The Siege That Never Came

aka the last quarter-day, the unopened order

The Third Clerkship's final ledger-leaf, deeper in the vault: the siege lifted, the Prefect's writ to open the stores never came, and the granary-hands stopped turning the augers and walked away.

Quarter-day, and no writ to turn the augers, for the granary-hands are dismissed and I am the last clerk the Prefect forgot to recall. The siege lifted in the autumn — lifted, or was never truly threatened; the Prefect's readers were never made to answer for the year they cost us. The wall came down. The corridor breathed. And the order to break the seal and give out the grain never came, because to break the seal is to admit the vault was filled in fear, and a Prefect does not admit fear. So the vault stands full and shut. Eleven hundred measures of hard wheat under my feet, souring slow in the dark, and above me a corridor that will go hungry the first bad harvest because no man will sign the writ that costs him his pride. I have turned the last auger I mean to turn. Let the next hungry season read this and know it did not have to be hungry. I am going up while the lamp lasts. — Clerk of the Third, the last of it

This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →