The office smelled of ink and dust, the scratching of quills filling the air like the hiss of restless insects. Clerks hunched over ledgers, their shoulders stiff, their eyes dulled by repetition.
Elara sat at the far desk, her quill gliding in silence. Page after page of numbers passed beneath her hand. To anyone watching, she was just another scribe, just another shadow in gray cloth.
But her mind was not on her work.
She had already copied three shipment reports that morning, and one detail snagged at her like a loose thread: the seal of Kether & Sons Ironworks, pressed in fresh red wax, yet paired with an older ledger entry claiming their foundry was crippled.
A contradiction.
A weakness.
Elara dipped her quill again, then slid an older report closer and recopied it word for word, an outdated claim of flood damage at Kether's foundry. She stamped it with today's date. To a casual glance, it was nothing more than routine clerical filing.
But in the right hands, it would whisper of fraud.
By mid-afternoon, murmurs began.
At the far end of the room, two clerks huddled over a stack of papers.
"Strange. Kether's shipments are recorded here—"
"But they're supposed to be ruined by the flood."
Another clerk leaned closer, brows furrowing.
"If that's true, then Lord Rynne's contract makes no sense…"
The first clerk paled, clutching his ledger tighter.
"If the auditors see this, they'll think it's our mistake. We'll be blamed."
"Or maybe…" the second muttered, lowering his voice, "…maybe Lord Rynne isn't as clean as he looks."
A silence followed uneasy, charged. None of them dared say more, but their eyes flicked toward the noble's name written in black ink.
Elara shifted in her seat, dipped her quill, and let her voice slip into the circle, quiet and almost careless:
"Perhaps it was just a rushed copy. You know how easy it is to misplace an entry when the reports pile up."
The others latched onto her words, nodding too quickly, grateful for an explanation that spared them blame. Yet the suspicion remained, heavier now, spreading from one clerk to the next like the smell of smoke in a closed room.
Elara lowered her gaze, her face unreadable.
By evening, the office was no longer filled with the dull hum of work but with tight whispers, anxious eyes, and the shuffling of nervous hands. Lord Rynne's name lingered in every corner.
As the lamps burned low, Elara closed her ledger with care, brushed a fleck of ink from her sleeve, and whispered, just for herself:
"One number shifted, one word misplace and an empire begins to rot."
No one looked her way.
And that was the beauty of it.