There were way more maps in the land registry office's back room than Jane had expected.

     The room was larger than her entire apartment had been, back in her old life, and every wall was filled with shelves stuffed full of dusty rolled up sheets of parchment. The dust made her sneeze, even with the window open to try to let some fresh air in. The trouble was that the only window overlooked a narrow alley that was so crowded with buildings on both sides that there was no room for the air to move. It did let in a cat, though, which curled around her legs mewling for attention and tried to sit on the map she was reading. She had put it back out, trying to ignore its harrowing look of perplexed betrayal as she did so. She closed the window most of the way shut, but this only resulted in the cat sitting on the window ledge staring at her as if trying to bring her under its hypnotic control.

     She had only managed to photograph the contents of one shelf so far and it had taken her the whole evening to do it. Her head phone told her that it was close to midnight but she would have known that anyway from the ache behind her eyes and the fugginess in her brain. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands but it did no good. The ache remained. She sighed. In her original naive optimism she'd thought she'd be able to photograph all the maps in one day but the magnitude of the task she'd set herself was only now begining to dawn on her. Well, she'd done as much as she could for now. She was tired. Time to call it a night.

     She stared down at the map she had just photographed, held down by black lead paperweights at the corners, the mold speckled edges curling upwards. She'd had almost no chance to actually look at any of them yet, she had just wanted to get as many of them as possible in her phone's memory while she could in case something happened to deny her access.

     The crabby, handwritten text along the bottom of the map declared it to be a depiction of a farm owned by the Delby family. It was very detailed, she had to give it that, but the size and location of the boundary lines between it and neighbouring farms and areas of common land seemed to be little more than guesswork, as if the surveyor had paid it one visit and taken an hour or so to walk around scribbling down what he'd seen. The location of the farm was also rather vague. There was a road running past it whose name had been erased twice and replaced with a different name as if the man who'd drawn the map had realised he'd made a mistake. God only knew if the most recent version of the road's name was accurate. If it wasn't, and if Randall's secret facility turned out to be under it, the only way to find it might be to go out into the countryside asking everyone if they knew of a farming family called Delby. That was assuming the farm hadn't been sold to a different family since the map had been drawn.

     There was writing all over it done with an old style quill but the ink had faded to yellow almost everywhere and, where the paper had darkened to brown, it could not be seen at all. Even where it could be seen, the writing was almost illegible. Little more than a wriggly line in some places. That didn't matter. All she needed from these maps were places where the ground was too shallow to grow crops in. There were indeed gaps between fields. Long narrow strips and triangular areas, some with the tiny drawings of trees, others just blank. Any one of them might be the one she was looking for and there were a dozen on this one map alone. Was the whole idea just hopeless after all?

     She was too tired to think clearly. Maybe something would become clear to her after a good night's sleep. She thought about going back to the Interesting Weasel but she didn't fancy walking the streets of a medieval city at night. Her successful encounter with her attempted rapist had given her some confidence but she wasn't the type to take unnecessary risks. It was also too late to search for other, closer lodgings here, in what she assumed would be the comparatively safer inner circle of the city. She sighed. Looked as though she would be sleeping in the office, then, for one night at least.

     She got up, hearing her bones pop, and headed back into Trabe's office. Trabe himself wasn't there. He must have gone home for the night, although she hadn't heard him leave. He had popped his head around the door a few hours earlier to see how she was getting on but she'd barely noticed. Maybe he'd told her that everyone else was going home and she'd been so caught up in the maps that she'd missed it.

     There was nowhere to sleep in the registry office, but Trabe's chair was large, padded and comfortable looking. She sat in it, lay back and put her feet on the table. Within moments she was asleep.

☆☆☆

     She was awoken by the sound of approaching footsteps. She just had time to get her feet off the table before the door opened and Trabe entered.

     Sunlight was streaming in through the window and sounds of busy traffic were coming in from the street outside. Trabe looked down at her curiously and Jane hurried stood. "Sorry," she said. "I lost track of time. I got lost in the maps and by the time I realised what had happened everyone else had gone home. I don't have a key. I couldn't lock the place up and I didn't want to leave the place empty in case someone tried to rob the place."

