Chương 164: Chapter 159 - Still Accounting.

Vale had been reading accounts since he was old enough to hold a page without tearing it. His grandfather had begun his education with household tallies. His father had moved him to warehouse books once he understood subtraction, then made him check spoiled stock reports against what the warehouse clerks claimed had been thrown away. At twelve, Vale had discovered that three sacks of salt could become two sacks through damp, theft, generous measuring, or a clerk with gambling debts.

The numbers never explained which was which, which was why he had always wanted to create his own accounts. Alric had let him do that. The problem with the account in front of him was that it wasn't outright wrong, or even bad. Wrong accounts were refreshing. A wrong number could be found, corrected, and led to a person who would become nervous when asked about it. Seren's accounts were good. That was what was annoying him as he looked at it. Vale held the sheet by both corners and read it for the third time.

Every cost had a date, every payment had been noted. Timber, stone, copperwork, heating stones, barrels, wages, excavation near the river. All of it sat beneath one heading.

'The small inn' Vale lowered the page.

"How did I not know about this?" Vale asked, tapping the account sheet with one finger as he looked across at Seren. The pair were in Seren's office, it was across from Alric's office. Vale had a room in the headquarters, but he seldom used it, opting to sleep at his family's home instead. Seren sat behind her desk; there were currently two ledgers on the desk.

"You did know," she said, shifting the ledgers to line up with the desk corners, she avoided looking at Vale.

"It has been in the accounts for months."

"This says the small inn," Vale said, lifting the page and giving it a small shake.

"It does not say anything more."

"The building was an inn when he bought it," Seren said, with a small smile. Vale looked back at the figures.

"Was," he repeated, smoothing one thumb across the bottom of the sheet. There were several reasons to keep the legal description of a property. Tax, guild jurisdiction, permits, inheritance, sale terms. None of them explained why an inn was buying enough copper to roof a chapel and most of those issues didn't happen to Royal Factors, that was the point.

"Why did you keep separate accounts for it, I would have thought this would have come to me?" Vale asked, turning the sheet over to check that no explanatory note had appeared on the back.

"It is Mister Alric's hobby," Seren said, as though that answered everything, she was finally looking at him,"Vale, I won't go into detail, but there was a time I disappointed Alric really badly, he loves making things, I was not going to stop him."

"So… you kept this from me?" he said, he asked holding the page up and directing a glare at Seren.

"It is a proper lord's hobby, he is with his friend making spirits, with a still," she said, tilting her head to the side and giving him a bored look. Vale stopped. He considered Alric for a moment, then he considered the expenses again. A large private building near the river. Specialist craftsmen, vast amounts of copper, workers employed for months. No expectation of immediate profit. Vale slowly nodded. It certainly sounded like a hobby Alric was involved in. Seren's mouth twitched.

"Mister Alric is not a lord," she said, sitting back and folding her arms, she looked up at him.

"No," Vale said, looking toward the passage that led to Alric's rooms.

"He just spends money like one when unsupervised." Seren turned her face away, but not before Vale saw the smile. He placed the account sheet on the table and flattened it carefully.

"A hobby consumes money," Vale said, running one finger down the copper payments.

"A business returns it. I should have been told when this changed from one to the other."

"That happened yesterday," Seren said, still trying to look relaxed.

"The agreement with Moreen is the first sale." Vale looked at the page again. That was reasonable. Then he frowned at the page. He had assumed the small inn was just storage. Nothing had been hidden from him. Technically. The expenses had arrived. The building had appeared repeatedly. Wine had been moved there. Casks had been bought. The brewery's missing copper boilers had been reassigned under a note he had read and apparently accepted.

Each fact had been presented separately, and Vale had failed to ask what they became when they came together. His grandfather would have made him copy the accounts out twice for that. His father would have told his grandfather.

"Who decided to call it the small inn?" Vale asked, taking in a deep breath.

"Mister Alric, before he called it the distillery," Seren said, reaching forward to retrieve the sheet.

"Of course," Vale said, sliding the sheet forward, ''Well, I'll see the place shortly I guess." Alric came downstairs not long afterward wearing the new grey cloak, eight armed guards following him through the rear yard. Vale had grown accustomed to four guards. Four guards could be made to look practical. They stood at doors, watched corners, carried messages, and discouraged the sort of people who believed a royal factor might be easy to rob. Eight guards became a statement.

Alric nodded to Vale, who fell into step beside him. They guards formed around Alric and Vale as they entered the street. Two ahead, four around them, two behind. Alric walked in the middle with his hands inside his cloak and the faintly annoyed expression of a man who had discovered protection involved other people's elbows in the ribs occasionally. Vale fell into step beside him.

