The Mortician’s Arithmetic
The body of Lord Aldric Marrow lay on a marble slab in the estate’s cellar, which the family had converted into a makeshift mortuary. The room smelled of formaldehyde and cheap incense, a combination that made my eyes water. I stood at the foot of the slab, notebook in hand, and tried not to think about the fact that I had seen more corpses in the past three weeks than I had in thirty years of accounting.
Kaelen circled the body like a hawk examining a wounded rabbit. His boots echoed against the stone floor, each step measured, deliberate. He wore his Auditor’s coat, the deep blue fabric embroidered with silver thread that spelled out the Imperial Treasury’s motto in a script too small to read from a distance. I had read it up close once. *“All debts are sacred.”* I had laughed. He had not.
“The official cause of death is soul-debt seizure,” Kaelen said, reading from a parchment he had pulled from his coat. “Time of death: approximately three hours before we arrived. The attending physician signed the certificate without examination.”
“Of course he did,” I said. “Why examine a body when the paperwork already tells you what happened?”
Kaelen shot me a look that was half annoyance, half something I couldn’t quite name. Respect, maybe. Or suspicion. With him, it was always hard to tell.
I stepped closer to the slab. Lord Marrow’s face was frozen in an expression I had seen before, on the faces of clients who had discovered their retirement accounts had been embezzled. Shock. Disbelief. The dawning horror of a number that refused to balance.
“His eyes are open,” I observed.
“Soul-debt seizure is instantaneous,” Kaelen said. “The soul is extracted, the body collapses. There is no time to close the eyes.”
“Convenient.”
“What do you mean?”
I pulled out my own notes, the ones I had been scribbling since we arrived. “The timing. We identified House Marrow as the source of the duplicate entry yesterday afternoon. We sent a formal request for an interview at four o’clock. By seven, Lord Marrow was dead. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a closing entry.”
Kaelen was quiet for a moment. He picked up the physician’s certificate, held it to the light of a mage-lamp, and squinted at the signature. “The physician is a man named Orin Voss. He practices in the lower district. Known for signing death certificates for the right price.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve audited him before.” Kaelen set the certificate down. “Three years ago, he was implicated in a scheme to falsify death records for a noble family that wanted to avoid inheritance taxes. The case was dropped. Witnesses recanted. The family paid a fine.”
“And Voss kept his license?”
“He kept his license and his practice. The fine was less than the profit from one falsified certificate.” Kaelen’s jaw tightened. “The system is not always just.”
I filed that information away. It was the closest thing to an admission of doubt I had heard from him since we began working together. I made a note in my ledger, a small checkmark next to his name. *Potential ally. Still unverified.*
“Let me see the body,” I said.
Kaelen raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a physician.”
“I’m an accountant. I know how to look for discrepancies.” I moved to the head of the slab and leaned over Lord Marrow’s face. His skin was pale, almost translucent, with a faint blue tint that suggested the soul had been pulled out rather than allowed to fade naturally. I had read about soul-debt seizures in the archives. The process was supposed to be clean. The soul was extracted, the body shut down, and the credits were transferred to the Treasury. No mess. No lingering.
But there was something wrong here. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Then I saw it.
“His hands,” I said.
Kaelen stepped closer. “What about them?”
Lord Marrow’s hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles white, the nails digging into the palms. I reached out and tried to pry one open. It resisted. I had to use both hands, and even then, it took a moment of sustained pressure before the fingers relaxed.
In the center of his palm was a small, circular mark. It looked like a burn, but not from fire. The skin was blackened in a perfect ring, about the size of a coin. In the center of the ring, a symbol had been etched. I didn’t recognize it.
“What is that?” I asked.
Kaelen’s face went pale. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small magnifying glass, the kind used by jewelers and forgery experts. He held it over the mark, his breath shallow.
“It’s a soul-brand,” he said. “A binding mark. It’s used to transfer a soul’s credit balance to another account without the owner’s consent.”
“Like a forged signature?”
“Worse. A forged signature can be detected. A soul-brand is invisible to the Treasury’s standard audits. It’s a backdoor. A way to drain someone’s balance without leaving a trace.” He lowered the magnifying glass. “I’ve only seen one of these before. In a case that was buried so deep, I was told to forget it or lose my position.”
