All My Summons Become Divine Girls

Chapter 222: Ink and Teeth

Marrick had rewritten the contract three times before breakfast, each version stacked beside his elbow under a mess of correction marks.

Hajin stood behind him with Ash on his hip, watching the scribe sand the newest copy while pretending his hand was not shaking.

"Your handwriting gets worse when rich people breathe near you," Hajin noted, shifting Ash away from the ink pot before the boy could taste it.

"My lord, this document decides whether the region eats through winter," Marrick whispered, pressing the blotting cloth too hard against the margin, "so I would prefer if my fingers received fewer opinions."

"Fair," Hajin said, stealing the ink pot before Ash blinked toward it, "but if you spill, we call it a tax stain and charge her extra."

Juna leaned against the wall near the door, arms folded as her ears tracked the movement outside. Seliza’s guards had formed a red line around the square before dawn, so neat that every local farmer stopped to count knives.

Vella sat on the ledger desk with one leg crossed over the other, watching Hans through the open inner door while the old hunter pretended not to be under healer arrest.

Loccy occupied the window with her hammer across her lap, staring at the caravan guards until two of them changed posts without being ordered.

[ GoldRushGamer: ] contract episode, place your bets, someone is leaving this room poorer

[ TaxpayerOnEarth: ] if Marrick survives this negotiation, give that man a pension and a chair

Seliza entered at the ninth bell with the gray man behind her, bringing no clerk and no visible adviser.

"You look as if you slept badly, Lord Hajin," she said, taking the same chair as yesterday, "I hope our little arrangement did not trouble your conscience."

"My conscience costs more than thirty percent," he replied, setting Ash on the floor with a core, "so your contract never got close."

Marrick inhaled as if the sentence had stabbed him, then pushed the finished vellum across the table with both hands.

Seliza read in silence, her eyes moving line by line while the gray man stood behind her left shoulder. His gaze never touched the contract, staying instead on hands, exits, Juna’s claws, Loccy’s hammer, then Ash chewing through half a core on the floor.

{House Seliza receives exclusive purchase rights over twenty-five tons of refined gold per month from the eastern mountain claim, renewed yearly at autumn reckoning, with all excess weight remaining under the lord’s discretion.}

{House Seliza provides transport, road protection, smelting access, stamped trade passage, and external market placement, taking thirty percent of net sale after refinery loss has been measured by both ledgers.}

{No clause grants House Seliza survey right, mining right, military right, inheritance claim, fosterage claim, beast claim, relic claim, or unnamed mountain claim beyond the gold listed above.}

Seliza paused at the third clause, one finger resting under the blunt row of refusals Marrick had forced into legal shape.

"Your scribe has a suspicious mind," she said, amusement touching her mouth, "I normally pay good money for that disease."

"He came with the office," Hajin said, watching Marrick go pale with pride and terror, "and I am trying not to break the useful ones."

"A noble ambition," she murmured, taking the pen from Marrick, "rarely profitable, but charming in young men."

She signed first, the silver rings on her left hand clicking once against the table as the ink went down. Hajin signed after her, then pressed the regional seal into the wax while Aria recorded every stroke.

[ Notice: Contract copy archived. ]

[ Regional solvency projection adjusted. ]

[ Estimated collapse window: nineteen weeks removed from active forecast. ]

The room held still for one breath before Marrick folded forward over the table, both palms braced against the vellum.

"We are not insolvent," he whispered, staring at the sealed copy as if it might run away, "my lord, we are not insolvent."

"Try not to sound disappointed," Hajin said, but the words came softer than he meant.

Outside, the first wagon rolled toward the mine road under escort, its wheels cutting through mud that had never carried this much money.

Seliza watched them from the registry steps, her face pleasant while her eyes counted hunger, fear, hope, and the armed rabbit girl sitting in the window above.

"They do not cheer," she said, voice dropping for Hajin and the gray man alone.

"People here learned cheering wastes breath," Hajin replied, looking over the square, "feed them twice, pay them once, then maybe they clap."

"And if I betray this contract after they begin believing in it?"

"Then I make betrayal expensive," he said, hands in his coat pockets as the first wagon passed the gate.

The gray man looked at him then, not sharply and not for long, but with the first real interest he had shown since entering the region.

Seliza smiled, slow and private, as if Hajin had finally named a currency she respected.

By noon, the first loaded wagon came down from the mountain, guarded by Seliza’s riders on one side and Loccy walking on the other. The red guards gave the rabbit girl half the road without being told, their horses staying calm while Ash rode on the wagon tarp, waving a stolen core like a victory flag.

Hajin watched Seliza watch that too, watching how her attention left the gold whenever Ash moved.

’She came for metal,’ he thought, scratching the boy’s head when the wagon stopped beside him, ’but she keeps counting the things I refuse to price.’

Seliza sent the first gold train south before sunset with eight loaded wagons, four contract copies, and a smile that had grown less decorative by the hour. Her guards folded around the caravan with clean discipline, the square seeming poorer the moment all that red silk and brass started moving toward the staging camp.

The gray man mounted last, pausing beside Seliza’s carriage while she stood with one hand on the door frame. She would follow the wagons only as far as the southern camp, leaving dawn open for another route inspection.

"Your read," she said quietly, no longer smiling as the road dust started to rise.

The gray man looked back toward the registry roof, where Hajin stood with Ash on his shoulders and Juna beside him.

"He is not a lord with a monster," the gray man said, his mild voice almost vanishing under the wagon noise, "he is a monster learning lordship."

Seliza’s fingers tightened once on the carriage frame before she laughed under her breath and stepped inside.

The report reached the Flint estate near midnight, carried by a road-stained rider whose horse was half-dead under him.

The Patriarch read the seal first, then the trade figures, then the line naming Seliza as exclusive buyer for the eastern gold. Nobody in the war room spoke while the paper bent slowly in his fist.

"She broke the siege," the heir said, staring at the map where their blockade markers suddenly looked childish, "not later or after the declaration, she broke it today."

Kenny stood near the back with a cup he had not drunk from, his face gray under the lamp as every man in the room carefully avoided looking at him.

Commander Dreth took the report when the Patriarch threw it down, reading the numbers once before placing it neatly beside the campaign map.

"Then we stop calling it a blockade," Dreth said, his courteous voice making the room colder, "and start calling it a road we have not burned yet."