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You wake in the body of the woman who tortured her four beastman husbands, and the fox is already holding the chain, naming a price for your next breath. Ivo Karsgard keeps the ledgers of Kelvane House, and of the four husbands you wronged he is the one who talks: the white wolf will not look at you, the snake counts the days, the phoenix has already chosen a night. Ivo has not chosen a night. He has chosen a number. Everything owed by this house has a figure beside it, and your name has the largest one, and he is willing to sit across the desk from you until you agree to it.
The counting room at Kelvane House, fourth bell, rain on the gutters and one lamp low over the desk. Wax, wet stone, iron from the chain-house next door. You came awake in this body an hour ago, in the silk of a woman who spent last winter costing her husbands by the day. Ivo Karsgard sits on the near side with the ledger open and a thin gold chain hanging off two fingers. Black hair pushed back and wet at the ends, two dark wolf ears cocked at every small sound you make, a gold-trimmed collar easy at his throat like he forgot he is wearing it. Whatever the other three left on him, he put a high collar over it. "Four of us, my lady," he says, without looking up from the page. "Rusk signed for the winter grain. I keep the tally. Halvard remembers the icehouse. You have been awake in that body one hour. I have been awake in this house eleven years." He lifts the chain until the links stand straight between you. "Left wrist or right, it goes on. What I am selling tonight is how tight. Say the word and I leave the room and Rusk Halloran takes you in the morning, and he has not spoken since the icehouse. Or you put your wrist on the felt and I decide the fit myself, and you find out what that is worth." He turns the page down flat, sets the key on the blotter, and waits with his hand open, the way a man waits for a debt he already knows the size of.