I had enough money for silver clasps and not enough cloth for another week of changing the dressing.
The packing list explained this without seeming embarrassed. Three pairs of formal gloves. Two cases for writing instruments. One small roll of clean bandage cloth, already half used.
I crossed out a case. Then I put the pen down and examined my hand.
A thin red line remained beneath the fingers. The skin had closed, but stretching it still pulled at the center. I could manage ordinary tasks. Trying to channel through the same place was another matter.
Two days remained before departure.
The capital, a gate, another journey after that, and an academy where Cedric was supposed to be strong.
I had been careful for more than a week since the examination. Careful had improved the hand. It had not repaired the core.
I opened the Ledger.
The balance remained thirty. Beneath it, a folded line listed available services. I had put off exploring it while I worried about the study and the departure papers.
Now I looked at the line until it opened.
[ SUCCESSION MANIFEST ]
────────────────────────────────────
VP BALANCE 30
VILLAIN'S ELIXIR 50 PER DOSE
STOCK 3 TOTAL
TYRANT'S AURA 100
SHADOW CLOAK 150
SCHEMER'S INSIGHT 200
────────────────────────────────────
A shop. No merchant. No counter. Just things I couldn't afford, arranged neatly in front of me.
I selected the Elixir first.
The terms unfolded beneath its name. Ordinary tissue repair. A one-band circulation boost lasting one hour, capped at B-rank. No change to the bloodline's stage.
My eyes went back to repair.
I pictured the burn disappearing. Holding a pen without adjusting my grip. Touching a ward without already carrying the pain from the last one.
Then I read the exclusions.
It would not restore a shattered core. Void scarring remained. No recovery of erased memory or lost lifespan. Nothing brought a dead person back.
More than one dose within seven days caused withdrawal.
Three doses existed in the stock. Not three today, with another crate arriving next week. Three in total.
I sat back. Useful. Limited. Twenty points beyond what I possessed.
The temporary circulation boost caught my attention again. One hour of better flow would be valuable at the right moment. It wouldn't turn a damaged beginner into the D-rank heir my father remembered, and it wouldn't make tomorrow's injuries someone else's problem.
Still, I wanted it. I looked at the balance and asked whether ordinary currency was accepted.
PAYMENT: VP ONLY
CREDIT: NOT AVAILABLE
That settled two questions.
I hadn't planned to put a magic potion on an installment plan, but apparently I had been willing to consider it.
I closed the terms without buying.
The stock remained three. The balance remained thirty.
No penalty for reading. No purchase hidden inside the act of looking.
I checked that before opening the next item.
Tyrant's Aura cost a hundred points. A passive field of intimidation, pushing weaker-willed people toward submission.
For a moment, I thought of the outer study. Of standing straight while waiting for the door. Of the effort it took to keep my voice level when a clerk read an inconvenient sentence aloud.
The promised effect would make some of that easier.
Then I reached the risk field.
Continued use could alter the user's disposition. Increased aggression. Personality changes associated with repeated exposure.
I read it again, less quickly.
I wanted people to overlook the weakness in my hands. I didn't want every disagreement to start feeling like a good reason to use them.
A person with a weak core might still have enough will to resist it. The terms promised nothing about a particular opponent. I could spend a hundred points, become less patient, and still fail to frighten the one man I needed to impress.
The item remained where it was when I closed the terms. I didn't delete it. I couldn't afford it, and refusing something I couldn't buy wasn't a great act of discipline.
But I wrote the risk down beside the price anyway.
When the balance changed, I wanted the whole offer in front of me.
The cloak promised a modest improvement in concealment and resistance to detection. It didn't promise silence, an invisible body, or a safe walk through every guard post in the empire.
The Insight entry interested me more. Observable inconsistencies between what someone said and what their behavior showed. A cooldown between uses. No access to thoughts, and no guarantee that a person who believed a lie would look dishonest.
Two hundred points.
I thought of Valeria's hand shaking around the cup.
An inconsistency might have helped me notice it faster. It wouldn't necessarily have explained why.
