Wintermark, Book 4
Burn the Tally
The Tally is void.
The Tally is void. Every debt in the north was written in it, and its first page was a fraud, so Tam Brandt stopped the burning with five words: we read it. All of it. Aloud.
Now the reading begins. Page by page, debt by debt, in the great hall at Karvhal and then in every pack seat and stolen valley in the north, the woman the book priced at 1,440 marks presides over its public reckoning, while the Keeper's daughter fights to keep the only machinery the peace has left, and the creditors whose fortunes the reading voids march to take by force what the law is taking by voice.
Her grandfather is coming to have his own page read. Forty thousand Starved wait outside the law for a country. And when the last page is read and the volumes finally burn, all but one, something new has to stand where the book stood: a covenant of witnesses, spoken aloud, with no man's kin for collateral ever again.
Burn the Tally is the shattering finale of Wintermark, a four-book academy shifter romantasy of debts, doors, and the price of a name. The debtor becomes the lawgiver. Read the reckoning.