Reeve Dena Holt was the first to take the witness circle. She did not hurry down the stone risers. She carried her heavy sheepskin municipal record under her forearm, her knuckles red from years of handling damp flax, her plain grey wool gown sweeping the cold flags. When she reached the iron rail, she placed the municipal book flat on the lectern shelf and looked across the circle at Lord Auditor Orin Vane.
“The auditor is correct about the washer,” Reeve Holt said, her voice dry and carryable, honed by twelve years of presiding over Mere’s parish rate meetings. “On the thirty-fourth day after the watch-fort burned, Noll Vey sent a stamped tin disk down the hill with a carter named Tomas. He called it silver. He told my timber inspector that it would pay for ten bundles of seasoned ash lath. We knew it was tin before the carter finished his mug of small beer at the bridge tavern.”
A low rustle passed along the town benches. Edren Dene nodded slowly from the second row, his chin resting on his cane.
“And you accepted the counterfeit, Madam Reeve?” Vane asked, leaning forward over his open portfolio.
“We took it because we were freezing, my lord,” Reeve Holt answered without blinking. “The Crown had closed the pit head in June. The survey bailiff had locked the grain store under an attachment warrant for unpaid road taxes. We had forty families living on boiled nettles and rye chaff. We took the…
