The steam from Hobb’s barley kettle lingered in the upper arches of the Hall of Witness long after the cook’s boots crunched out into the gravel yard. It smelled of boiled winter grain, salt pork rind, and woodsmoke—an ordinary, heavy kitchen smell that sat strangely over the carved treason-curb where dukes’ magistrates had once weighed blood-fines and unredeemed tallies.
At the clerk’s table, Cale turned to a fresh leaf in the Communal Book of Witness. Four different hands had already written across the preceding pages since dawn: Cale’s own neat Survey script, Tessa Dene’s square carpenter’s block-lettering, Lady Serit’s narrow court italics, and Reeve Dena Holt’s broad, heavy parish hand. The book was bound in plain pigskin and stitched with waxed cobbler’s hemp so that no page could be slipped out without leaving a torn stub in the gutter.
“We are at the final limitation sub-clause of Claim Ten,” Cale said, dipping his iron-gall nib and holding it poised above the rag paper. He looked across the witness rail at Eske, where the tall figure in the coal-ash coat stood with three-legged Bristle resting squarely on its left boot. “The fifth clause has defined the suspended royal charter as the final war meal. The Hall of Witness now requires the post-settlement maintenance terms for the named party’s physical frame.”