"You should purchase a carriage," Vale said, lifting the hem of his purple pants away from a muddy patch. Alric glanced at him.

"Why?" he asked, pulling his cloak closer as they crossed into the busier road.

"It would be kinder to your guards," Vale said, gesturing toward the men behind them.

"They would not have to walk across the city every time you decide to look at something." One of the guards looked determinedly ahead. Alric gave Vale a bored look. He was getting those a lot recently. Vale considered the city traffic. A carriage required horses, a driver, stable space, feed, maintenance, guards near the carriage, and a stubborn spine. He did not blame Alric for the look. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"You should still have one," Vale said, smoothing the front of his coat as they passed a vegetable cart.

"I'll think about it," Alric said, stepping around a puddle and giving Vale a small nod. Vale knew that phrase. His father used it whenever Vale's mother suggested replacing the dining-room curtains. Moreen used it when someone proposed a contract containing fair penalties. Merchants used it whenever saying no immediately might cost them something. The carriage was not happening, Vale noted. Alric seemed to be learning though.

The old inn stood near the river, broad and solid, its upper shutters opened despite the cold. There were fewer workers outside than Vale expected. Two men carried shaped stone through the side entrance, while another measured timber near the wall. Vale felt some relief. Perhaps the work was nearly complete. Alric entered ahead of him. Warm air, sawdust and the smell of worked metal met Vale inside.

"I'm going to speak to Stromni about Moreen's grain," Alric said, turning toward the centre of the building and lifting one hand toward the far platform.

"Have a look around." Vale nodded stepping through the door. First, he saw the washback. He had been told what a washback was. Alric had explained it as a place where grainy water became 'wash' before it went to a still and became expensive. Vale had pictured a large barrel, maybe like in the brewery. The thing rising from the floor was not a barrel. It was a room made from staves. A stonemason worked around its base, building a permanent emplacement with a drainage channel leading away.

Iron bands lay beside it in sections. A second position had already been marked nearby. As Vale moved closer, he looked at the height, then the width, then the troughs. Grain would enter, go into the boilers, poured to here. Workers would fill it, empty it, clean it and fill it again. The contents would remain there for days while the grain water changed. Capital sitting still, useful capital, certainly, but still. He glanced at the second marked position. Two of them. Vale began calculating before he meant to.

How much grain to fill? If it goes bad? How much staff? What about the water? How often will this go wrong? He forced the numbers aside and looked toward the upper platform. The copper boilers sat there. Vale stopped again. He knew those boilers. They had been purchased for the final section of the brewery. He had recorded the payment, argued over the transport charge and spent half a morning discovering why one supplier was charging them for six copper boilers, apparently Alric ordered three more.

Vale climbed the stairs. From above, the layout became clear. Grain would not be brought here as finished beer or wine. It would arrive as grain. It would be malted, mashed, fermented and then moved onward. This was not an addition to the brewery. Alric had begun building another brewery and changed the last step. Vale turned. He saw Maggie. His knees went weak. The still stood against the river side of the building, enormous and copper and utterly beyond what any reasonable person would call 'equipment'.

Its broad belly rested above stone emplacements. The neck climbed high before bending into a long arm, leading toward another barrel, then more complicated piping coming out the barrel into three stacked barrels. Alric stood beside it with Stromni. He was gesturing with his hands; the dwarf raised both hands in a shrug. Vale stared. They looked tiny next to it. His first thought was the copper cost. His second thought was that the copper cost no longer mattered. He descended the stairs slowly.

His family traded in brandy one time so he had seen noble estate stills before. Noble estates used stills to rescue poor wine, make small batches of brandy, or produce private spirits with impressive names and ordinary flavour. Those stills were kettles. This was architecture. The inn had been repurposed around it, not the other way around. Vale walked toward Maggie. Neither Alric nor Stromni noticed him at first. He passed beneath the copper arm, looked at the thumper, then moved around the broad lower body.

There were twelve heating-stone positions. Twelve.

"How large is it?" Vale asked, placing one hand against his coat while looking upward, his hand shook, he suddenly felt very cold. Alric turned.

"Maggie?" he asked, gesturing toward the still as though another object might have caused confusion.

"About thre… She takes ten barrels of wine, roughly, don't think we will fill her that hard with whisky unless I get some good oil." Vale looked at him.

"Did you say ten barrels?" Vale asked, holding himself very still.

"Yes," Alric said, rubbing at the side of his jaw.

"Roughly." Vale had tried to learn Alric's measures because Alric used them in every calculation, he had seen Alric's calculations and while he couldn't read them, he could respect it as math beyond what he knew. Ten. Barrels. Of. Wine. Or. Whisky. The brewery's boilers ate grain and produced beer. Beer was valuable, but it was heavy.

