Chapter 39
Elara’s POV
The ledger lay open on the table like an accusation.
I found it by accident—if there is such a thing as accident when you are hunting truth. We had been tracing shipments out of the granaries for weeks, following crooked manifests and false seals until twilight and beyond. Jaric’s ledgers, once exposed, had been a thin ribbon. They’d led us to merchants, to smugglers, to small-time nobles who thought they’d never be noticed.
But the book in front of me was different. It had no gilded cover and no official stamp. It had been tucked in a secondary chest in a storeroom labeled “Charitable Disbursements” that had belonged to an otherwise respectable merchant-house. Someone in the house had thought they were clever—keeping the real records in a place meant to be visit
