Chapter 34: Four Hundred
Yeju opened the store at the ninth bell on the fifty-seventh day, on the floor of the east hall, with Wolha's map weighted flat at the corners by four practice blades.
She had not opened it since a courtyard on the first morning, when a monster the size of a cart had been shaking a wall and she had read a whole shelf in one glance and bought the only thing on it she could afford. She had assumed, at some point over the following fifty-six days, that not opening it was a decision she was making. Sitting on the boards with a map of a valley in front of her, she understood it had been a room she was refusing to walk into, which is a different thing, and which costs less.
[ Store. ]
It came up the way it had come up in the courtyard, a grey sheet unfolding in the corner of her eye, and she made herself read it in order this time instead of in one bite.
FORMS. At the top, because it was always at the top, because it was the shelf they wanted you on. [Spark], greyed, OWNED. [Ember Coil], 400, second circle, with a line under it in smaller text that had not been there on the first day, or had been and she had not had a second to see it: unmastered casts: 250 points. Below that, [Ash Veil], 900. Below that, four more, greyed, with a note that said above narrative weight, which she had never had time to be insulted by before and did not have time to be insulted by now.
TRUTHS. The second shelf, and it did not list anything. It had a field on it. The field was empty. Under it: ask, and I will price it.
SELF-EDITS. LOCKED, with a note in three lines she still could not read, because the note itself was greyed, which was either a joke or a mechanic.
PRESENCE. Numbers with too many digits. She did not stop.
Two hundred and fifty a cast.
I've got twenty-one thousand two hundred and five. That's eighty-four casts of a real form. Eighty-four is more than six days needs. It's more than the whole line needs. Wolha throws four hundred without thinking. Jang throws forty-one and complains about his wrist.
She went to the second shelf.
"Entry eleven," Yeju said, out loud, to an empty hall. "What is it."
The field took it. There was a pause. It ran longer than the Engine's pauses usually ran. Then a number came up beside the field, and it had six digits in it.
[ 418,000. ]
[ Before you ask: no, that isn't a joke, and no, it doesn't come down. Truths are priced by what they cost the story to have known. That one is expensive because knowing it does something. ]
Four hundred and eighteen thousand. I have earned twenty-one in fifty-seven days by being looked at funny by four girls. At that rate it's four years, and I have fifty days, and the thing has no front.
"Give me the shelf," she said. "Everything under twenty-one thousand. All of it."
[ You won't like it. ]
"Give me the shelf."
The list came up. It was short, which she had not expected, and it was in ascending order, which was the store being polite.
[ What Jin Taewoong thinks about when he cannot sleep. 900. ][ The name of the woman who cut Kwon Hae-su's hair before she came here. 1,100. ][ Where Professor Doksu keeps the file. 2,400. ][ What Cheon Miyu has written on the fifth string. 6,000. ][ Why the Kang line has no rating. 19,000. ]
Taken from NovelFire, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Yeju's breath went out of her.
Nineteen thousand. Nineteen. I've got twenty-one. It's the cheapest real thing on the shelf. It's the only question in my life with an answer I can afford. It's about the girl who sleeps four feet from me, who gives away the whole loaf, who won't lend a sen that isn't hers.
Buy it. Know. Never tell her. Be a person who bought her roommate.
She was still looking at it when the last line came up.
It came up under the Kang line, at the bottom of the list, in the same plain black, and it had not been there four seconds ago.
[ What the Deviation Engine is. 21,205. ]
Yeju sat on the floor of the east hall and did not move for some time.
That's my balance. Not a round number, not nineteen, not twenty. Twenty-one thousand two hundred and five, which is what I have got at this second on the fifty-seventh day, after eleven casts this morning and a receipt from a corridor. Priced at all of it. Not one point more.
A shelf doesn't do that. A price is what a thing costs. This is a thing looking at my pocket.
"Is that a real price," she said.
The panel did not answer.
It sat there with the list on it, the last line at the bottom, the empty field above where she could type anything at all. It said nothing. The lamp on the wall did what the lamps in the east hall did after the tenth bell, which was start to gutter, because the oil was low, because a girl who unlocked this hall every night was not permitted to requisition oil.
Yeju closed the Truths shelf.
She did it fast, the way you take your hand off a stove. Afterward she could not say whether she had done it because a shelf that prices a thing at everything you have is not selling you a thing, or because she had asked a machine a question and the machine had gone quiet. There had only ever been two things in her life the Engine could not price. It had never once been one of them.
Fifty days. Nine people who drop when I say a word. A girl who intends to walk four paces in front of me with a tell she spent nine years having beaten out of her. A boy hauling crates for eleven sen a day because of my mouth.
I can buy an answer or I can buy a weapon. I've been sitting on a fortune for eight weeks being proud of not spending it. Wolha was right. Wolha is still right. I'm going to do it anyway.
She went back to the first shelf.
"[Ember Coil]," Yeju said.
[ Confirm 400. ]
"Confirm."
[ Balance: 20,805. ]
The knowledge arrived the way it had arrived in the courtyard, all at once, from nowhere, a shape her hand abruptly knew. It was bigger than [Spark]. That was the first thing, and it was not a metaphor; the form had a size to it, a heaviness behind the wrist, the difference between knowing a word and knowing a sentence. Seven strokes. A coil that turned back through itself at the fifth and came out as a rope of fire you could put around a thing and close.
She got up off the map. She went to the line, in an empty hall, at half past nine, with a target board that a girl had set out at the fire-track's regulation distance for the fifty-seventh night running.
She lifted her right hand and drew it.
Her hand knew where to go. It went there without her, the same as it had gone on the first day, seven strokes in the air, and at the fifth stroke, where the coil turned back through itself, her fingers did something she had not asked them to do.
They stopped. A quarter-beat, no more, at the top of the turn, and then a small flat pressure downward before the stroke went on, like a person pressing a thumb on a page to hold their place.
The fire came off her hand as a rope, went around the target board, closed. The board went over sideways with the burning coil still on it, and the hall filled with the smell of it.
[ Cast successful. 250 points. Balance: 20,555. ]
Yeju stood on the line with her hand still out.
That isn't the hook.
The hook's in [Spark]. The hook is a hook. A little curl at the release, in my hand since the start. Doksu has been staring at it for eight weeks. He's named it and filed it in red.
This is a pause and a press at the fifth stroke. It's a different flourish. It's a different hand.
She looked at the burning board on the floor of the east hall for a while.
[ Thank you. ]
What?
The panel had gone plain and grey and small, the way it went when it had decided to be a thing that only kept books. It did not say anything else. It did not explain. Yeju stood in an empty hall at the ninth bell with a form she had not earned, a stranger's thumb inside it.
Want early access to 20-30 chapters ahead? Join my Patreon here: /cw/Sturdy_701_hunter