It filled casks, it spoiled, it travelled poorly although Alric apparently knew something about that but a cart could carry it across the city, perhaps to nearby towns if the roads were kind, but distance consumed profit quickly. Spirit however could wait, it could age, it could cross borders. One wagon could carry enough value to interest lords, merchants and thieves at the same time. Vale looked back toward the washbacks. The brewery boilers ate grain and spat silver Alric had teased him once, but it was true.

Not this thing though, Maggie would eat grain and spit out entire economies. Vale felt more unsteady. He looked from Maggie to Alric, then to Stromni. Stromni stood with both hands hooked into his belt, watching Vale with open satisfaction.

"Knew ya 'ere comin, been looking forward ta it." Stromni said with a grin that widened. Vale turned to Alric, Vale tried to speak, but the words didn't come. The dwarf had started laughing.

"I kept meaning to bring you," Alric said, lifting both hands slightly and avoiding eye contact.

"Things happened." Vale looked up at Maggie again.

"Things happened? This just happened?" Vale said, pointing shaking one finger toward the copper body.

"Aye," Stromni said, patting his belt while nodding proudly.

"She did." Vale moved around the still again, counting stones and access points. There were casks near the collection side, several already marked. Used casks.

"Aye, as I was saying lad, we cant run Maggie till the walls up and all finished 'ere?" The dwarf said to Alric with a sad nod. Alric frowned and nodded in sympathy.

"How… How many times?" Vale asked, folding both hands together before himself.

"Hmm?" Alric said, rubbing the back of his neck, he glanced at Stromni.

"You mean how many times have we run Maggie? A few times."

"A few is not a number," Vale said, leaning forward slightly.

"Four runs, well three full en one half," Stromni said, raising four thick fingers and smiling through his beard.

"More if ya count water." Vale turned toward the casks.

"You were saying, but it is getting cold, will they finished the wall in time?" Alric said turning back to the dwarf, drawing his cloak tighter and looking toward the open upper windows.

"Aye," Stromni said, rubbing one hand through his beard.

"Nothing for it though lad. Mortar needs ta set, doors need hanging can't run her with the wall open." Alric nodded. Vale barely heard the rest. Four runs. How much wine? How many casks of brandy already produced in the cellar? A sales agreement signed. Grain purchased for winter. The business existed. No one had opened a ledger for it. Alric turned back to him.

"How do we handle the King's taxes?" Alric asked, slipping both hands into his cloak pockets.

"Since we have run Maggie a few times now." Vale opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Stromni's eyebrows rose. Alric watched him with growing concern. Vale had spent years training himself not to stammer. Merchants noticed hesitation and treated it as opportunity. His father had corrected the habit by making him repeat figures aloud at family dinners until he could announce a loss as though it was expected.

"The taxes," Vale said, pressing his hand together.

"Yes." Alric waited.

"I… I don't think Merrigold was expecting anything for this season, but we will send for them to look at our records," Vale said, drawing in a slow breath as he looked toward the casks.

"That makes sense," Alric said, nodding and relaxing slightly. Of course it made sense to him. The problem had entered the correct hands and had therefore ceased to exist.

"I will notify the palace," Vale said, rubbing his hands together for warmth.

"They will send a collector." Alric smiled.

"Good," he said, giving Vale an approving nod before turning back to Stromni. Vale looked at Maggie. A royal collector would absolutely ask. Then the palace would understand her capacity. The Merchants' Guild assessor would understand the value of the spirit. Moreen already understood enough to demand exclusivity without seeing the machine that would supply him. Soon every serious merchant in the capital would know. Vale imagined the account heading. The small inn.

"No," Vale said aloud, shaking his head as he reached inside his coat for his notebook. Alric turned back.

"No?" he asked, lifting one eyebrow.

"The heading," Vale said, opening the notebook against his palm.

"We are not calling this the small inn anymore." Alric looked around the building.

"But it's the distillery?" he asked, spreading one hand toward the washbacks.

"The distillery," Vale said, writing the word with enough pressure to nearly break the charcoal.

"We will begin separate books today."

"Good job Vale," Alric said, nodding before turning back to Stromni. Vale moved away from the pair, still shaking slightly. The brewery had required new ledgers, new contracts, new suppliers and an entire section of Vale's working life. He looked up at Maggie again. He would need a team, this was getting too big. A realization struck at Vale, Moreen had tried to drown Alric in grapes, Alric had never told Moreen how fast he could make brandy.

His eyes widened at Alric, he knew he was ruthless, but this was something else, Alric had done this intentionally. He shuddered again but this time he didn't think it was the cold.