“What happened to the case?”
“The auditor who found it was reassigned to a border post in the northern wastes. He died six months later. Official cause: exposure.” Kaelen’s voice was flat, but I could hear the anger beneath it. “The mark is the signature of a group called the Ledger Keepers. They’re a secret society within the Treasury. They’ve existed for centuries, supposedly to protect the integrity of the soul-credit system. But they’ve become something else.”
“What?”
“Thieves. Murderers. The people who make sure that certain debts are never collected, and certain credits are never questioned.” He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something like fear in his eyes. “If the Ledger Keepers are involved, this goes higher than House Marrow. Much higher.”
I processed this information the way I processed all information: by turning it into numbers. A secret society within the Treasury. A mark that could transfer soul-credits without detection. A dead noble who had been killed hours after we identified him as a suspect.
The equation was simple. Someone had known we were coming. Someone had wanted Lord Marrow silenced before he could talk.
“Who knew about our request?” I asked.
Kaelen frowned. “I filed it myself. Through the official channels. The request would have been logged in the Treasury’s records, accessible to anyone with the right clearance.”
“Anyone with the right clearance,” I repeated. “That includes the Ledger Keepers.”
“Yes.”
“And it includes the Chancellor’s office.”
Kaelen was silent.
I pulled out my notebook and began to write. I listed the facts in order of certainty. One: Lord Marrow was dead, killed by a soul-brand. Two: the brand was the signature of a secret society within the Treasury. Three: the society had access to our request. Four: the society had a motive to silence Marrow.
Five: the society was still active, and we were now on their radar.
“We need to leave,” I said.
Kaelen nodded. “Agreed. But we need to take the body with us.”
“The body?”
“The brand is evidence. If we leave it here, the Ledger Keepers will destroy it. We need to bring it to someone we can trust.”
“Who?”
Kaelen hesitated. “There’s a woman in the lower district. A former Treasury archivist who was dismissed for asking too many questions. She’s the only person I know who can analyze a soul-brand without reporting it to the authorities.”
“You trust her?”
“I trust her to know more than I do. That’s not the same thing, but it’s the best we have.”
I looked at the body again. Lord Marrow’s face was still frozen in that expression of shock. I had seen that expression before, on the faces of clients who had discovered their life savings had been wiped out by a single fraudulent transaction. It was the expression of someone who had just realized that the system they trusted was a lie.
I knew the feeling. I had felt it myself, the day I woke up in Seraphina Vane’s body and discovered that my own soul-credit balance was negative.
“Fine,” I said. “We take the body. But we need to be quick. If the Ledger Keepers know we’re here, they’ll send someone to clean up the scene.”
Kaelen moved to the head of the slab and began to wrap the body in a canvas sheet. I helped him, my hands steady despite the tremor in my chest. We worked in silence, the only sound the rustle of canvas and the distant drip of water somewhere in the cellar.
When we were done, Kaelen hoisted the body over his shoulder with a grunt. He was stronger than he looked. I grabbed the physician’s certificate and the notes I had taken, stuffing them into my coat.
We made our way up the cellar stairs and into the manor’s main hall. The house was quiet, the servants having been dismissed by the attending physician. The mage-lamps flickered, casting long shadows across the walls.
As we reached the front door, I stopped.
“Wait,” I said.
Kaelen turned. “What?”
I pointed at the floor. There, just inside the threshold, was a small scrap of paper. It was crumpled, as if it had been dropped in a hurry. I bent down and picked it up.
It was a receipt. A receipt for a soul-credit transfer, dated three days ago. The amount was substantial—enough to buy a small estate. The payer’s name was Lord Aldric Marrow. The recipient’s name was blank.
“He was paying someone,” I said. “Someone who didn’t want to be named.”
Kaelen took the receipt from my hand and examined it. “This is a Treasury form. The kind used for anonymous transfers. They’re supposed to be destroyed after processing.”
“But this one wasn’t.”
“No. It wasn’t.” Kaelen’s voice was tight. “Someone wanted us to find this.”
