Seyun leaned over the oak table beside Archivist Vel to read the open canvas register. Across the top of the left-hand page, where chartered sects like Ash Reed and White Heron normally pasted the embossed tax-exemption seal of the Country Examination Board, Daro had written a plain heading in square black characters: The School Under the Black Roof — Autumn & Winter Term Account.
Below the heading sat fourteen family entries. None of them involved the fifty-silver annual bond that chartered houses demanded before a child was allowed to touch a practice blade. A riverwright near the south wharf had paid his twelve-year-old son’s tuition by supplying the seasoned ash rafters for the west gable. A widow who ran the salt-fish warehouse by the ferry had contributed two barrels of pickled herring and four copper pieces a month. A blacksmith from the north gate had forged six pairs of blunted iron training guards. And the leftover families paid modest, fixed monthly sums in ordinary market coin.
“When the inner council delegation rode south last week after Vaska Ren laid down his insignia,” Daro explained, resting his hip against the edge of the table to spare his healing thigh, “one of Arbiter Venn’s junior clerks stopped at my gate on the way out. He offered to have the country registry reissue my old Bronze teaching license—backdated two years, upgraded to Jade, with no mention of the suspended petitions—if I signed a standard non-interference promise agreeing to keep our order strictly within…
