The walnut coffer made a dull, heavy thump when Lady Serit released its leather handle.
The sound did not ring out like iron on stone. It was thick and muffled, the quiet impact of seasoned hardwood and dense metal pressing down on the scarred witness rail. Along the corners of the box, bands of oath-silver held the walnut planks tight, polished until they caught the pale morning light spilling down through the high lantern flues.
Noll Vey leaned his right stone forearm against the timber bar, basalt fingers resting three inches from the latch. Through the stone, he felt the chill of the silver bands—the preserved cold of royal vault metal kept in subterranean storage three hundred miles south.
“Before the clerk dips his pen,” Lady Serit said, hands resting on the lid, “the Crown has a proposal for the record.”
Beside the clerk’s desk, Cale paused, quill poised above the open page of the first payment register. Behind him, Prit hopped from the core housing to the floor, bone heels clicking sharply against the flags as he brought his slate forward.
“The registers are already laid out, Master Serit,” Cale noted, his clerk’s voice carrying Survey formality. “The four columns were established under the public covenant.”
