Chapter Three: Rules of the Night
Ash woke with the taste of metal in his mouth and the ledger heavy against his ribs like a sleeping animal. The garret smelled of ink and stale stew and the faint, unnamed scent that Rook had taken as payment. For a while he lay still and let the quiet fill the space the memory had left, as if silence itself might stitch the hole closed. It did not. Silence was only the absence of sound. It could not replace a name or the way rain smelled on a certain roof.
Lys was already awake, sorting a small pile of knives as if setting out silverware. Her fingers were quick and neat. She hummed without words, a tune she insisted she had not stolen, and the rhythm steadied him. The ledger, when opened, felt impatient and tidy all at once.
"Practice," Rook said, pages folding as if clearing its throat. "Application builds competence. Competence reduces waste."
"Businesslike," Lys said, looking up. "Is it rude to call a book a business partner or is it more accurate to call it a demanding creditor?"
"Both," Rook replied. "But creditors rarely teach you how to close a lock."
Ash rolled off the pallet and flexed his hands. The city outside was soft with morning fog. He felt oddly deliberate, as if each step might be a ledger entry in his lifetime. He slid Rook into his lap and opened to the first clean page. Its surface gleamed with an ink that seemed to rearrange itself when he blinked.
"Rules," Rook said. "There are rules. Rule one: noctes are finite. Rule two: noctes regenerate only through intense experience. Rule three: binding alters associative memory networks. Rule four: do not bind a thing to a living heart without knowing the cost."
"Tell me like I am a stupid coin," Ash said. "Keep it simple."
Rook hummed in the way a book hums when it is amused. "You give experience. I return effect. Effects vary depending on the intensity of the experience and the nature of the binding. Small noctes buy small effects. Large noctes buy large effects. The greater the effect the greater the associative erosion. There is no trick here. Only account keeping."
"Assuming I care about your accounting," Lys said. "Which I do not, but also I enjoy the thrill."
"You will care eventually," Rook said. "Memory is the currency of continuity. Spend too much and you will not be the person who remembers why you spent it."
Ash pressed a thumb to the ledger's cover. He thought about the smell that had gone and about the laugh that no longer belonged to him. He thought about bread and stew and the small map he kept folded in his boot that led to a place he only visited in dreams. He felt the faintest tremor of fear and something else that felt dangerously like hope.
"Show me more," he said. "Teach me to bind a sound to a hand and not to a throat. Teach me to take a guard's foot out from under him so he falls wrong and his sword misses. Teach me to take the edge off a shout so it becomes a cough. But make sure when I pay I keep the things that make me me."
Rook turned a page as if nodding. "Lesson one: anchoring. You bind a shadow essence to a small physical point. The smaller the anchor the more precise the effect. Thread the shadow through cloth, metal, or rope. Do not try to anchor to skin on your first attempts."
"Why?" Lys asked. "Because it would be dramatic and messy?"
"Because anchoring to skin binds to living tissue which bleeds associative patterns. Skin remembers differently. The ledger prefers quiet accounts."
They practiced on simple things. A rag, a pebble, a strip of leather. Ash wove the shadow around a pebble and felt the same small cold that had come when he barred the juggler. The pebble ate the light in a thumb sized patch of air and when he threw it across the room its impact was muffled as if it had landed on curtains. Lys clapped with the precise enthusiasm of someone who appreciates a successful theft.
"Useful," she said. "Imagine pulling a rope and the other end does not make a sound. Imagine slipping a lock and the click never happens."
"Useful," Rook agreed. "But useful with cost."
On the third attempt Ash tried to bind a memory to a locket Lys had found once in a market stall. It was heavy in his hand and warm from the room. He thought he could thread shadow into the locket so that when opened it would give the holder a brief sense of calm. He imagined offering that to an old woman in the market who cried at night for a lost son. He imagined being needed for reasons that were not simply coin.
He threaded the shadow carefully, following Rook's patient directions. The ledger hummed with concentration. The locket warmed and a faint glow ran across its metal. Ash felt a tug in his head like a wench winding up a rope. He braced himself. Rook took the nocte required and he expected that the trade would be for the comfort of someone else, not for himself.
When the thread settled Ash opened the locket with a small, ceremonial motion. For a heartbeat the air in the garret smelled like the market at dusk, the scent he had already lost and could not place. Then, like smoke, it slipped away. Ash's fingers trembled. The locket closed and his mind faltered on a thin, bright shape.
A name sat at the edge of his thought like a coin that refuses to fall into his palm. He reached for it and found nothing. For the first time a memory had a face and he could not grasp it. Tears came hot and unexpected to his eyes. They were small and private and Ash cursed himself for shedding them. He had always been good at holding things in. The ledger's price had felt abstract until now. It had become concrete and terrible.
