By the eighth bell of the morning, the river mist had risen from the weir only far enough to hang like wet wool around the stone arms of the market cross.
Jon Hale stood behind a portable oak counting-desk that notary Corve Penner had carried out from the Merchant Assize, the Bound Common Charter spread open upon a sheet of oiled sailcloth to keep the damp off the vellum. Around the cobbles of the square, forty-odd townspeople stood in wool cloaks and leather trade aprons, their breaths smoking in the chill air of the ninth day of Flood Month. At Jon’s left elbow stood Elin with her tally slate; at his right stood Lady Signe Lorr in her travel-stained blue magistrate’s coat, her carved bone stylus held balanced between her gloved fingers, while Sister Oda watched from the lower step of the cross with her brass shrine keys tucked into her cincture.
It had taken less than an hour in the back room of the post house to lay the preserved evidence before Signe, Oda, Alden Bram, and young Tobin—the blood-stained lead tube that had saved Tobin from riding down the south ridge to his death, the double-struck brass key, and the fifty-seal Charter itself. Once Jon had admitted them as formal witnesses under House Memory, the pages of the bound leather ledger had unfolded from ordinary room bills into the grim chronicle of Life Eleven, complete with Signe’s own signature and seal on the previous ratification.
