Len smoothed the folded crease of the thick parchment sheet with his thumb. He pressed the paper flat against the zinc tabletop.
“Look at the wording in the fourth paragraph,” Len said. He kept his voice quiet and even. “He names the waystation in Cross-Hollow. He doesn’t say ‘your home district’ or ‘the northern terminus.’ He specifically writes your family station in Cross-Hollow. How does a country judge in a closed mountain basin know the geographic designation of a three-room relay station fifty leagues past the border barrier?”
Bram leaned his elbows on the back of the timber bench, his knuckles stained with black engine animal fat. His voice was heavy with bitter tiredness. “Because Pell doesn’t just manage the southern court. Pell controls the licensed transit monopolies. Every crate of salt-glass, every barrel of refined pitch, and every wagon of northern animal fat that passes through Gate Three moves under commercial charters stamped by his trade commissioners.”
“Bevin Soot’s wagons,” Len noted.
“Bevin Soot is nothing,” Bram muttered. “Soot owns twenty mules and four draft wagons, but the freight licenses belong to Pell’s syndicates. Pell maintains commercial factors in every market town along the northern river road, all the way to the capital. If Pell writes a single office bill of dock-wait and forwards it through the commercial postal couriers, he can place an immediate embargo on your station’s transit accounts. He doesn’t need to send an assassin fifty leagues. He just needs to notify the regional freight inspectors…
