Chapter 37-Between the Pages

Sam’s POV

  Morning light reached the narrow windows while the ledger still lay beneath four protection spells. We had compared it to the copy through most of the night. Every blurred line kept the southern road beyond Edric’s gates a little farther away.

  Kyron paced as I checked an entry for the third time. He knew I would not abandon the review. He also knew how often I looked up at the window whenever a vehicle passed below.

  ‘Reading it again will not make the annex appear,’ he observed.

  ‘Neither will staring south,’ I answered silently.

  ‘I can do both,’ Kyron replied without apology.

  Commander Halden stood across the table with one hand braced beside the copied gate records. The witch investigator, Maris, examined the original binding through a glass marked with pale detection runes, while the vampire representative, Celene, recorded every page number we were allowed to inspect. Edric’s archivist watched all four of us as though breathing too close to the book might count as theft.

  “The resident entries stop at forty-three because the remaining households were moved to an annex,” Celene reported.

  “The note says the annex was transferred during the archive repairs,” I replied while pointing to the faded line beneath the total.

  “Transferred where?” Halden asked with mounting impatience.

  Pell, the archivist, studied the ledger instead of Halden. He had corrected us every time we called a weather-worn page damaged, yet he became far less exact when we asked about a volume outside this room.

  “The eastern administrative house received several secondary volumes after a pipe burst in this archive,” Pell explained.

  “Is the household annex one of those volumes?” Maris asked.

  “The transfer inventory should identify it,” Pell answered reluctantly.

  “Then we need the inventory and the annex,” I said.

  Pell’s jaw tightened before he reminded us that the eastern house sat beyond two mountain roads and a guarded river crossing. Snow had closed the shorter road during the night. The remaining route would take a messenger at least a day each way if the weather held.

  “King Edric authorized this ledger, not unrestricted access to every archive in his territory,” Pell warned with stiff disapproval.

  “We are requesting one inventory and one volume referenced by the record he authorized,” I corrected without raising my voice.

  Edric had allowed the joint team to inspect one ledger, and I did not intend to give him a reason to withdraw that permission. The missing volume was named in the very record he had put before us.

  Maris rotated the detection glass above the binding and studied the threads holding the final section together. The magic showed no recent replacement, concealed writing, or foreign spellwork. Several pages had been repaired after water damage, but the repair marks matched the archivist’s dated maintenance entries.

  “Nothing here proves anyone removed a page,” Maris stated with deliberate clarity.

  “Nothing here explains the missing total either,” Celene added.

  “Record both statements beside each other,” I instructed firmly.

  The gate copy held forty-three names. The protection register counted forty-seven residents; the supply request had been made for fifty-one. The annex might explain the difference, or it might have nothing to do with it. I wrote down the numbers without filling the spaces between them.

  Halden carried our written request to Edric’s council chamber while the rest of us continued the comparison. The copied departure entry that lacked an explanatory note belonged to a family of three who had relocated before the attack. Their names appeared in the original, but the mark beside them indicated that their permanent record had also moved to the household annex.

  “That may account for three of the eight,” Celene suggested cautiously.

  “It may account for three names on one list,” I replied.

  “We do not know whether the protection register stopped counting them at the same time.”

  “You truly dislike convenient answers,” Pell muttered with open annoyance.

  “I dislike answers that become facts before the records agree,” I told him evenly.

  We reached the final available page before midday and found another reference to the annex. This one concerned temporary residents housed near the eastern boundary during repairs to their cottages. It did not name them, identify their species, or state whether they remained when the settlement was attacked.

  I could hear northern officers arguing in my head. Some had seen the punctures and blood and decided they knew the attackers. Others pointed to the orderly rooms and careful cuts as proof of a planted scene. The missing residents gave either story room to grow unless we counted them properly.

  I waited for the annex before writing to Zion. Somewhere, a family might be watching for news of one of those names. I could spare them a false alarm by finishing this comparison, even if another night at the desk cost me a day on the road home.

  Halden returned with snow melting along his collar and frustration set hard around his mouth. He placed Edric’s written answer beside the ledger instead of handing it to me. The king had approved supervised access to the transfer inventory but required one of his record guards to retrieve it.

  “The guard cannot leave until the river ward is inspected this afternoon,” Halden reported.

  “When can the inventory reach us?” Maris asked while lowering the detection glass.

  “Two nights from now if the western road stays open,” Halden answered grimly.

  “The annex will take longer if the inventory confirms its location.”

  I had told Zion we might leave within a week. The pages in this room should have taken one day; the annex would take several more. No one at home had been given a date, but I felt the failed expectation all the same.

  Kyron quieted. He understood why we had to stay, and still the bond pulled south. We had lived with that distance for years. A few more days ought to have been easy, which made my anger at them harder to admit.

  “Send someone else to observe the annex,” Pell suggested.

  “Someone from whose side?” Celene asked with cool skepticism.

  “One of Edric’s record guards can confirm the totals,” Pell replied defensively.

  “The purpose of a joint review is that no single side asks the others to accept its conclusion without equal access,” I explained.

  Pell glanced at the sealed door, perhaps hoping Edric would come and end the argument. The king did not. Equal access to the pages would give our conclusion its value, however much the process tried our patience.

  Halden could finish the review without me. I pictured him signing a report after inspecting a volume I had been too impatient to wait for. I would still have to answer for the work when I got home.