The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani (story reading .TXT) 📕

“Don’t worry,” Kirrana says, misreading my stillness. “No one was hurt. They took a great deal of jewelry, and quite a bit of food too.”

“Food,” I repeat, bewildered. Bren hadn’t struck me as hungry, and the house I’d sheltered in had been well-appointed.

“From the sound of it, bags of grains and lentils and beans. Anything dry that could be stored.”

I frown, eyes narrowed. “Surely the nobles didn’t report all that? Would they even have noticed?”

Kirrana snorts. “I doubt it. But we get the news from the servants and pages passing through, and when I stepped out to get breakfast from the dining hall, that was all the talk.”

“But why food?”

“Because people get hungry,” Kirrana says, as if it were the most obvious thing. And perhaps it is. Red Hawk keeps a network of street children, and the ones I’ve seen are all on the scrawny side. Paying them in coin might be a great deal more trouble than paying them in grain; it saves them having to answer where their wealth came from.

“What is it?” Kirrana asks.

I shake my head. “I know people get hungry. It’s just, back home, everyone takes care of each other. If one family has a bad harvest, or loses too much livestock, we all help out. I knew the city is different, I just . . .” I can’t comprehend a community that allows their own to go hungry. And I don’t want to see Red Hawk’s thievery as partly a good thing.

“There’s a lot of need here,” Kirrana says. “And neighbors care, but if the whole neighborhood is hungry, you can only do so much.”

She takes a seat at the table and gestures for me to do the same. “Anyway, I’m more concerned with this other kind of thief.”

I sit down, relieved to rest both the topic and my foot. “I understand you have ‘thoughts and possibilities’ to discuss.”

Kirrana grins, the corner of her eye crinkling. “That I do.”

As it turns out, Berenworth Trading Company established an office in Menaiya some thirty-five years ago, filing a very modest tax report in their first year. They’ve been growing their presence steadily since then. “That aligns nicely with the growth of the snatchers,” she observes. “Though again, it could be coincidental.”

I nod.

“They provide a general description of their company for tax purposes, with a brief listing of other ventures they’re engaged in through their holdings in other countries. In the first three years, they mentioned their overseas mines, and they still maintain a brisk business in imported gems.”

“They don’t report their mines anymore?”

“It’s an optional description,” Kirrana says. “They’ve opted to describe other things since those early years, but there’s no questioning the fact that they engage in a very legitimate gem and jewelry import business. A good percentage of the gems the noblewomen wear are funneled through them.”

“The mines would explain the larger gemstones,” I say. “Menaiya has mines as well, though, right? In the mountains?”

“Yes, but the gems are not quite as high quality, and certainly not as large as the descriptions of the ones that poor warden discovered.” Kirrana taps her wax tablets once, absentmindedly. “I can’t help thinking that mines are the sort of place that would happily use small children whom no one would ask questions about—children who could fit into tighter spots than an adult.”

I shudder. It never even occurred to me to ask where the jewels I’d ordered came from. “But we don’t have proof, do we?”

“None at all. Just coincidences, like the port warden’s death and the captain’s replacement, following the discovery of those two gems. And the fact that the snatchers showed up around when Berenworth did, and their presence has grown in tandem.”

“And we have potential motives,” I agree. There are the children as both salable goods and useful workers, and the gems as a valuable trade to the Circle. What we’re striving for is a preponderance of coincidences, enough to warrant an actual investigation into Berenworth, with soldiers to search ships for children and apprehend what slavers they can find.

“You’re brilliant,” I say, eyeing her with admiration. We started with almost nothing, and in the space of days, she’s brought us so far. “You know that, right?”

“No,” she says, dropping her gaze humbly. “I’m just a damn good tax clerk.”

I laugh.

Not to be distracted, Kirrana says, “If you have time, you can look at loading records while I check more incident reports.”

“Loading records?”

“Just look for anything strange—maybe loadings that happened at unusual times, or some other detail that doesn’t sit quite right. We’re looking for people who were in the know making an unconscious mistake in their reporting, accidentally recording a truth instead of a lie.”

“Sounds good,” I say, and set to work on the ledger Kirrana pushes over to me. This time, I’m working forward from the last available records five years ago to the first, each in their own ledger. The records, though, come from the river dock here in Tarinon, instead of the port wardens in Lirelei.

“I’ve already gone through all the Lirelei records,” Kirrana assures me. “I didn’t find anything else that stood out.”

It’s a bit like looking for a glass bead in a horse pasture, when you haven’t any idea what the bead even looks like. At some point, Kirrana produces a small stash of snacks and we break to eat, then go back to reading.

“Where are last year’s records?” I ask when I finish with the final book in my stack.

“Still at the river wardens’ office, I expect,” Kirrana says. She sits back and stretches. “Incident logs are sent up semiannually unless there’s a big enough incident to warrant an investigation. Loading ledgers . . . there’s only a rush on those when it’s a five-year tax assessment to adjust rates. We had one two years back, so no rush this year.”

I rest my chin on my stack of ledgers. “We’ve found enough to raise interest. It might be enough to get the princess and . . . her allies to launch an investigation.”

I wish, though,