Forty hours after the ford raid, splinters flew across the stone floor of the lower alchemy hall as Alchemist Linnea forced open the iron band of a captured cargo crate.
Dawn light filtered through the high arched windows, illuminating fifty identical cedar crates stacked three rows deep against the wall. These were the secondary wagons seized from Malakor’s tax convoy at Red-Willow Ford.
Deacon Vane stood nearby with his ledger, dipping his horsehair brush into black ink.
“The eastern refugee caravans bought another batch of clean mountain water and salt-cured greens this morning,” Vane noted, his abacus clicking merrily. “Two thousand Mid-Grade Spirit Stones added to the vault. Our net treasury, cash and inventoried assets together, reaches one hundred and eighty-two thousand Mid-Grade Spirit Stones.”
Linnea barely heard him. She was staring into the open crate with a look of growing suspicion.
Inside sat hundred-count earthenware jars, each sealed with yellow beeswax and stamped with the prestigious imperial crest of the Nine-Cauldron Guild. A red wax seal proclaimed them to be Standard Issue Foundation Pills, designated for mandatory distribution to the frontier garrisons.
For three centuries, the Nine-Cauldron Guild had maintained an ironclad monopoly across all seven northern provinces.
Any local apothecary who tried to sell uncertified remedies was branded a heretic and dragged to the imperial mines. The guild claimed its standardized recipes were the only safe way to condense a Golden Core. Every frontier soldier was forced to spend half his monthly salary purchasing these certified yellow-sealed jars.
