Chương 9: The Ring

I found the Regesta key on my key ring and unlocked Sinon's office, carefully opening the door to keep the hinges' usual complaint quiet. The cloth bundle was warm in my pocket, where it had sat the whole way from the tavern. Every now and then I had passed my hand over it, asking my skill, and every time it stubbornly refused to offer up any information. A few words on the Mandate Ledger, if you do not know, and perhaps a few words about the Mandate itself.

I have heard it called different things from merchants coming to Varenza from afar; it is everything from their God to their System. What we all share is that it provides a structured framework to our lives: It is the source of our classes and skills, and it provides concise information about who we are. My own information is only a thought away: my name, my absence of a class, my position in the city hierarchy, my occupation and my titles.

And, of course, my list of skills, which contains only the singular skill that landed me in my job. If I meet someone new, it will offer up their name and not much more, until they give me permission to see additional details. The Ledger is a tool created by artificers working directly under the Signoria, which extends these abilities to things. Just as my own skill targets a thing and a person, or the natural world, the Ledger takes the shape of a large tome.

Place an item in its vicinity, and you can ask the Ledger to provide a full summary of what that thing is: details depending on that specific Ledger's purpose. Since the Misericordia operates under legal charter to determine the provenance, ownership and inheritance of effects and has the authority to conclude under ius testamenti, our Mandate Ledger provides comprehensive detail on these topics. You may wonder then: what is the usefulness of my own skill, if the Ledger provides all of this?

It is mostly convenience, having a man doing both washing and cutting and investigation, able to conclude without querying the Ledger. But also in a rare quirk, my ability to separate objective from subjective value is one that no Mandate Ledger can imitate. In all of Varenza, I believe I am the only man able to look at a thing, and know if its owner loves that thing more than it is worth, or if he is perhaps unaware of its real value.

So when my skill failed me, the natural next step was to bring the ring to the Regesta, Sinon's office, where we kept our Ledger. The room was empty at that hour, and the desk lamp glowed with only a hint of light. One wall was covered entirely in ledger books; the filled ones reaching some three-fourths along its span, with the last quarter containing empty ledgers waiting for future corpses.

Sinon's desk had two neat piles of paper, one to the left, those on their way out, and one to the right, those that were inbound. Sinon's predecessor had kept a system mostly carried by the strength of his memory, the vagaries of his mood, and the current status of a lifelong battle which had always occupied his attention more than his position at the Misericordia. I could still remember his body on my slab after his last fight; he and the bottle on the winning side, his wife and sobriety on the losing side.

But now, the office belonged to Sinon. And for thirteen years I had never once seen the two desk-piles confused. Sinon was many things, and hardly a day went by without us coming to some type of disagreement. But he was diligent and meticulous, and I was never concerned that our paperwork would not be in order. But today, something was odd. The outbound pile was weighed down by a funerary mask, like the ones we hang in the Facerium when we mark the passage of our more… wealthy customers.

It was entirely novel for anything other than plain paper to be in that pile. Bronze, cracked along the left cheek from brow to jaw, the mask held the face of some citizen I did not know. Sitting on top of the left report pile, its eyes were looking at me. It had no business being here. Masks were minted at the metalworker, and brought straight to the Facerium for hanging. Sinon ran this place with precision, and we all agreed with the need to organize items carefully.

Confusing the effects of the dead was grounds for dismissal for any of us. Why is a death mask sitting in Sinon's office? I wondered, but shook the thought away. It was getting late and my mind was going soft. I forced my thinking into straighter lines. The mask was strange, but far from the strangest thing going on tonight. Still, I passed my hand over it out of habit. RECOGNISE PERSONAL EFFECTS Funerary mask, cracked Subjective Value — Objective Value 4 florins Unknown? What was wrong with my skill tonight?

That was the second time in an hour, and for a moment I was afraid it was the skill that was broken. I found Sinon's pen sitting on his desk in its normal place, and reached out. RECOGNISE PERSONAL EFFECTS Clerk's pen, iron-nibbed Subjective Value 7 coppers Objective Value 7 coppers Breathing out in relief, I found a respite from the strangeness of the night in the small fact that Sinon knew exactly what his pen was worth. Of course he did.

His own perceived and subjective value was even counted to the copper (which is not uncommon in a city built on commerce, but most men did not walk around pricing their smaller effects). But that only brought my skill's apparent betrayal into even sharper relief. It had never failed me before. It had told me about a stick-figure-doll brought in with a small child (cherished), it had told me about a necklace of pearl and gold forgotten around the neck of a matron from the Ricci family (unimportant).

It had told me about bread in a starving man's pocket, and about a charcoal drawing of a naked woman crumpled up and forgotten. Here there was not even that. A death mask is made of a person and for people who should have loved that person. Or at least, felt something. Four florins. That would be the value of the bronze from melting down the mask… Enough. There is certainly a perfectly good reason for the mask being where it is.

