Kyou hardly needed the ledger to know the truth. A ledger could be a ledger; it could also be a weapon. He had read such numbers before — and sometimes, numbers were the only things that could answer what people would not.
He turned to Yori. “Get the rope and the lantern,” he whispered. raw chapter 461 yuusha party o oida sareta kiyou binbou free
“We cannot sell it,” he said. “We will expose it.” Kyou hardly needed the ledger to know the truth
Kyou did not flinch. The “ghost” that moved out of shadow was not a pale wraith but a woman in a mourning dress whose eyes looked like the inside of a seashell. She moved without feet, an echo of motion. She did not speak. She opened a mouth and out of it spilled a dozen faces — faces of people once led by the ledger’s entries. Their features were blurred, their mouths worked soundlessly, and Kyou felt the ledger in his hands grow heavier with stories not yet told. He turned to Yori
He thought of the farmers he’d saved once. He thought of the captain’s hands when they’d been draped in ceremony. He thought of the ledger in his pockets — the one Maren had given him — and the way it might resonate against the one here. He could simply snatch this book and run. He could sell it, as any salvage would fetch reward from hands that preferred private violence to public accountability. But as his fingers closed around the leather, the faces pressed their reticence between his ribs. The ledger became lead.
“Balance,” she said again. “Not vengeance as spectacle. Not ruin. Equilibrium.”
Mikke — the child — was brave in the way that made people keep secrets from walls. She watched Kyou as if inspecting a coin for gold. “Why’d they kick you out?”