The voices in the amphitheater overlapped, rough, hurried, and urgent, bouncing off the ancient limestone vaulting like the clatter of loose stones tumbling down a gravel slide.
Cale’s goose-quill pen was flying across a fresh sheet of vellum, the nib scratching so hard into the sheepskin that fine droplets of black gall-nut ink speckled the sleeve of his wool tunic. Beside him, Prit stood on his tiptoes upon his three-legged stool, his claws gripping the edges of the desk while his sharp yellow eyes tracked every pledge called down from the stone tiers.
“Slow down!” Cale gasped, his fingers ink-stained to the knuckles. “I need the parish parcel numbers! Mistress Dene, is the weaver’s shed registered under the North Meadow tithe roll or the Millpond bailiwick?”
“Millpond bailiwick, parcel seventeen,” Edren Dene called down from the second tier, his voice thin and wheezing from his damaged lungs, but clear as an anvil strike. “Book four, page twelve of the old manor roll. Paid in full forty years ago by the Weavers’ Guild.”
“Got it,” Cale muttered, his pen scratching furiously. “Parcel seventeen. Four double-frames. Annual rental value forty silver groats.”
Noll Vey kept his single stone palm pressed against the witness rail. He could feel the deep, physical resonance of the fort responding to the words spoken in the hall. It was not the strange, feverish thrum of core magic spinning phantom corridors out of midnight vapor. It was the heavy, stubborn weight of real oak beams, lime mortar, dressed…
