Neat hand, master chronicler. Keep it steady. The city’s nerves depend upon it.”

  I do not turn. The river is murmuring below, a lullaby for driftwood and ghosts. My pockets jingle—truth bought cheap. Tomorrow the numbers will climb, and I will be here again, counting absences until absence counts us all.

  My beloved Hasholm. Empty of life. Window shutters closed as though the houses have turned to coffins. The trek along the main road—the only ribbon that truly binds east gate to west—taxes the knees even on days of festival. It rises in a long, muddy slope of broad cobbles, crests at the market square, then slips down again toward the east-river like a weary sigh. In seasons of plenty that climb is eased by colour: smugglers hawking pepper?leaf under the bailiff’s nose, farmers selling turnips the size of a man’s fist, tinkers rattling charms against the evil eye.

  All gone. The stalls stand naked, tarps rolled tight. Even the beggars are few—either pressed into patrol squads or vanished with the other absences no one yet dares to count.

  I pause midway up the rise and glance westward, toward the gate that once meant homecomings and river gossip. Our people used to arrive from that direction—flat?bottom barges packed with salt fish, drovers in mud?spattered smocks, pilgrims who sang if the wind was kind. Now the road shows nothing but sweating patrols and an empty axle groove slowly filling with rain.

  It strikes me with a chill that the West has grown as unpredictable as the East. Letters stop at the same dead ends, wagons founder into the same hush. The map in my head—so confident in its compass points—has become a compass rose set spinning. East is storms and rumors of Gustavian banners; west is vanished caravans and a silence you can taste on the tongue. North bleeds salt and tolls, south coughs dust and empty granaries. Where does a soul flee when every cardinal point smells of hazard?

  I find myself touching the spine of my notebook, as though reassurance could be measured in paper weight. If there is no safe direction, then forward will have to do—one foot then the next, ledger tucked under arm, recording the shape of vanishing until the ink runs out.

  The butcher was right; I would miss his prices—but as the slope finally levelled beneath my boots, I realised cheap mutton is hardly the only comfort now absent. From the crown of the rise the market sprawled ahead, shrunken to a third of its usual breadth yet packed so tightly it looked ready to burst its own palisade of rickety stalls. A nervous hive, humming on half?rations.

  Canvas awnings that once flapped in a dozen proud colours had been torn and re?sewn into dull bands of brown, stretched low to hide sparse wares from the drizzle. Where spice sellers once argued over cinnamon weights, a single cart offered turnip tops and wilted chicory. The fishmongers’ arcade—normally a riot of gulls and brine—was shuttered, nets hanging dry as shrouds. Even the knife?grinder’s bell lay silent; his wheel stood locked with rain?swollen rope.

  I threaded into the crush, shoulder to shoulder with housewives in patched shawls and clerks carrying requisition chits stamped in Dreml’s red wax. A dozen faces glanced up, recognised no authority in mine, and turned back to haggle over sour bread. The air stank of boiled barley, cheap tallow and a fear so thick it tasted metallic on the teeth.

  At the centre plinth—once given to travelling jugglers—two bailiffs now stood guard over a wagon of dried peas. Their truncheons tapped the rail in a rhythm meant to discourage crowding; the rhythm failed. Lines swelled, tempers flared, yet no fist was raised—folks saved their strength for the next queue. I passed a vendor roasting stale walnuts over a rusted brazier. He claimed the city granary was already locked; nothing left but shells and hope. I took him at his word and moved on.

  I let my gaze wander, hunting some scrap of the old, riotous commerce: the copper?ware brothers, the apothecary who sang his prices, the matron who sold pastries shaped like saints. Gone, gone, and gone. In their place a thin?faced boy offered jars of river water "guaranteed free of shadows." Even desperation has its entrepreneurs.

  A pang hit—nostalgia or hunger, I could not decide. I pressed a Silver Sky into the boy’s palm, took nothing, and moved on. My ledger would call such charity a footnote; my stomach called it surrender.

