~ KAEL ~
The sailor's name was Tomlin Brask, and his first reaction, on learning that the harbour commission's accountant wanted to discuss his indenture, was to assume he was being audited for something he hadn't done.
"I haven't skimmed anything," he said immediately, before Kael had said more than two words, in the cramped crew quarters of a ship that smelled overwhelmingly of salted fish. "Whatever's missing from that manifest, it's not me, I don't even handle the —"
"It's not about the manifest," Kael said. "It's about your indenture. The one with the Covenant Exchange."
Brask went very still — the particular stillness of a man who had just heard two words he'd hoped never to hear from an official.
"That's not—" he said carefully, "that's a private arrangement. Family matter. It's not the harbour's business."
"You're right," Kael said. "It's not. I'm not here as the harbour commission." He sat down, uninvited, on an overturned crate — a habit he'd apparently picked up from Davan, of all people. "I'm here because I read the terms. And I don't think you know what they actually say."
— ✶ —
~ NYXARA ~
Brask's face did something complicated — a flicker of something that wasn't quite hope, quickly suppressed, the way a person suppresses an emotion they've learned not to trust.
"I know what it says," he said, too quickly. "My grandfather signed it. Passage for the family, three generations back, during the Hollow Years — when half the southern coast starved. I know the terms. I've known them since I was eight."
"Do you know," Kael said carefully, "that the interest rate increases exactly in line with your wages? That if you got a raise tomorrow, the debt would grow by the same amount, automatically, the same day?"
Brask opened his mouth. Closed it.
"That's…" he said slowly. "That's not — my father always said the debt was just… big. That it'd take a long time. He never said—"
"He might not have known either," Nyxara said — and this time, the words simply arrived in the room, quiet but unmistakably present, the way a voice arrives when someone you can't see has spoken aloud. "The clause is buried in formal language most people would never read closely. I don't think this was meant to be understood, Tomlin. I think it was meant to be inherited."
— ✶ —
~ KAEL ~
"Who's…" Brask looked around the cramped quarters, at the empty air beside Kael, with the expression of a man recalibrating several assumptions at once. "Who said that? There's no one else here."
"...That was new," Nyxara said, sounding faintly startled by herself. "I didn't mean to do that. I've never— not with anyone but you, Kael. Not directly."
"That's… a longer conversation," Kael admitted, recalibrating right along with everyone else in the room.
It was, in fact, a considerably longer conversation — made longer by the fact that Biscuit, who had followed Kael to the docks with the unshakeable confidence of a cat who considered Kael's itinerary to be, by extension, his own itinerary, chose this exact moment to wander into the crew quarters, survey the room, and settle into the one patch of sunlight with the air of a creature exercising a long-held legal right.
"—and that's your cat," Brask said, several minutes into Kael's explanation, in the tone of a man no longer sure which part of this conversation to be most confused by.
"He followed me. He does that."
"And the… the Void Mother. Is also here. Right now. In my crew quarters."
"Also accurate."
"For what it's worth," Nyxara said dryly, "I've been in considerably less dignified places than this."
Brask sat down, heavily, on his bunk. "I need a moment," he said. "This is — I came down here to mend a sail. I was going to mend a sail, and have my dinner, and now there's a god in my crew quarters telling me my family's been paying an unpayable debt for three generations and also there's a cat."
He looked at Biscuit, who had begun, with great dignity, washing one paw.
"The cat seems unbothered," he added, somewhat helplessly.
"The cat is unbothered by almost everything," Kael said. "It's sort of his whole personality."
— ✶ —
~ NYXARA ~
Once Brask had recovered — a process that took most of a cup of the ship's truly terrible tea — the conversation grew quieter, and more careful.
"So what does this mean?" he asked finally. "Practically. You said the debt can't be paid off. Does that mean… it just goes on? To my children, if I have any? Forever?"
"Under Vren's law, yes," Nyxara said. "That's how it's designed. But Tomlin — I want to be honest with you, because that's rather the only thing I'm actually good at. I don't know yet whether we can change that. Not for certain. We've never tried to undo one of Vren's contracts before. This might not work."
Brask was quiet for a moment, turning his cup in his hands.
"My grandfather used to say," he said slowly, "that the Covenant kept its word. That whatever else you could say about them, a deal with the Covenant Exchange was a deal that held — forever, no surprises, no changing the terms halfway through. He said that like it was a comfort." He looked up. "I never understood why. Forever sounded like the worst part."
"It is," Kael said quietly. "That's rather the problem with forever. It doesn't care whether the thing it's preserving is good for anyone."
"And you think…" Brask hesitated. "You think that can change? Actually change — not just 'we'll petition someone and wait twenty years' change?"
"I think," Nyxara said slowly, "that two months ago, an entire religious Conclave ruled, for the first time in four hundred years, that something that had always been one way could be another way instead. I think the world is bigger than 'forever' likes to pretend. Whether that's big enough to reach your family's debt — I genuinely don't know. But I think it's worth finding out. And Tomlin — I think you deserve to be the one who decides whether it's worth the risk. Not your grandfather, sixty years ago. You."
— ✶ —
~ KAEL ~
Brask looked at the empty air for a long moment — then down at the cup in his hands, then, unexpectedly, at Biscuit, who had finished washing and was now regarding the whole conversation with the profound indifference of a creature who had never owed anyone anything in his entire life.
"Alright," he said finally. "What do you need from me?"
"The original contract," Kael said. "Not the copy on file with the harbour — the original. If your family's kept it."
"It's at my mother's. In a strongbox. She's ashore, two streets from the temple district." Brask hesitated. "She won't want to talk about it. She's spent her whole life telling people the debt is just… family business. Old history."
"Then perhaps," Nyxara said gently, "it's time someone other than family asked about it."