The third line of the ledger looked black and tainted.
It wasn't an ink stain. It was a taint only I could see. From the day I woke up in this world, false numbers alone had looked tainted to me, like rotten fruit.
“...This purchase has been padded.”
The moment I said it, the expression vanished from the guildmaster's face.
“You noticed.”
The guildmaster smiled as he said it. For just a moment, I thought I'd been praised.
Three days later, I was driven out of the Royal Capital. I had one cloak to my name. Everything else I carried was in my head, brought over from my previous life.
The one doing the padding had been the guildmaster himself. He didn't need anyone who could notice.
In my previous life, I had been an ordinary accounting clerk. I spent every closing period with a stomachache, then died on the train ride home. When I opened my eyes, I had become a ledger clerk in this world. It was a remarkably unglamorous reincarnation.
After walking along the highway for three days, I arrived at this roadside town.
Calling it a town was generous. It was just a place with about twenty buildings lined up along both sides of the highway. Travelers slept there for one night, then left in the morning. That was all the town existed for.
The inn stood at its edge.
Its sign hung crooked. The plaster had peeled from the walls, and the stable's fence had been broken and left that way.
“Looking for a room? One night's stay is half a denari.”
The innkeeper who came out said it plainly.
Half a denari. The going rate along this highway was one denari for one night's stay. Half.
I looked around the inn. There were no guests. Four tables stood inside, every one of them empty. I peered through the window toward the stable, but not a single horse was tied up there.
(Oh. So this inn—)
I could already see why it was going under.
“Ma'am, can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“You're trying to make your money from the guest rooms, aren't you?”
The innkeeper's brows drew together.
“It is an inn. What else would we do?”
“That is why you're going under.”
She didn't throw me out. I don't think she had the luxury of throwing anyone out.
Her name was Maren. She had lost her husband three years earlier and had been running the inn alone ever since.
“I owe thirty denari by the end of the month.”
Maren spoke while looking at the grain of the table.
Thirty denari. For an inn charging one denari per night's stay, that meant thirty full days at full occupancy—and only if its expenses were zero. In reality, it needed food and firewood too. The net earnings would be less than half.
In other words, with the way it was operating now, this inn could never repay the debt.
“So I lowered the price. I thought people passing through would stay if it was only half a denari.”
“Did you get more guests?”
Maren fell silent. That was my answer.
Small footsteps came from the kitchen. A girl of about ten peeked out. She was Maren's daughter, Tina.
Tina split the black bread in her hands in half.
She put one half in her mouth, wrapped the other half in a cloth, and returned it to the shelf. It was for tomorrow. A ten-year-old child had learned to eat that way.
I looked away.
“Maren. Travelers don't choose an inn based on price.”
“Then what do they choose based on?”
“Horses.”
Maren looked as if she didn't understand. That was fine. If she had understood, the inn wouldn't be on the verge of collapse.
I put my hand on the table.
“Give me food and a bed for one week. I don't need any money.”
“...And what will you do in return?”
“I'll change how this inn makes money.”
Maren stared at my face for a while. She had plenty of reasons to throw me out. A man of unknown origins who had drifted in from the Royal Capital. There was nothing to make me trustworthy.
Even so, she nodded.
I think it was because she had nothing left to lose.
She let me see the ledger. It was a leather-bound memorandum, too rough to really call a ledger. Dates, incoming money, and outgoing money were simply listed in rows.
It was enough. Numbers didn't lie. The people who wrote them did.
I opened to a page from last autumn.
Almost everyone traveling along the highway was a merchant. Merchants carried cargo. Carrying cargo required horses.
People could sleep even sprawled out on the floor. Horses were different. Horses needed a roof, water, and oats.
—And horses cost more.
To a merchant, a horse wasn't a tool. It was the business itself. If a horse hurt its leg, the cargo couldn't move. If the cargo couldn't move, the business was over.
So merchants would cut back on their own beds before they cut back on horse feed.
That was where the money was.
At the going rate along this highway, a bed for a person cost one denari per night. But if you boarded a horse overnight and fed it oats, you could charge ten denari. Ten times as much as a person.
An inn's main revenue wasn't its guest rooms. It was the stable.
“Maren, how long has the stable's fence been broken?”
“...Since last winter. I didn't have the money to fix it.”