I put that price in the notes too, leaving room for questions instead of writing a plan that assumed I already owned the skill.
The screen had no opinion beneath the manifest.
That absence stood out after the entries I had seen before. Familiar conduct is advised. The house records recovery.
I returned briefly to the record of the thirty-point credit. The amount, balance, and witnesses sat in plain fields. The advice came afterward, separately marked as commentary.
"Is the commentary a condition of the credit?"
CREDIT: RECORDED / 30 VP
COMMENTARY COMPLIANCE: NOT REQUIRED
I read the two lines until the distinction was clear.
The award was a record. The advice wasn't an extra rule that could take the points back if I stopped following it.
Useful information, though I still didn't know why a witnessed deception deserved payment in the first place.
I wasn't going to learn that by obeying every opinion placed beneath a number.
For a moment, I considered how easily I could arrange another unpleasant conversation downstairs.
An attendant was always within calling distance. A clerk always had something I could criticize. Twenty more points felt close enough to make the thought sound practical.
Then I looked at the reason attached to the only credit I had received.
A witnessed deception that changed a report. Not an award for speaking harshly. I had done that several times without getting anything.
Repeating the tone would not necessarily repeat the result.
I could frighten someone, earn nothing, and leave myself with another person choosing his words more carefully around me.
The attendant's reminder about the gloves had been useful because he risked saying it. I didn't want him deciding the safer answer was silence whenever I missed something.
Even if the Ledger did pay, the points wouldn't make the lost information reappear.
I drew a line beneath the prices and left the balance alone.
I closed the display and looked at my ordinary packing list.
It had a much less interesting selection.
Bandages. Soap. Spare shirts. A water bottle with a stopper that actually stayed in. Enough food to avoid depending on someone else remembering when I last ate.
None would repair a shattered core either.
At least I could buy them.
The clerk came after lunch. I gave him the revised list and asked for the cost to come from the travel allowance already assigned to me.
He examined the crossed-out writing case.
"You wish to carry the instruments loose?"
"One case is enough."
"The second contains replacements."
"Put a spare nib in the first."
He considered the practical difficulty of this radical arrangement, then marked the line.
I pointed to the cloth.
"More of that. Plain, clean, cut into lengths."
His gaze moved toward my hand.
"The academy has medical supplies."
"The academy isn't in my carriage."
"Of course."
He made another mark.
"The circulation primer," I said. "It goes with me. Have the loan recorded."
He checked the book's number against the note inside its cover.
"Under your name?"
"Whose would you prefer?"
"I meant the household account or your personal library record."
I had managed to object before understanding the question.
"My record," I said. "Leave a copy of the entry."
He wrote it down without looking up.
I let him finish before adding anything else. If I wanted useful answers, giving people time to complete the question seemed like a reasonable place to start.
I added a small packet of ordinary food to the list. Bread that would keep through the journey. Something salted. Nothing that required a silver dish and an attendant to make sense of it.
The clerk informed me that travel meals were already arranged.
"For the planned stops," he added.
I looked at him. He looked at the food line and left it in place.
That was the first easy agreement of the afternoon.
The bottle took longer. The one already assigned to me was glass, wrapped in a fitted compartment of the large case. Very safe, provided I had access to the large case whenever I became thirsty.
I asked for something I could carry myself.
He sent the attendant to fetch two alternatives.
I chose the plain one after checking the stopper over the basin. The attendant watched me tip it upside down with the expression of someone waiting to learn which part of the test involved him.
Nothing leaked. "This one," I said.
He took the other bottle away.
By evening, the supplies occupied a small cloth bag on the desk. I opened each bundle and checked what was inside. More bandage cloth than before. Spare nibs. Soap wrapped separately from the food, which seemed worth appreciating.
The Elixir still existed somewhere behind a line of text I could call up whenever I wanted.
I left it there.
Thirty points were thirty points. Spending a whole afternoon wanting fifty wasn't going to change the balance.
I put the water bottle beside the travel folder and tied the supply bag shut.
Tomorrow, I needed to make sure both were packed where I could reach them.