I looked at the receipt again. The date. The amount. The blank recipient. It was a clue, but it was also a trap. Someone had left it here deliberately, knowing we would find it.
The question was why.
“We need to move,” I said. “Now.”
We stepped out of the manor and into the night. The street was empty, the gas lamps casting pools of yellow light on the cobblestones. The air was cold, carrying the faint smell of rain.
As we walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. I glanced over my shoulder, but the street behind us was empty.
Kaelen noticed. “You feel it too?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll take the back alleys. It’s slower, but safer.”
We cut through a narrow passage between two buildings, the walls pressing close on either side. The body on Kaelen’s shoulder bumped against the brick, a dull thud that echoed in the darkness.
I counted our steps. Forty-seven. Fifty-two. Sixty.
At sixty-three, I heard it. A soft footfall behind us, barely audible over the sound of our own footsteps.
I grabbed Kaelen’s arm and pulled him into a doorway. We pressed ourselves against the cold stone, holding our breath.
The footfalls grew closer. A figure emerged from the shadows, moving with the practiced silence of a predator. They were wearing dark clothing, their face obscured by a hood. In their hand, they held a blade that glinted in the faint light from a distant lamp.
Kaelen shifted the body off his shoulder, setting it down gently against the wall. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, silver instrument that I recognized as a Treasury-issue soul-scalpel. It was a weapon designed to sever a soul’s connection to its body. It was also, I knew, illegal for anyone outside the Treasury to possess.
The figure stopped. They were ten feet away, their head tilted as if listening.
I held my breath. My heart was pounding so loudly I was sure they could hear it.
The figure took another step. Then another.
Kaelen moved. He lunged from the doorway, the soul-scalpel flashing in the darkness. The figure reacted, raising their blade to block. The two weapons met with a sharp clang that rang through the alley.
I pressed myself deeper into the doorway, my mind racing. I was an accountant. I dealt in numbers, not blades. But I had something the assassin didn’t have: a ledger.
I pulled out my notebook and flipped to the page where I had recorded the layout of the Marrow estate. I had noted the positions of the guards, the timing of their patrols, the blind spots in their coverage. I had done the same for the surrounding streets.
The alley we were in had one exit. It was behind the assassin, blocked by their position. But there was another way out. A drainage grate, twenty feet to my left, that led to the sewers beneath the city.
I had noted it because it was the kind of detail that mattered. The kind of detail that could save your life.
I waited for Kaelen to engage the assassin again. When they clashed, I moved. I slipped out of the doorway and ran for the grate, my boots splashing through a puddle of stagnant water.
The assassin noticed. They tried to break away from Kaelen, but he pressed the attack, driving them back.
I reached the grate and dropped to my knees. It was heavy, rusted, but I managed to get my fingers through the gaps and pull. It lifted with a groan of protest.
“Kaelen!” I shouted.
He heard me. He disengaged from the assassin with a swift strike that forced them to retreat, then sprinted toward me. The assassin recovered and gave chase, but Kaelen was faster.
He reached the grate and dove through the opening, landing in the shallow water below with a splash. I followed, pulling the grate closed behind me.
We lay in the darkness, breathing hard, listening to the sound of footsteps above us. The assassin stopped at the grate, their boots inches from my face.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.
After what felt like an eternity, the footsteps moved away.
Kaelen let out a long breath. “That was close.”
I sat up, my clothes soaked, my hands shaking. “That was the second attempt on our lives in three days.”
“I know.”
“Someone is trying to kill us.”
“I know.”
I looked at him, his face barely visible in the dim light filtering through the grate. “We need to find out who. And we need to do it before they succeed.”
Kaelen nodded. “The woman I told you about. She can help. But we need to get there before sunrise.”
I pulled out my notebook and began to calculate. The distance to the lower district. The time it would take to navigate the sewers. The likelihood of encountering more assassins.
The numbers were not in our favor. But they were the only numbers I had.
“Let’s move,” I said.
We waded through the darkness, the body of Lord Marrow floating beside us, a silent witness to the crime that had set us on this path. And as we walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were not the hunters. We were the prey.
