The Trade Route

He keeps two ledgers. One for the world, and one nobody is allowed to read.

Jonathan wakes before dawn in fourteenth-century Timbuktu with no name and no memory, living the life of Bakary Touré, a merchant and route assessor for the house of Diallo. Around his neck hangs a brass key. It opens a cedar box, and the box holds a black book in his own hand.

The council says the salt road north to Taghaza is overrun by bandits, and soldiers are already marching for the ridge. Bakary rides north to prove it and finds hungry, unpaid well-keepers instead. Back in the city, Kadidia Sow, a translator of old trade scripts on court probation, has found the clause that proves the council owes them.

He wants her name off the finding to keep her safe. She refuses to be erased. Nine days to the ridge, a councillor with his own stake in the salt, and a man who has never once said the hard truth out loud.

Narrated by the prompter under the stage, the cold half who feeds him his lines.

Twelve games. This is the second.

Book Two of Across Infinities: The Twelve Games, Jonathan's Series.