     "Nothing worth stealing but the petty cash box," said Trabe, moving behind the desk and opening the drawer to make sure it was still there. He opened it, glanced at the handful of silver and copper coins and put it back. "And if you'd checked the front door you'd have noticed that I locked it on the way out."

     Jane grinned apologetically. "I didn't think to actually try the door," she said. "I promise I'll leave with the others tonight."

     "You do that," said Trabe. "In the meantime we got some records to look up. Your first chance to prove your worth. You committed all these files to that phenomenal brain of yours, right?" He waved a hand at the filing cabinets lining the walls.

     "Yes, you were here watching me while I did it."

     Trabe nodded and pulled a sheaf of papers from an inside coat pocket. He glanced at them one at a time with a sour look on his face. "Farms all over are being burned and pillaged by orcs," he said. "Their insurance is based on the value of their land before the attack. Usually this kind of business is left until the attack is over and the dead are buried but a few of our more enterprising clients managed to bring claim forms with them on their way to seek shelter in the city. One of them was so preoccupied with securing financial recompense that he left a daughter behind." He shook his head in disbelief. "So, you and I have to look up the worth of each farm based on the value of buildings, crops and livestock as of the last census in eight thirty eight."

     That must be the year, Jane thought. Eight hundred and thirty eight years since something had happened that was momentous enough to be the basis of a completely new calendar. It would only have been a couple of centuries after the nuclear war that had destroyed her civilisation, if the dates given by the priests were accurate. She wondered how long ago the census had been taken and what the current year was. Eight forty? Eight forty five? How could she find out without people thinking she was a bit peculiar?

     "Today, you'll use that brain of yours to work out the figures and I'll do it the old fashioned way," Trabe added. "Then I'll compare the two, see if they match."

     "So long as you do your sums right, they'll match," said Jane distractedly.

     Trabe gave her a fierce look and Jane realised how brusque that must have sounded. "I mean, I hardly ever make mistakes," she said hurriedly. "And I'm sure you don't ever. After all these years doing this job you must have become very good at it."

     "Not because I love the job," said Trabe, apparently conciliated by Jane's tone. "But everyone's got to do something and I wouldn't make a good soldier." He looked down at the sheaf of papers in his hand and put them all down but the top one. "The Cresswell farm. Let's see how quickly you can add up its total value."

     Jane hadn't had time to assemble the information into a proper database yet so she told her head phone to simply display all the information across her visual field. It made a very long column of text that she scrolled through, glancing at the owner's names as she came to them. "There are three Cresswell farms," she said.

     "Hm?" said Trabe. He'd opened a drawer of a filing cabinet and was leaving through the files. "Three?" He looked down at the sheet of paper again. "The one on Bramble Road," he said.

     Jane consulted her head phone again. "One of them is on Bramble Lane," she said. "Maybe the road was renamed. The other two are on Lendaron Road and The Great North Way." She didn't see Trabe giving her a suspicious look before going back to the filing cabinet.

     Jane selected the data on the Cresswell Farm and discarded the rest. She read through it. Fifteen acres of prime arable land worth eight crowns in total. One farmhouse worth ten crowns. One barn worth one crown. One well worth six shillings. The farmland consists of six acres of rye which produced forty bushels in the year 838 and which fetched eight shillings and sixpence at market. Five acres of wheat which produced ten bushels, fetching five shillings and tuppence. One acre of turnips generating two shillings of income and one acre of carrots generating three shillings of income. In addition, the farm contained two acres of grazing meadow producing no income. Livestock consisted of one cow worth five crowns, two plough oxen worth six crowns each, four sheep worth one crown each and twenty chickens worth sixpence each.

     Jane had her head phone add the numbers together, using her own biological brain to calculate the three tier currency which she assumed was the same as the archaic British currency used before decimalisation. Twelve pence to a shillings, five shillings to a crown. That made the total worth of the farm, minus the land it stood on, thirty one crowns two shillings with the total income in 838 of eighteen shillings and eight pence.

     Trabe was still searching for the right file when Jane gave him the figures and, even despite her demonstrations of the day before, he stared at her sceptically. "Can that brain of yours tell you which drawer the blessed file's in?" he asked. Jane could only shake her head. She hadn't thought it necessary to record that information.

