The town seal on the reduction order was stamped in vermilion wax that had not yet fully hardened when Clerk Varo Nenn carried it down the damp spiral steps of the Senate House. The paper was heavy royal thick parchment, embossed with the twin anchors of Lathmere and co-signed by Councilor Elna Vesk with three slashing strokes of an unsharpened iron quill. By the fourth bell of the evening, copies had been pasted to the oak bulletin boards outside the Watermen’s Guildhall, the Cooperage Slip, and the iron gates of the Sluice Crown compound on the High Terrace.
A knot of thirty wagon drivers and timber-fallers had gathered under the guttering pitch flare at the Lowbank back gate, reading the decree aloud in low, rasping murmurs. The language was dry, formal, and devoid of academy rhetoric. The College of Summoners was commanded to reduce its extraction volume by one-quarter of total intake, effective right away, pending an exhaustive physical check of the underground relief chambers. For fifty years, the College had operated above town oversight, answering only to the High Archon’s private exchequer. Now, the decree stood pinned to their timber fence by an ordinary wrought-iron nail.
Korr Var walked down the gravel path beside the water chute, his long gray coat buttoned to the chin against the damp wind blowing off the river. In his right hand he carried an iron gauge bar marked in quarter-inches. In his left, a copy of the council order folded inside an oiled…
