When Marris Gault dropped the leather strong-purse of the Masons and Wallwrights Guild onto the oak desk beside Elin’s scale, the heavy clink of silver sounded like a mason’s hammer striking dressed limestone.
She did not untie the thongs with the slow care of a clerk; she pulled the slip-knot free with one jerk of her calloused thumb and counted out five broad-stamped silver crowns across the wood, laying them edge to edge in a neat, square course between the inkhorn and the candle.
“Five shares for the Masons and Wallwrights of Harth,” Marris Gault declared, her gruff voice carrying through the open taproom door into the wet lane where half a dozen additional lanterns were now bobbing through the drizzle toward the porch. “Lines Two through Six on your roll, Elin Hale. That is the maximum five-share allotment your charter permits a single guild bench to hold, and every crown of it comes straight out of our bridge-repair reserve.”
Lady Signe Lorr dipped her bone stylus (#11) to witness the entry while Elin’s quill moved steadily down Lines 02, 03, 04, 05, and 06.
“Like Dunstan Harl and Widow Moss, the Masons’ Guild does not put its silver into a wall without writing the structural specifications into the mortar,” Gault continued, planting one stone-dusted knuckle on the margin of the town compact and turning her hard grey eyes on Jon. “Stone holds or falls by how it is tended, Jon Hale. If my guild owns five shares of the…