But I had been prey before. I had been a dead woman walking, a soul with a negative balance, a body that didn’t belong to me. I had survived because I knew how to count.
And I knew how to count on one thing: the numbers never lied.
It was the people who lied. And I was going to find every single one of them.
Kaelen circled the body like a hawk examining a wounded rabbit. His boots echoed against the stone floor, each step measured, deliberate. He wore his Auditor’s coat, the deep blue fabric embroidered with silver thread that spelled out the Imperial Treasury’s motto in a script too small to read from a distance. I had read it up close once. *“All debts are sacred.”* I had laughed. He had not.
“The official cause of death is soul-debt seizure,” Kaelen said, reading from a parchment he had pulled from his coat. “Time of death: approximately three hours before we arrived. The attending physician signed the certificate without examination.”
“Of course he did,” I said. “Why examine a body when the paperwork already tells you what happened?”
Kaelen shot me a look that was half annoyance, half something I couldn’t quite name. Respect, maybe. Or suspicion. With him, it was always hard to tell.
I stepped closer to the slab. Lord Marrow’s face was frozen in an expression I had seen before, on the faces of clients who had discovered their retirement accounts had been embezzled. Shock. Disbelief. The dawning horror of a number that refused to balance.
“His eyes are open,” I observed.
“Soul-debt seizure is instantaneous,” Kaelen said. “The soul is extracted, the body collapses. There is no time to close the eyes.”
“Convenient.”
“What do you mean?”
I pulled out my own notes, the ones I had been scribbling since we arrived. “The timing. We identified House Marrow as the source of the duplicate entry yesterday afternoon. We sent a formal request for an interview at four o’clock. By seven, Lord Marrow was dead. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a closing entry.”
Kaelen was quiet for a moment. He picked up the physician’s certificate, held it to the light of a mage-lamp, and squinted at the signature. “The physician is a man named Orin Voss. He practices in the lower district. Known for signing death certificates for the right price.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve audited him before.” Kaelen set the certificate down. “Three years ago, he was implicated in a scheme to falsify death records for a noble family that wanted to avoid inheritance taxes. The case was dropped. Witnesses recanted. The family paid a fine.”
“And Voss kept his license?”
“He kept his license and his practice. The fine was less than the profit from one falsified certificate.” Kaelen’s jaw tightened. “The system is not always just.”
I filed that information away. It was the closest thing to an admission of doubt I had heard from him since we began working together. I made a note in my ledger, a small checkmark next to his name. *Potential ally. Still unverified.*
“Let me see the body,” I said.
Kaelen raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a physician.”
“I’m an accountant. I know how to look for discrepancies.” I moved to the head of the slab and leaned over Lord Marrow’s face. His skin was pale, almost translucent, with a faint blue tint that suggested the soul had been pulled out rather than allowed to fade naturally. I had read about soul-debt seizures in the archives. The process was supposed to be clean. The soul was extracted, the body shut down, and the credits were transferred to the Treasury. No mess. No lingering.
But there was something wrong here. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Then I saw it.
“His hands,” I said.
Kaelen stepped closer. “What about them?”
Lord Marrow’s hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles white, the nails digging into the palms. I reached out and tried to pry one open. It resisted. I had to use both hands, and even then, it took a moment of sustained pressure before the fingers relaxed.
In the center of his palm was a small, circular mark. It looked like a burn, but not from fire. The skin was blackened in a perfect ring, about the size of a coin. In the center of the ring, a symbol had been etched. I didn’t recognize it.
“What is that?” I asked.
Kaelen’s face went pale. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small magnifying glass, the kind used by jewelers and forgery experts. He held it over the mark, his breath shallow.
“It’s a soul-brand,” he said. “A binding mark. It’s used to transfer a soul’s credit balance to another account without the owner’s consent.”
“Like a forged signature?”
“Worse. A forged signature can be detected. A soul-brand is invisible to the Treasury’s standard audits. It’s a backdoor. A way to drain someone’s balance without leaving a trace.” He lowered the magnifying glass. “I’ve only seen one of these before. In a case that was buried so deep, I was told to forget it or lose my position.”
“What happened to the case?”
