CHAPTER 84: [84] THE LEDGER’S BITE

Raven spotted Alyssa’s return from the guest wing’s balcony, where she’d been pretending to study the harbor’s layout while actually counting guard rotations. The princess moved differently now—her shoulders carried a weight that hadn’t been there this morning, and her usual perfect posture had developed a slight slump. The emerald dress that had looked so confident hours earlier now seemed to hang on her frame like expensive armor that had failed its first test.

When Alyssa reached the sitting room, she dropped into a chair, staring at the unopened purse in her lap. Her pale green eyes held the hollow look of someone who’d just discovered their safety net had been cut.

"Let me guess," Raven said, not looking up from her navigation charts. "Your money’s no good here."

"Script only." Alyssa’s voice came out flat. "Earned through labor contracts with Valerio’s enterprises."

Raven suspected as much—too many things about Porto Veloce’s economy hadn’t added up during their arrival.

"How many ships in that harbor do you think are actually free to leave?" Raven asked.

Alyssa looked up, confusion replacing some of the defeat in her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I mean Valerio doesn’t just control the currency. He controls everything." Raven rolled up her charts and stood. "And I’m going to prove it."

"Raven, you can’t just—"

"Can’t what? Investigate the man who’s holding us prisoner?" Raven moved to the wardrobe, pulling out a black dress she’d noticed among the clothes Valerio had so thoughtfully provided. "He made one mistake. He gave me a view of the harbor office."

The dress was conservative, professional—exactly what a merchant guild auditor might wear. Raven had played this role before, in Port Royal and again in Coral Bay. Bureaucrats were the same everywhere: easily flustered by paperwork and terrified of making mistakes that might anger their superiors.

"You’re going to break into the harbormaster’s office?"

"Break in?" Raven smiled. "Princess, I’m going to walk through the front door."

Twenty minutes later, Raven stood before the harbor office with a leather portfolio tucked under her arm and her distinctive hair hidden beneath a plain brown cap. The building was smaller than Valerio’s other structures, built for function rather than intimidation. A single clerk sat behind a desk piled high with ledgers, his thin face pinched with the perpetual anxiety of someone drowning in paperwork.

Raven pushed through the door, letting it bang against the wall with just enough force to make the clerk jump.

"Merchant Guild inspection," she announced, dropping her portfolio on his desk with a heavy thud. "I’m here about the cargo discrepancy on the vessel Wind’s Fortune."

The clerk—a nervous man with ink stains on his fingers and thinning hair—blinked rapidly. "I... what discrepancy? I don’t have any notice of an inspection."

Raven opened her portfolio and pulled out a forged document, one of several she’d acquired during a job in the Coral Islands. The letterhead was impressive, all official seals and flowing script, and the clerk’s eyes widened as he tried to read the deliberately confusing language.

"Manifest irregularities," Raven said, her voice crisp with authority. "Your records show three hundred barrels of lamp oil departed on the fifteenth, but our receiving dock in New Providence logged only two hundred and seventy-three. That’s a variance of twenty-seven barrels, worth approximately forty-one thousand Cori at current market rates."

She watched the man’s face go pale. Twenty-seven barrels was a significant loss, the kind that could cost a clerk his position—or worse, in a place like Porto Veloce.

"I... I need to check the departure logs." He began frantically shuffling through papers, his movements growing more agitated by the second. "The Wind’s Fortune, you said? Fifteenth of which month?"

"Last month. And while you’re at it, I’ll need to review your standard lien procedures. There have been complaints about excessive fees being applied to visiting vessels."

The word ’complaints’ made the clerk’s hands shake. Raven kept her expression stern while internally counting the seconds. She needed him distracted, focused entirely on finding records that didn’t exist while she gathered the information that actually mattered.

"Lien procedures... yes, of course. Master Valerio is very thorough about protecting Porto Veloce’s interests." The clerk pulled out drawer after drawer, searching for the fictional manifest. "Could you... could you repeat the vessel name? And the exact date?"

"Wind’s Fortune, departed the fifteenth." Raven leaned forward, scanning the desk’s surface. Among the scattered papers and open ledgers, she spotted what she was looking for: a thick, leather-bound book with ’OUTGOING VESSELS’ embossed on the cover. "Perhaps if I could review your standard documentation while you search? Just to verify your procedures align with guild standards."

"Oh! Yes, certainly." The clerk gestured vaguely at the desk. "Please, feel free to examine whatever you need."

Raven reached for a stack of shipping orders, deliberately knocking her elbow against a tower of papers near the edge of the desk. The documents scattered across the floor in a cascade of white, and the clerk let out a strangled noise of distress.

"Oh, how clumsy of me!" Raven dropped to her knees, gathering papers with one hand while the other flipped open the outgoing vessels ledger. "Don’t mind me, I’ll have this cleaned up in no time."

The clerk scrambled to help, his attention entirely focused on collecting the scattered documents. Raven’s eyes raced across the ledger’s pages, absorbing the information with the speed that had made her one of the most sought-after navigators in the Dawn Sea.

What she found made her blood run cold.

Every single entry for the past eighteen months followed the same pattern. Ship arrives, repairs and provisions are provided by Valerio’s enterprises, and then a lien is placed against the vessel for the full cost plus interest. The interest rates were astronomical—thirty percent compounded monthly. Even a simple week-long stay for minor repairs could result in debts that would take years to pay off.

Serpent’s Tooth: Arrived January 3rd, departed January 10th. Lien amount: 150,000 Cori.

Morning Star: Arrived January 15th, departed January 22nd. Lien amount: 203,000 Cori.

Lucky Strike: Arrived February 2nd, departed February 9th. Lien amount: 189,000 Cori.

The list went on and on, ship after ship trapped by debts that grew faster than any honest merchant could hope to pay.

"I’m so sorry about the mess," the clerk was saying, still gathering papers. "I really should organize this desk better. Master Valerio is always telling us about the importance of proper record-keeping."

Raven flipped to the final pages, her heart hammering against her ribs. The most recent entries were even worse—the liens had grown larger, the interest rates more punitive. Valerio wasn’t just trapping ships; he was perfecting the system, refining it into an art form of financial slavery.

And there, on the very last page, the ink still wet enough to smudge under her fingertip, was the entry she’d been dreading to find:

The Crimson Sparrow: Arrived [current date]. Status: Repairs in progress. Estimated completion: 3-4 weeks. Projected lien amount: 485,000 Cori.

Half a million. For repairs their ship didn’t need, at rates no honest sailor could ever afford to pay.

"Found them!" The clerk’s voice cracked with relief as he held up a completely unrelated set of shipping orders. "Here are the departure records for the fifteenth. Though I don’t see any Wind’s Fortune listed..."

Raven closed the ledger and stood, her movements carefully controlled despite the rage burning in her chest. "That’s quite alright. I think there may have been a clerical error on our end. These things happen in large organizations."

"Oh, thank goodness. I was worried..." The clerk trailed off, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.

"Your procedures appear to be in order," Raven said, gathering her forged documents. "I’ll file a report with the guild noting Porto Veloce’s... thorough approach to vessel management."

She walked out of the harbor office on steady legs, but the moment the door closed behind her, Raven felt the full weight of what she’d discovered crash down on her shoulders. Every ship in that harbor was a prisoner. Every crew was trapped by debts they could never hope to pay, forced to work for Valerio until they died or found some way to earn enough Script to buy their freedom—which the system was designed to make impossible.

The Crimson Sparrow was scheduled to join them.

Raven made her way back through Porto Veloce’s perfect streets, past the smiling vendors and contented workers who now looked like actors in a play they couldn’t leave. The white stone buildings that had seemed so welcoming now felt like mausoleums, beautiful tombs for the dreams and freedom of everyone trapped within their walls.

When she reached the guest quarters, she found Pierre in the sitting room, looking marginally better but still pale and drawn. Alyssa sat beside him, her emerald dress wrinkled from hours of worry. They both looked up when Raven entered, hope and fear warring in their expressions.

"Well?" Pierre asked, his voice hoarse but alert.

Raven pulled off her cap, letting her distinctive hair fall free. "We’re not guests. We’re inventory."

She told them everything—the ledger, the liens, the impossible interest rates that turned every ship into a permanent prisoner. Pierre’s jaw tightened with each detail, while Alyssa’s hands clenched into fists in her lap.

"Half a million Cori," Pierre said when she finished. "For repairs we don’t need."

"For repairs that will never actually be finished," Raven corrected. "As long as they keep finding new problems with the Sparrow, the debt keeps growing. And even if we somehow paid it off, Valerio would just find new reasons to keep us here."

"So what do we do?" Alyssa’s voice was steady, but her knuckles were white where she gripped the arms of her chair.

Raven looked at her companions—Pierre, still recovering from injuries sustained protecting people he barely knew; Alyssa, who’d given up everything to escape one prison only to find herself in another. They were trapped in a system designed to be inescapable, surrounded by guards who smiled while they locked the doors.

But Raven had spent years studying the currents and winds, learning to read the invisible forces that could carry a ship to safety or dash it against the rocks. Every system had weak points, places where the current ran differently than expected.

She just had to find Porto Veloce’s.

"We do what we do best," Raven said. "We steal something."