Four thick folios bound in unbleached calfskin lay side by side across the clerk’s trestle table.
Cale smoothed the first folio flat with the heel of his ink-stained hand, weighting its corners with two iron plumb-bobs from the Survey archive kit. Beside him, Prit stood on a high three-legged stool, his bone knees level with the tabletop, pointing his grey audit chalk at the header line.
Noll Vey leaned his weight against the witness rail, his right stone shoulder resting against the scarred upright. Below him on the flags, Lady Serit remained seated near her closed walnut coffer, hands clasped over her knees, observing the proceedings with the quiet detachment of a court envoy whose official offer had been declined. Ten paces back along the wall, Ossa Flint sat on an upturned coal crate near the iron stoves, her brass-mounted glass loupe pushed up into her grey hair, watching Cale’s pen with tired eyes.
“We begin the audit of the Four Payment Registers under the Public Covenant of Mere,” Cale announced, his clerk’s cadence carrying through the vaulted room.
“Read the titles into the stone, clerk,” Prit directed, his dry voice like peas rattling in an earthenware pot. “Every column must have its lawful heading before a single tally mark is struck.”