“The auditor who found it was reassigned to a border post in the northern wastes. He died six months later. Official cause: exposure.” Kaelen’s voice was flat, but I could hear the anger beneath it. “The mark is the signature of a group called the Ledger Keepers. They’re a secret society within the Treasury. They’ve existed for centuries, supposedly to protect the integrity of the soul-credit system. But they’ve become something else.”
“What?”
“Thieves. Murderers. The people who make sure that certain debts are never collected, and certain credits are never questioned.” He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something like fear in his eyes. “If the Ledger Keepers are involved, this goes higher than House Marrow. Much higher.”
I processed this information the way I processed all information: by turning it into numbers. A secret society within the Treasury. A mark that could transfer soul-credits without detection. A dead noble who had been killed hours after we identified him as a suspect.
The equation was simple. Someone had known we were coming. Someone had wanted Lord Marrow silenced before he could talk.
“Who knew about our request?” I asked.
Kaelen frowned. “I filed it myself. Through the official channels. The request would have been logged in the Treasury’s records, accessible to anyone with the right clearance.”
“Anyone with the right clearance,” I repeated. “That includes the Ledger Keepers.”
“Yes.”
“And it includes the Chancellor’s office.”
Kaelen was silent.
I pulled out my notebook and began to write. I listed the facts in order of certainty. One: Lord Marrow was dead, killed by a soul-brand. Two: the brand was the signature of a secret society within the Treasury. Three: the society had access to our request. Four: the society had a motive to silence Marrow.
Five: the society was still active, and we were now on their radar.
“We need to leave,” I said.
Kaelen nodded. “Agreed. But we need to take the body with us.”
“The body?”
“The brand is evidence. If we leave it here, the Ledger Keepers will destroy it. We need to bring it to someone we can trust.”
“Who?”
Kaelen hesitated. “There’s a woman in the lower district. A former Treasury archivist who was dismissed for asking too many questions. She’s the only person I know who can analyze a soul-brand without reporting it to the authorities.”
“You trust her?”
“I trust her to know more than I do. That’s not the same thing, but it’s the best we have.”
I looked at the body again. Lord Marrow’s face was still frozen in that expression of shock. I had seen that expression before, on the faces of clients who had discovered their life savings had been wiped out by a single fraudulent transaction. It was the expression of someone who had just realized that the system they trusted was a lie.
I knew the feeling. I had felt it myself, the day I woke up in Seraphina Vane’s body and discovered that my own soul-credit balance was negative.
“Fine,” I said. “We take the body. But we need to be quick. If the Ledger Keepers know we’re here, they’ll send someone to clean up the scene.”
Kaelen moved to the head of the slab and began to wrap the body in a canvas sheet. I helped him, my hands steady despite the tremor in my chest. We worked in silence, the only sound the rustle of canvas and the distant drip of water somewhere in the cellar.
When we were done, Kaelen hoisted the body over his shoulder with a grunt. He was stronger than he looked. I grabbed the physician’s certificate and the notes I had taken, stuffing them into my coat.
We made our way up the cellar stairs and into the manor’s main hall. The house was quiet, the servants having been dismissed by the attending physician. The mage-lamps flickered, casting long shadows across the walls.
As we reached the front door, I stopped.
“Wait,” I said.
Kaelen turned. “What?”
I pointed at the floor. There, just inside the threshold, was a small scrap of paper. It was crumpled, as if it had been dropped in a hurry. I bent down and picked it up.
It was a receipt. A receipt for a soul-credit transfer, dated three days ago. The amount was substantial—enough to buy a small estate. The payer’s name was Lord Aldric Marrow. The recipient’s name was blank.
“He was paying someone,” I said. “Someone who didn’t want to be named.”
Kaelen took the receipt from my hand and examined it. “This is a Treasury form. The kind used for anonymous transfers. They’re supposed to be destroyed after processing.”
“But this one wasn’t.”
“No. It wasn’t.” Kaelen’s voice was tight. “Someone wanted us to find this.”
I looked at the receipt again. The date. The amount. The blank recipient. It was a clue, but it was also a trap. Someone had left it here deliberately, knowing we would find it.
The question was why.
“We need to move,” I said. “Now.”