     "Well, help me find it, ye damned woman. Try that cabinet over there."

     It took the two of them ten minutes to find the Cresswell file and another couple of minutes for Trabe to work out the farm's worth and income. He wrote it on a scrap of paper which he hid from her while asking her to repeat the figures she'd worked out. He tried to keep his eyes from widening in astonishment but Jane saw it anyway and felt a moment of wry amusement.

     "Do the other farms on the list," he said with audible aggravation. He searched around in growing frustration. "Where'd I put the other bloody forms?"

     "Over there," replied Jane, pointing. "On top of the filing cabinet."

     Trabe glared at her and snatched up the sheets of paper. "Take a look,", he said, showing them to her one at a time. "With your phenomenal memory you won't need more than one glance of them of course," he said.

     "Quite right," replied Jane, photographing them as he showed them to her.

     There were eight farms in total and it took her just a few minutes to work out the figures for all of them. She wrote them on another scrap of paper and waved it to attract his attention. Then she placed it on his desk. Trabe was still searching for the second file and gave her a glare of annoyance.

     "So, how much compensation do they get for the loss of their farms?" she asked.

     "They haven't lost their farms," Trabe replied. "If they survive the incursion they can go back and rebuild when the orcs've gone again, so long as they know where to replace torn down fences and so forth. Otherwise we get disputes, two farmers each claiming they own the same field, that kind of thing. They're only compensated for property damage and loss of earnings. One penny to the crown."

     "Just one part in sixty?" asked Jane, raising an eyebrow at him.

     "Do ye know how many farms there are out there? The city ain't made o' money. Two shillings and sixpence is enough to buy some seed grain and rent an ox for a couple of weeks to plough the fields. Once he's got a year's harvest in he can start to replace everything else he's lost. They'll all have a few crowns buried in a field anyway, a nest egg for when the orcs come. They do okay. Always have, always will."

     Jane nodded. "So, is it okay if I go find something to eat now?" she asked. "I'm starving!"

     "Do whatever ye bloody well want," Trabe replied. "Just be where I can find yer when I've checked yer figures." Jane nodded and went back into the accounting room.

     The clerks were all there, sitting at their desks and busily copying rows of numbers from official looking sheets of paper into large leather bound books. Jane went to the nearest, who looked up at her as she approached. "Hi," said Jane. "Where do you get breakfast around here?"

     "We eat before we get here," the clerk replied. He looked to be in his early middle age but that might have been an illusion caused by his receding hairline. Jane thought that he might have been in his early thirties, maybe even his late twenties.

     "Mister Trabe doesn't like us taking time out to eat," the clerk continued. "We get ten minutes for lunch at noon. We go to the pie shop at the end of the street. Gribblers. They should be open by now."

     "Thanks," replied Jane while bracing herself for the thought of a big, heavy pie for breakfast. In her previous life she'd liked to start the day with a bowl of muesli. Her stomach was telling her that it didn't care what she filled it with, though, so she moved towards the door.

     "By the way, my name's Philip," the clerk called out after her. The other clerks glanced at each other in amusement.

     "Tracy," replied Jane, just to be polite. She didn't want to get into a conversation right now. She turned to go but Philip called her name and she paused, looking back. Philip looked furtively at the door to Trabe's office to make sure it was closed. "If you're going to Gribblers, could you bring me back some roast chestnuts?" He dug around in a pocket and pulled out a couple of copper coins.

     Jane paused. She was impatient to get back to the maps. She wanted to prove to the true God that He had not made a mistake in choosing her to help overthrow VIX. She might need these people's help in the future, though. Best to keep on their good sides, just in case. She came back, therefore, held out her hand and allowed Philip to drop the warm coins into her palm. "Of course," she said. "Glad to."

     She turned to go once more but a polite cough made her pause again. "If they've cooked come apple pies yet," said another clerk, "could you get one of them too?"

     Jane went over to take the offered coins. "Anyone else?" she asked, trying to hide her irritation. She didn't have time for this!

     In the end they all had a request for small foodstuffs that Mister Gribbler might or might not have had time to make yet this early in the morning. She promised to get what she could and then hurried out the door before anything else could delay her any longer.