The smell of lamp oil and damp parchment filled the corner of the hearth hall as Cale smoothed out a sheet of heavy rag paper across the cleared tabletop. Outside, the midday wind had begun to howl down from the high northern crags, throwing spatters of sleet against the horn-paned windows, but inside the thick stone walls the air was still and close.
Noll brought his presence up into the floorboards directly beneath Cale’s stool. He could feel the scrape of the former clerk’s boot heels against the oak, the quick, rhythmic tapping of an anxious man who had spent his youth cataloguing Crown taxes and hated working without an official register.
“Keep the language dry,” Noll murmured, his voice rising through the joinery with a steady, quiet rasp. “Nothing poetic. No grand declarations of justice or ancient rights. An auditor does not read poetry; he looks for numbers, dates, and surveyor stamps. If we sound like martyrs, Vane will know we are desperate. If we sound like municipal surveyors warning of an engineering catastrophe, his sappers will make him listen.”
Cale dipped his quill into the dark oak-gall ink. His hand was remarkably steady now that he had a pen between his fingers. “I have the standard wording from the Royal Corps of Engineers. When a mine drift threatens an unmapped municipal aquifer, the district warden is served with a Form Seven notice of Subterranean Hydrostatic Hazard.”
