The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 39: Volume 2: Chapter 37 — Tax Day & Grandmother

Read chapter 39 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 2: Chapter 37 — Tax Day & Grandmother The square had been swept and marked out with measured chalk lines by dawn, running like veins from the wells to the dais. Banners, once for festivals, now marked lanes: north-red, east-blue, river-white, market-ochre, so each man could easily locate his group of five hundred. Bread wagons waited under tarps labeled FOR CLEAN LISTS ONLY in clear, bold letters, especially for those unable to read. Kettles steamed at the edges, providing water and aiding the faint, while splint carts idled in the shade. Eliza stood under the dais awning, organizing her boards in order: Declared Fives-Hundreds by Lane, Enhanced (Exempt), Children Nearing Fourteen, Captured Enemies Available for Dues. She touched each chalk heading with two fingers, a ritual that steadied her hands before beginning the day’s duties. Marcus checked the posts. Varrek walked the perimeter like a level finding true. Rolen spoke to the Bread Wardens in a voice that made men fix the slop in their knots without remembering that they had decided to. Sam and Harry took their place behind the dais, silent and still, not statues, statues don’t look back. Their presence quieted the parts of the crowd that would otherwise have swollen into bravery. Yara came up the stairs as if the stone had offered itself to carry her. The scarf sat where it always sat, a green you could smell if you were too close and didn’t know what you were smelling. The square saw the scarf, did the math, and set its face to not-panic. Eliza looked once at Yara and once at the boards. “We’re ready.” Yara nodded. “Then we begin.” — The first five hundred came as a braided line: a midwife with a scar at her lip, a cooper’s son carrying the names, a dozen men who could lift without making a song of it, a dozen women who could make food for a hundred and make a hundred behave. They stopped at the chalk. Eliza raised her hand, and the sound in the square disappeared as suddenly as a dropped stone. Yara stepped to the front plank of the dais. “Each five-hundred pays one: one person given up, or one item with enough history or power that it feeds the Gem for seven days. Pay once; free for life. Next week another pays. Children at fourteen. Captured enemies taken under the city's laws may satisfy your due. Judgment is public. Consumption is not.” No euphemisms. The words sat in their grooves like old stones. The cooper’s son set a pouch of coins on the Offering table with more hope than belief. Yara lifted the pouch, weighed it, then touched it to her sternum beneath the scarf. Nothing moved. Dead metal. She let the pouch drop back into his palm. “Rejected,” she said. “Shiny. No years.” The midwife stepped next. She placed a rod of birch polished by a thousand grips. The wood remembered hands. Yara touched it to the scarf with almost the tenderness you give a knife you trust. Warmth climbed her palm. A faint draw. She pulled back before the pull became a drink. “Accepted,” she said. “Held through fear and breath. Seven days paid.” Eliza’s scribe stamped the Belonging mark, a dyed cord knotted twice and looped through a wax seal. The midwife’s lane tied the cords to their wrists, and the smell the cord carried, something like smoke and green, and the hint of iron, settled as if it had found a place meant for it. The Bread Warden signaled, and a wagon turned toward their lane. Yara repeated the rule. “One person given up. Or one history.” The second five-hundred tried a signet ring, the gold fat and smug. Yara touched it to the scarf and lifted it away at once. “Rejected,” she said. “Wrong scent. It isn’t yours.” The man who had brought it looked at his feet because men know when their names aren’t on the things they steal. A captured riverman, tall, wrists roped, stood with his chin up. His captors held city letters. Yara pointed. “Accepted,” she said. “This lane’s due.” The riverman didn’t spit. He looked over the crowd and memorized faces for later, the way men who s