The single glass lens dangling against Ossa Flint’s chest caught the pale light falling from the lantern flues, casting a tiny, wavering oval of grey glare across the third payment register.
Cale did not dip his quill. He sat with his hands resting flat on the sheepskin book, looking up at the core-seal artificer with the cautious, respectful stillness of a clerk who knew that when an artisan spoke about joints and mortar, the law had better listen.
Beside the desk, Prit held his slate against his ribs. The bone imp’s eye sockets flickered with dim blue luminescence as his filing memory searched sixty years of dead charters.
“The objection is entered,” Cale said, his voice level. “Artificer Ossa Flint petitions to exempt Item Three—the Stone Host Body—from the surrender roll under the Rule of Material Contribution. The petitioner asserts that the basalt limbs, bronze pivot pins, and river-lime joints constitute honest third-party labor and cannot be seized to satisfy a claim-debt.”
Lady Serit stepped up to the edge of the ash table, her silver-trimmed sleeve brushing against the willow slate frame. “The Crown does not contest the physical provenance. We have inspected the body. It was fashioned from ordinary valley basalt, quarried from the old north drift and shaped by manual tools.”