  Beyond the peas?cart a ring of onlookers had gathered. I expected a brawl over salt pork, but instead found a Blemmye standing motionless, face sunk into its chest, humming a low, steady tone. Children watched, wide?eyed; their mothers kept a cautious distance yet did not shoo them away. The melody was unfamiliar, older than hymn or tavern tune, and for a heartbeat the market hush deepened—as though everyone present shared the same, shivering question: was the creature praying for us, or for itself?

  The moment broke when a patrol sergeant barked orders to move along. The hum ceased; the Blemmye shuffled off toward the alleys, leaving silence in its wake. I had no pen to dip, but noted the incident.

  Scraps remain, after all—scraps of trade, scraps of music, scraps of courage—but they lie scattered like loose pages in a gale. I mean to collect what I can before the wind changes again. Tomorrow Brenda will read my tally and call it ammunition; I wonder if she’ll see the sun in the margins.

  I had started to angle toward the grain wagons—hoping for a fist?sized heel of bread, nothing more—when a short, abrupt sob snapped my attention sideways. A child, no more than seven, stood alone near a shuttered spice stall. She clutched a brimmed sailor’s hat far too large for her, the rim folded like a wilted lily around her small fingers. Whoever should have worn that hat—father, brother, guardian—was not here to keep the rain off her head.

  Such sorrow could not be left alone.

  I crouched to her height, easing my voice into something softer than my baroque tone usually could handle. “You there—do you know the tale of Henriette the Sun Thief?”

  A quick shake of the head, eyes still shining with unshed tears.

  “Then this market is twice lucky, for I know it by heart.” I gave the hat’s rim a respectful tap. “Henriette had thirteen brothers—thirteen!—and could thrash every last one in a friendly bout before breakfast. She once crossed swords with the King of the Heathens and, praise be, schooled him in the genteel art of southern tea?drinking.”

  A faint, astonished smile tugged at the child’s mouth.

  I went on, voice carrying just enough to hook the curiosity of nearby youngsters. “In those days, the world held two suns. Henriette, bold as brass, pinched the smaller one right out of the sky and wrapped it in a handkerchief embroidered for her mother. Said the bigger sun could mind the seasons well enough on its own.”

  A boy in patched breeches edged closer. “How did she meet the King?”

  “That,” I declared, “is a galloping chapter. She found him hunting starlight on the northern dunes—lonely work, even for a monarch. Henriette offered him a wager: if she could strike a gull feather in mid?flight, he must abandon war for a fortnight and host a feast for any wanderer who asked for bread at his gate.” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “She never misses.”

  By now half a dozen children ringed us, market noise receding as though the very stalls were eaves?dropping. The girl with the hat hugged it against her chest, tears forgotten, eyes alight like fresh?struck tinder.

  From the corner of my gaze I noted adults watching—some smiling, some simply relieved to see wonder supplant worry, if only for breaths. Above their heads a bailiff’s drum kept the curfew beat, but softer now, almost respectful.

  The boy piped again. “Did the King keep his promise?”

  “Of course,” I answered. “A king’s word weighs as heavy as his crown—especially when a girl who steals suns stands ready to test it.” I straightened, smoothing my coat. “And that, dear audience, is why travellers on the northern road still find soup and a clean blanket if they ask in the old tongue. Henriette’s bargain holds.”

  A hush, then a ripple of delighted chatter. The children dispersed like birds after welcome rain, each carrying a shard of stolen sunlight. One girl remained. The one with the sailor’s hat. It had a blue ribbon around its brim. I marked the colour. If I ever see it again, it will not be by chance.

  I rested a palm atop the oversized hat, “He’ll want this back,” I said. “Keep it safe until then.”

  She nodded, resolve planted where fear had grown.

  Only when I turned away did I notice two watchmen leaning against a shutter, their earlier sorrow replaced by something gentler. One raised a hand in silent thanks.

  Stories, I reflected, could still barter courage in a market short on bread. Henriette had thieved a sun once; I had borrowed a spark. May it burn long enough to light even one more night of this narrowing world.