I could think of three in a moment if I just tried, and I chastised my mind for seeking out new mysteries when it was already working to solve one. I next turned to the pedestal that occupied the wall opposite from our smaller, ordinary Misericordia ledgers, where the Mandate Ledger rested on its own, always open. Its pages looked like they could be turned, so well was it made, but it was a book only in name.

Bound in the grey leather marked with silver that was customary for Mandate artifacts, it was a powerful magical artifact. I had been told that a team of artificers might spend several years to make a single one, and it held the weight not only of their labour, but as an instrument of law in Varenza. This Ledger, and the others like it, held together the fabric of our city.

The information contained within determined ownership and value, and all rulings in courts, magistrates and tribunals were based on its conclusions. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. I lifted the Ledger down carefully and laid it on Sinon's desk, set the lantern beside it, and unwrapped the red cloth fold by fold. I held the ring above the open page and requested identification.

My first hint came when nothing happened for a heartbeat, then one line appeared: MANDATE LEDGER No information available"I don't understand—" The words echoed back at me from the marble walls, and I jumped, and it still took me a moment to understand that I had spoken aloud. The Mandate identifies everything. I already described the Ledger's purpose, and the one assigned to the Misericordia was more comprehensive than most: Auctions, inheritances, guild charters, marriages, the copper in a dead man's mouth.

Everything was within our mandate to review and conclude on. But somehow this ring had snuck outside that mandate? I put the ring down on the page and asked it properly. Sometimes, it is necessary to shape one's will to get accurate results.

"Requisition of identity. One object, recovered this night at the Misericordia. Present, quaesitor Marek Vale." MANDATE LEDGER No information available I tried to narrow my query.

"Registered owner." MANDATE LEDGER No information available"Place of making." And again, nothing. Without anything conscious driving my actions, I pulled out Sinon's chair and sat down. I knew he kept a set of assessor tools in a drawer, which I opened to reveal them: the scales, the measuring stick, and the leather pouch with markers. These were rarely used, but any office in Varenza involved in the valuation of effects had them available in case of need.

I began with the markers, already knowing as I picked up the chalk what the result would be. No mark. Neither did the next, or the next. I worked down the grades towards the diamond, and by this time I was not surprised when not even the diamond was able to mark the ring. I looked at the scales for a moment, deciding that using them was of no value.

If I knew the claimed material of the ring, I could weigh it and validate that claim, but it was just as useful to simply hold it in my hand, feeling its weight more dense than gold. The measuring stick would give me nothing my eyes could not see. A ring that was slightly too small to fit on even my smallest finger. Its temperature was still warm. I set the ring back on the open page when something happened. And at this point, I want to make another small aside. I was used to prompts, from my singular skill.

Concise, informative, and always predictable. I knew that the Mandate reserved other prompts for other things. Classes had long and sometimes strange read-outs. Other skills spoke less plainly. The Mandate spoke to each one of us according to whatever we had acquired at the Auction. And anyone living under the Mandate could at will call up their full status. (I had not done so for years; none of its changes had ever mattered enough to bring me back.) But now, text unfurled in front of my eyes, and it was new.

Not the plain grey text I had seen ten thousand times in the Mandate's clerical hand, each letter spaced equidistant, each stroke upright and legible. And the order in which it appeared... Not coming all at once, a wall of text hovering in front of my sight, and dismissed as quickly. This trickled in, a letter here and a letter there. The letters were curled in on themselves, sometimes barely readable, leaning forward with flourishes normally associated with a man's writing.

They hung in the air above the ring, where it lay on the open page of the Ledger. MANDATE PROTOCOL: UNKNOWN External information injection overridden. Information This is a ring. Provenance Owned, lawfully, until owner's death. Current Ownership No valid heir is registered. Available to a recognised Finder.

Marek Vale marked as recognised Finder Do you know that thing that happens in your mind when you hear something or you read something, and one part of your mind starts processing it, understands it, and files it away. But the main part of your brain, where the rest of your thoughts reside, simply decides to ignore the understanding, because it is so absurd, so far outside what you know? To take one thing first. The words that appeared above the Ledger were legally binding.

They referred to ownership and inheritance. I believe you could call any advocate into this room and they would (after asking about the strange shape of the letters) not find any ambiguity or unknown complexity. The ring had been lawfully owned, no valid heir was registered, and I had in the moment of finding become recognised as its Finder. And if there was any doubt, that doubt was answered by the prompt which appeared next: RING Do you wish to accept?

"Yes." At this point, there was no reason to defer or to wait or to ponder. I had come this far. The letters faded, and I startled. The ring was on my finger. I had not seen it move. One moment, it was on the page by my left hand, and as the letters faded, the ring appeared on my right hand, on the middle finger. A memory reminded me that it should have been far too small to fit around that finger, but that memory was relegated, rightfully, as not important right now.

It was warm, a presence that drew my focus, and I held my hand out, twisting it to look at the ring. And at the edge of the desk, on the left with the outgoing papers, a cracked funerary mask began, very faintly, to glow gold at the seams.