When It's Enough

aka Halder's tally, the going-home sum

A road-thief's private running total of his cut against the cost of the farm he lost — kept so he'll know the day it's enough to go home. The arithmetic never lets him.

Kept honest, because it's mine and no one counts it but me. Team of two, broke to the plough: 40 crown, and that's if I take the Farrow widow's old pair. Plough, harrow, seed for one field: 15. Back-rent they'll want before they let a Vane onto Vane land again: 60. It was 50 last winter. It climbs faster than I do. Have, this day, sewn in the lining: 71 crown and some clipped silver. Had it at 71 in the spring too. Then a bad month, then Ossric's burying, then my share of the salt that came up short — Pell's fault or the chief's, I've stopped caring which. Every time the pile gets tall enough to look at, the road takes a season back off it. When it's enough I'm gone. I don't rob because I like it. I rob because the ledger got to me before I got to it, and this is the only column left that a man can add to. It just never comes up enough. — H. Vane

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