The Keeper's Private Ledger

aka Mara's skim-book, the Cache-Keeper's ledger

Mara Venn's own hidden ledger — the crates she holds back from the Silt Hands, and a rare unguarded line about why she squats on her grandfather's grave.

What the ring's tally says, and what is true. Two columns, and only I read the second. Crate of bronze, third run: reported spoiled to damp. Not spoiled. Mine. Salt-barrel off the Driftmarket boat: reported four out, five came. The fifth is under the loose brace behind me where the old man kept his crushings. Sresha counts what I let her count. Every keeper skims. I skim a little more, and I have earned the difference in a coin the Hands do not mint. Because this was ours. This wet hole took my grandfather's name and his coin and his last good year, and paid him in water, and the town wrote him down a fool. So I take from the deep now. Crate by crate, I am collecting what it owes the Venns. Let the water rise. Let it have the timber back. I will have carried out more than it ever gave, and that is the only assay in this place that ever came out silver.

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