The night on the King's Road was quiet, save for the sentries’ gnashing teeth and a strange rustle coming from our wagon.

  Gunther wasn't sleeping. He was suffering from an attack of "Auditor's Insomnia."

  "Overweight," the Accountant mumbled, circling the cart. "Mules are losing velocity. We are hauling unaccounted cargo. Dead weight. I can hear the axle screaming."

  He abruptly threw back the tarp.

  Inside, hiding among the grain sacks, slept the rookie. The same one we picked up on the road a couple of days ago.

  [EMPLOYEE DOSSIER: ALF]

  Background: Refugee.

  History: Lost his house, family, and cat during a raid.

  Traits: Clumsy.

  Alf wasn't hugging a pillow. With gray, dirt-stained hands, he clutched a canvas sack to his chest, from the neck of which poked a broken shovel handle, a rusty horseshoe, a length of rope, and a bronze door handle.

  "Up!" Gunther hissed. "What is this illiquid asset?!"

  Alf jumped up, got tangled in his own legs in his sleepiness, and tumbled out of the wagon with a crash, spilling his treasures into the road dust.

  "Don't touch!" he squealed, covering the pile of junk with his skinny body. "It's mine! It’s a strategic reserve!"

  The Sergeant and Jem approached the noise.

  "It is debris, recruit," the Sergeant stated, kicking the rusty horseshoe. "Why do you need a door handle? We have no doors. We live in tents and sleep in ditches."

  "There will be," Alf whispered, feverishly raking the junk back into the bag. "Someday there will be a house. And the handle is already here. Good, brass... It can be polished..."

  Gunther picked up a leaky ladle with two fingers, grimacing.

  "You are occupying inventory slots. Increasing axle load. Discard it. All of it. Immediately."

  "No!" Alf grabbed the ladle so hard his knuckles turned white. Tears stood in his eyes. "You don't understand... After THEY came... I had nothing."

  Jem squatted down next to the "Hoarder." The Jester stopped smiling.

  "Who came, Alf?"

  The refugee froze. His gaze fixed somewhere through Gunther, through the night, into a past that was still smoking.

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  "The Termites," he whispered.

  "Who?" asked the Sergeant. "Goblins?"

  "Termites... They came at dawn. They weren't an army. Armies fight, burn, rape. These ones... they dismantled."

  Alf trembled all over.

  "They didn't kill out of anger. They killed efficiently. To avoid damaging the loot. I saw their commander order his men not to hit the elder on the head because 'the helmet costs money'. They took everything. Food. Tools. Even pulled nails from the walls. They left nothing but bare walls and bootless corpses."

  Gunther froze. His face, usually impassive, suddenly turned into a rigid plaster mask. The Ledger in his hands became heavier than lead.

  "What did they look like?" the Accountant asked quietly, very quietly.

  "I don't know," Alf sobbed. "I hid. But their leader... he kept counting. Like a clerk, scratching with a pen on paper. He saw the villagers not as people, but as loot boxes."

  Silence hung heavy. You could hear the coals crackling. And Gunther's heart beating.

  Jem shifted his gaze to the Accountant. Then to his Ledger.

  There was no laughter in the Jester's eyes. There was understanding.

  Gunther slowly, as if the book had suddenly become red-hot, closed it and hid it behind his back.

  "War," he said hoarsely, looking somewhere over Alf's head. "War breeds looters. This is... a standard economic model of survival."

  Alf wasn't listening. He stroked his door handle, calming himself.

  "I ran away in my underwear. I sat in the forest and shivered. I had nothing. I was a zero. And I swore: never again. Now I will always have a Stock. A nail. A rope. A handle. If I have Things — it means I exist."

  Gunther was silent.

  A calculator clicked in his head, but this time it wasn't for profit. It was calculating probability.

  A small village. The one we "optimized" weeks ago. Stripped everything, down to the spoons. Protocol "Termite".

  "Fine," Gunther finally squeezed out. His voice sounded strangely hollow. "Keep it."

  "What?" the Sergeant was surprised. "That's extra weight! You said yourself about the axle!"

  "I said, keep it!" Gunther barked with unexpected fury, which made even Talah shy away. "Write it off as... 'Amortization of Moral Wear'. Let him carry it. If this junk helps him not to go insane — it is cheaper than hiring a psychiatrist."

  Alf beamed. He grabbed his sack and hugged it to his chest.

  "Thank you, Herr Gunther! You are a kind man. Not like Th... Those Termites."

  Gunther turned away and walked quickly into the darkness, away from the firelight. His shoulders hunched.

  Jem caught up with him at the edge of the camp.

  "Gunther."

  "Shut up, Jem."

  "I'm silent. But we need to do something. He is useless with that sack."

  "Find him a job," Gunther threw over his shoulder.

  "Which one?"

  "Put him in charge of Nets and Flash Pots. Since he loves holding things so much and is afraid to let them go... let him throw them at enemies. Make him a Control Master."

  Jem chuckled.

  "He won't throw the net. He'll regret the cost. A net costs 60 crowns."

  "Tell him..." Gunther faltered. "Tell him the nets are reusable. That they return, like a boomerang. Lie to him, Jem. Otherwise, he dies along with his junk."

  Alf stumbled, clanging his trash, but walked forward with the smile of a happy idiot. Heavy throwing nets and a flash pot hung from his belt.

  And Gunther walked ahead and never looked back once.

  He avoided meeting the eyes of the "Accounting Error" trailing behind his Executioner.