We stepped out of the manor and into the night. The street was empty, the gas lamps casting pools of yellow light on the cobblestones. The air was cold, carrying the faint smell of rain.
As we walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. I glanced over my shoulder, but the street behind us was empty.
Kaelen noticed. “You feel it too?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll take the back alleys. It’s slower, but safer.”
We cut through a narrow passage between two buildings, the walls pressing close on either side. The body on Kaelen’s shoulder bumped against the brick, a dull thud that echoed in the darkness.
I counted our steps. Forty-seven. Fifty-two. Sixty.
At sixty-three, I heard it. A soft footfall behind us, barely audible over the sound of our own footsteps.
I grabbed Kaelen’s arm and pulled him into a doorway. We pressed ourselves against the cold stone, holding our breath.
The footfalls grew closer. A figure emerged from the shadows, moving with the practiced silence of a predator. They were wearing dark clothing, their face obscured by a hood. In their hand, they held a blade that glinted in the faint light from a distant lamp.
Kaelen shifted the body off his shoulder, setting it down gently against the wall. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, silver instrument that I recognized as a Treasury-issue soul-scalpel. It was a weapon designed to sever a soul’s connection to its body. It was also, I knew, illegal for anyone outside the Treasury to possess.
The figure stopped. They were ten feet away, their head tilted as if listening.
I held my breath. My heart was pounding so loudly I was sure they could hear it.
The figure took another step. Then another.
Kaelen moved. He lunged from the doorway, the soul-scalpel flashing in the darkness. The figure reacted, raising their blade to block. The two weapons met with a sharp clang that rang through the alley.
I pressed myself deeper into the doorway, my mind racing. I was an accountant. I dealt in numbers, not blades. But I had something the assassin didn’t have: a ledger.
I pulled out my notebook and flipped to the page where I had recorded the layout of the Marrow estate. I had noted the positions of the guards, the timing of their patrols, the blind spots in their coverage. I had done the same for the surrounding streets.
The alley we were in had one exit. It was behind the assassin, blocked by their position. But there was another way out. A drainage grate, twenty feet to my left, that led to the sewers beneath the city.
I had noted it because it was the kind of detail that mattered. The kind of detail that could save your life.
I waited for Kaelen to engage the assassin again. When they clashed, I moved. I slipped out of the doorway and ran for the grate, my boots splashing through a puddle of stagnant water.
The assassin noticed. They tried to break away from Kaelen, but he pressed the attack, driving them back.
I reached the grate and dropped to my knees. It was heavy, rusted, but I managed to get my fingers through the gaps and pull. It lifted with a groan of protest.
“Kaelen!” I shouted.
He heard me. He disengaged from the assassin with a swift strike that forced them to retreat, then sprinted toward me. The assassin recovered and gave chase, but Kaelen was faster.
He reached the grate and dove through the opening, landing in the shallow water below with a splash. I followed, pulling the grate closed behind me.
We lay in the darkness, breathing hard, listening to the sound of footsteps above us. The assassin stopped at the grate, their boots inches from my face.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.
After what felt like an eternity, the footsteps moved away.
Kaelen let out a long breath. “That was close.”
I sat up, my clothes soaked, my hands shaking. “That was the second attempt on our lives in three days.”
“I know.”
“Someone is trying to kill us.”
“I know.”
I looked at him, his face barely visible in the dim light filtering through the grate. “We need to find out who. And we need to do it before they succeed.”
Kaelen nodded. “The woman I told you about. She can help. But we need to get there before sunrise.”
I pulled out my notebook and began to calculate. The distance to the lower district. The time it would take to navigate the sewers. The likelihood of encountering more assassins.
The numbers were not in our favor. But they were the only numbers I had.
“Let’s move,” I said.
We waded through the darkness, the body of Lord Marrow floating beside us, a silent witness to the crime that had set us on this path. And as we walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were not the hunters. We were the prey.
But I had been prey before. I had been a dead woman walking, a soul with a negative balance, a body that didn’t belong to me. I had survived because I knew how to count.
And I knew how to count on one thing: the numbers never lied.
It was the people who lied. And I was going to find every single one of them.