Chapter 2: Merit and Debt

The academy ran on merit points. Lectures cost points, meals cost points, and the great library cost more than a scholarship student would see in a year.

Lin Mo learned the arithmetic of poverty in his first week. Then the brand beneath his collar showed him a ledger no one else could see, and the arithmetic changed.

Every debt in the academy, it seemed, could be traded. He only had to find the ones nobody else knew existed.