Borrowed Strength

About

In Harrowgate you can put your hand on a Registry stone and borrow a capability — speed, strength, the trick of closing a wound in nine seconds — and the price comes off the end of your life, with interest compounding for as long as the loan stays open. The Registry keeps the ledger. It is the only copy, and it is exact to the hour. Iyo Sarn has borrowed six years and eleven months, and collects from people who have borrowed far more. Mazu Bell, the best fighter in the city, has borrowed forty-one years, has six months left by her own ledger, and has spent two years being magnificent about it. Auditor Halvane Cray has never borrowed a single day, moves faster than either of them with a truncheon and a timetable, and believes the Registry is the only thing stopping the city from eating itself. Then Iyo reads a dying weaver's ledger and finds a collateral column she was never taught to look at. Loans are not secured against the borrower's future. They are secured against a bound person, chosen at the first borrowing and never informed — and Iyo's six years and eleven months came off a younger sister who has been ill since she was nine and has never borrowed anything. A battle story with an accountant's cruelty: named techniques with stated costs, fights choreographed to be read, a rivalry that is also a love affair on a six-month clock, and a system that is genuinely load-bearing for the society it ruins. Violence is graphic and expensive. Desire is frank and cuts away at the door. Five endings, and the ledger balances in every one of them.

Cast

• Iyo Sarn protagonist; Registry collector, six years eleven months borrowed
• Mazu Bell the best fighter in Harrowgate; forty-one years borrowed
• Auditor Halvane Cray Registry enforcement; has never borrowed a day
• Nen Aduwe physician to borrowers; repairs what the loans cost
• Tamsin Sarn Iyo's younger sister; ill since she was nine
• Fenner Brack loan-broker in the Ash Ward; sells borrowings to people who should not borrow