Chapter 41-Accounted For

Sam’s POV

  The annex arrived two mornings after Edric approved its retrieval. Snow covered the iron case, and three seals crossed its lock beneath a layer of ice. I had packed my travel bag twice while we waited. I left it by the door until we knew what these pages said.

  Kyron watched the case through me while the guard documented each seal. When Maris raised her detection glass, I caught myself leaning forward. Neither of us liked how much hope we had put in a box of paper.

  ‘That box is between us and the southern road,’ he observed with restrained impatience.

  ‘The review is between us and the road,’ I corrected silently.

  ‘The box has handles. I could move it faster,’ Kyron offered without humor.

  Commander Halden stood beside the worktable with our comparison sheets arranged in date order. Celene waited across from him, her ledger open to the page where we had recorded the three conflicting totals. Pell remained near the door with the northern examiner and the record guard who had completed the eastern journey.

  “The case left the eastern administrative house under all three seals and remained in my custody until we entered this room,” the record guard reported.

  “The river ward and the case contain no foreign magic or broken protections,” the northern examiner confirmed with professional calm.

  “Record both statements before we open it,” I instructed with deliberate care.

  Celene turned the ledger so we could read the guard’s statement. Maris added her own examination mark beside the northern examiner’s. They had each checked the seals; neither had to take the other’s word for them. Pell finally opened the lock.

  The annex was a narrow volume with a warped cover and uneven repair thread across the spine. Dated marks and faint preservation spells appeared on the restored pages. Maris examined the binding before anyone turned a leaf.

  “No missing leaves, no concealed writing, and no replaced binding thread,” Maris stated with focused certainty.

  “The water damage predates the attack by more than a year,” the northern examiner added.

  “That addresses the condition of the volume, not whether every entry was accurate when it was written,” Celene cautioned evenly.

  “Agreed,” I replied.

  “We verify what the book can support and leave the rest alone.”

  The first relevant page listed the family of three whose departure appeared in the original gate ledger. Their permanent record had moved to the annex because they retained property near the settlement after relocating. A receiving official in another district had signed for all three.

  The receiving signatures placed the family of three in another district before the attack. They did not tell us where the family was now. We asked the district to confirm the registration before their names went into any summary.

  “The supply request counted them before they relocated,” Halden noted with cautious interest.

  “That explains three places in the difference between fifty-one and forty-three,” Celene answered while marking the date.

  “It may explain them,” I reminded them firmly.

  “We still confirm that the supply clerk used this household list.”

  Pell found the supply clerk’s mark in the transfer inventory. The request had been made twelve days before the family moved and counted the permanent register together with the annex. I drew a line between those dates on our comparison sheet.

  Five people had stayed near the eastern boundary while their cottages were repaired. The settlement supplied their food, though none was a permanent member. That explained part of the larger supply count, provided we could find where they had gone before the attack.

  “Five temporary residents and three relocated family members account for the eight-person difference,” Pell said.

  “Only if all five left before the gate copy was prepared,” Maris replied with methodical caution.

  “Four departure marks appear here,” Halden observed.

  “The fifth entry continues onto the repaired page.”

  A stain hid the fifth departure mark. Beside it, the clerk had written the name of a receiving shelter without a date. Pell looked relieved to be close to an answer; I asked Halden to request confirmation.

  Edric approved a totals-only inquiry after Halden carried the request upstairs. The shelter did not release a name, medical information, or current location. Its keeper confirmed that one resident from the damaged cottages entered before the attack and later returned to their home district.

  “All five temporary residents were transferred away from the settlement before the attack,” Celene summarized.

  “And the family of three?” I asked while looking toward the protected response station.

  “Their district confirmed all three were registered there during the same period,” Halden answered.

  The numbers finally fit their dates. The earlier supply request counted forty-three permanent residents, three people who later moved away, and five temporary residents receiving food during repairs. The last gate list counted the forty-three who remained.

  The protection register came from a different day. The family of three had left, and one temporary resident had already transferred to the shelter. Forty-three permanent residents and four temporary ones accounted for its total of forty-seven.

  “The totals reconcile,” Pell announced.

  “The totals reconcile when each is read with its date and category,” I corrected.

  “That is what I meant,” Pell muttered with fading patience.

  “Then put it in the report,” I replied.

  Without the dates, the lists made eight people appear to vanish. With the annex, we could account for them. I thought of the families who might have heard that rumor before anyone found the book.

  The annex answered nothing about the eastern barrier, the northern patrol damage, or the blood left on boundary stones. It could settle the count and no more. I kept those questions on separate pages.

  I had wanted the annex to let us leave. It did, but I was glad for another reason: no relocated family would be called missing because an investigator compared numbers from different days.

  We drafted the finding together. Pell objected whenever the wording hinted that Edric had deliberately hidden the annex. The transfer inventory showed an archive repair; it gave us no way to judge the king’s motive. I took the implication out.

  “The delay was avoidable,” Halden argued.

  “The delay resulted from restricted access, separate archives, weather, and protection requirements,” I explained.