From the fourth aisle of the cedar pigeonholes, Archivist Vel hooked down a narrow, box-shaped box of oiled pine labeled INNER FOUNDRY & SPECIAL ALLOY DISBURSEMENTS. WINTER OF THE RED CHUTE (YEAR ONE OF HALL MISTRESS SORAN) and carried it back to the reading frame stand.
Untying the faded hemp tape around the box with his crooked thumbs, Vel lifted out a bundle of stiff, soot-speckled foundry dockets. The actual workbench receipts stamped by White Heron’s master smiths when drawing precious metals from the hall vault during the northern seal crisis twenty winters ago.
Seyun and Ilyra stood side by side under the hanging brass animal fat-lamp as Vel flipped past routine claims for iron crampon spikes, bronze spear-ferrules, and protective quarry-jade settings. Halfway down the bundle, folded inside a double wrapper of oiled parchment marked Treasury Variance. Unreturned Court Alloy, lay a single heavy slip of crimson-bordered Aperture Court supply order paper.
Unlike the two-hundred-year-old pigskin folios, this slip was not written in the third Hall Master’s furniture cipher. It was an official, emergency military-foundry supply order written in the clear, sharp clerical script of twenty winters ago. And at the top of the sheet was stamped the clear double-sky-slit seal of the Northern Seal Command.