She had been throwing away her main source of revenue for almost a year.
I kept turning the pages. Then my finger stopped.
The purchase price of oats: eight denari per horse.
That number looked black and tainted.
“Where do you buy these oats?”
“From the town's grain merchant. I've always bought them there.”
I looked out the window. Beyond the highway, fields of grain stretched into the distance.
Oats grew on this land. Why were they paying eight denari in a place where oats could be grown?
“Maren, have you never thought this price was high?”
“I thought that was just how things were. My husband bought from them when he was alive, so I kept doing it.”
Nothing drained money like the words, That's just how things are.
I closed the memorandum. I had decided on two things to do that night.
That afternoon, we repaired the stable.
I set a brace against the broken fence, Maren tied it in place with rope, and Tina carried straw. We couldn't afford to call a carpenter. As long as the horses couldn't escape, it didn't matter if it was crooked.
We washed the water trough and drew water from the well. That alone made the stable look like a stable again.
We bought oats directly from a farmer in the neighboring village. It was an hour's walk. When I asked the farmer the price, he answered without hesitation.
“Three denari.”
Three denari. The town's grain merchant had been selling them for eight.
Maren was speechless on the spot.
Before sunset, a caravan arrived from the east along the highway. Two wagons, six horses.
The merchant leading it stopped in front of the inn. He was looking at the stable I'd just repaired.
“Can you board all these horses?”
“All six. The troughs and straw are fresh, too.”
The merchant went inside the stable, peered into the water trough, and stepped on the straw. He pinched some between his fingers and checked its moisture.
“What about the oats?”
“We bought them from the neighboring village this morning. We haven't mixed in any old feed.”
The merchant looked at the horses once more. Then he nodded.
“This place will do.”
The inn one door down had a much cleaner sign and walls than ours. But its stable's troughs were empty. The merchant walked right past it and came here.
That evening, I wrote out the ledger in front of Maren.
Six horses at ten denari each: sixty denari. The oats cost three denari per horse, for a total of eighteen.
The stable's net earnings: forty-two denari.
As for the people, four guests at one denari per night's stay came to four denari. After providing their meals, just over one denari remained.
“...Forty-three denari.”
Maren's voice was hoarse.
“We can repay the thirty denari.”
“We can. From tonight alone.”
Maren stared at the ledger without moving for a while. Then she covered her face.
The next morning, Maren went into town and bought bread.
She set down a whole loaf in front of Tina.
Tina tried to split it in half—and stopped. She looked up at her mother.
Maren nodded.
Tina didn't split the bread. She bit straight into it.
I listened to the sound.
In my previous life, my work had been nothing but shifting numbers around, giving someone a stomachache. In this world, numbers decided whether a child split her bread or ate it whole.
I thought that wasn't so bad.
From that day on, horses never stopped coming to the inn.
The debt disappeared in three days. Maren said she wanted to fix the sign, but I stopped her, telling her it was too soon. Before money could be earned, the gaps leaking it away had to be sealed.
And the gaps still weren't sealed.
That night, I opened the ledger again.
Oats: eight denari per horse.
The farmer in the neighboring village had said he'd sell them for three denari. The town's grain merchant sold them for eight. A difference of five denari.
If that was all it was, it would simply be business. Marking up goods after buying, transporting, and selling them was normal. The number shouldn't have looked tainted.
But that number had been tainted.
Numbers became tainted only when there was a lie.
I went back through the pages. Three years earlier—the records from when Maren's husband was still alive.
The same grain merchant's name appeared there too.
Oats: three denari per horse.
That number wasn't tainted.
The price had gone up starting the month after her husband died.
Three years. Assuming ten horses stayed each month, five extra denari per horse meant fifty denari a month. Over three years, that came to 1,800 denari.
The thirty-denari debt this inn had been carrying hadn't been impossible to repay.
Money had been quietly siphoned away every month.
I closed the ledger.
From the stable came the sound of a horse stepping on straw. Tina was already asleep. She was the child who had eaten her bread without splitting it today.
Tomorrow, I had to go see the town's grain merchant.
I was an exile. I had no backers, no title, and no money. All I had were eyes that could see false numbers as tainted.
But that was enough.
As long as I could figure out where the money was leaking from, I could seal the gap.