"What did you take?" Lys asked, voice softer than him.
Rook was quiet for a breath. "Not an entire memory. A fragment. A pattern. The ledger prioritizes value. You paid for a comfort thread. The nocte was supplied from a pattern linked to scent and naming. The ledger selected an associative node to satisfy the transaction. The result will be a gap in recollection."
"How long?" Ash asked. "Is it gone forever?"
"It may be gone," Rook said. "It may resurface under specific triggers. Or it may be rearranged into other memories. Memory is many layered. The ledger alters one layer and the rest must adapt."
Ash clapped a hand over his mouth as if to stop the world leaking out. He wanted to shout and instead all he could do was feel the absence. It had the weight of a small stone. He had given comfort to someone he had not yet met and lost a sliver of himself that had a name.
"You warned me," he said to Rook, but the words lacked heat.
"You agreed," Rook said. "Agreeing is a contract. Contracts are precise."
Lys put a hand on his shoulder. Her touch was warm and firm and made the hole ache like a tooth. "You did the right thing," she said. "We do things so we can sleep at night without hearing knives in dreams. It does not mean the cost does not hurt."
Ash swallowed and let himself be steadied by her presence. He had traded a private piece for a public good even if the public good had been a practice in a garret and not a village. The ledger had worked exactly as it said it would. The knowledge of that steadied him more than he expected.
They left the garret before midday in a slow, haunted step. The city had the unremarkable business of its day to manage and it barely noticed two thieves and a talking book. Still, eyes watched. There was always someone who noticed the way a person moved or the shadow that clung too closely to him. Ash felt the prickling at the back of his neck, the animal sense that the world was being measured.
At the market edge a veiled woman in a long cloak watched them with an intensity that felt like a tool. Her fingers were folded in front of her and she did not join the bustle. She had the posture of someone who catalogued small things and kept lists in a manner that made them dangerous.
"You should not be so careless in public," she said when they passed within earshot. Her voice was soft and exact. "Books that bargain with memory do not keep their appetites hidden long."
Lys bristled. "And you are who? A city nurse or a veiled moralist?"
The woman smiled without humor. "I am Aria Solen. I am of the Veilwardens."
The name landed with a gravity that made Ash feel as if someone had turned a page. Veilwardens were the scholars and custodians who tracked Thorns and artifacts. They were not hostile to all bindings but they treated them like wild animals. Their presence meant questions. Their presence meant danger.
Aria's eyes moved to the leather at Ash's side as if she could read through hide. "That ledger is old," she said. "Its script is variant. It has touched several hands. You will either be careful with it or you will be careful for it."
Ash felt the ledger vibrate like a contained laugh. Rook, for its part, closed and gave no sign of unease. "We will be careful," Ash said, because truth is often the best defense until you can find a better lie.
Aria inclined her head once and then she did something that surprised them both. She reached into her cloak and withdrew a small token. Metal glinted. "If you are willing to talk, there is a small reward for information about ledger bindings. If you are not willing to talk there are other means. This city remembers those who hide dangerous things."
Lys crossed her arms with a show of theatrical offense. "We are poor," she said. "We would not know how to bargain with scholars."
Aria's gaze rested on Ash with a clarity that felt sharp. "Poor is not the same as ignorant. I will offer you a choice. Share with me the ledger's origin and I will help you learn to bar its worst hunger. Hide and I will find you and take it by force. The ledger will not survive either way."
The ledger in Ash's pack thrummed as if it enjoyed being the center of a polite threat. Ash looked at Lys then at Aria and felt the ledger's weight like the weight of a coin in his palm.
"Talk now or fight later," Aria said. "There is no middle."
Ash chose words that balanced between truth and the future. "We found it in a shrine," he said. "We do not know more than that. We do not want trouble."
Aria studied him, curiosity softening into something like calculation. "Meet me tonight at the River Gate," she said. "If you bring Rook I will bring my notes. If you bring only stories there will be questions. Be warned. The Veilwardens are not forgiving of those who use dangerous things to amuse themselves."
She turned and walked away, her cloak sweeping the dust. Ash watched her go and felt the ledger's quiet interest. He told himself the meeting was a reasonable precaution. He told himself he could manage Aria. He told himself many things to keep the ledger from sounding like a bell inside his head.
Lys nudged him. "First practice, first cost, first Veilwarden. Welcome to the account book."
Ash smiled with a small, fractured humor that tasted faintly of the missing memory. "Welcome," he said. "This business is getting busy."