The copper coins in Reeve Holt’s pouch made a muffled chink as Noll Vey pushed the leather bundle back across the oak rail.
His right stone palm felt the uneven lumps of the coppers through the greasy deerskin. Beside the pouch, the two felling axes lay with their polished cutting edges resting on a fold of scrap canvas, the dark carbon steel gleaming under the lantern light. Between the axe heads sat Mira’s heavy lead loom weight, Corin’s iron wedges, and the three stoneware jars of Rella’s bitter-root salve.
“Pick them up, Dena,” Noll said, his voice grating in the quiet hall.
Reeve Holt did not reach for the strings. She stood with her rough wool cloak unclasped at the collar, her jaw set with the immovable stubbornness that had kept Mere from starving through three mine strikes and two flood years.
“The clerk read the law, Noll,” she answered, her voice firm. “Eight hundred and forty pieces of silver displaced from the world’s tally. If the stone takes that balance out of your hide, this house goes dark before the first snow. We are not asking for a favor. We are settling the town’s portion.”
Behind her, grain carter Tomas nodded his shaggy head, his thick fingers resting on his canvas sack. “The mules pulled the timber, Master Vey. I have sixteen coppers and two spare trace-chains. It isn’t a duke’s fortune, but it is honest iron.”
