Lady Signe Lorr did not turn toward Sir Cael or Captain Dain when Master Mason Alden Bram finished laying out the two-minute hydraulic equation on the porch boards. Instead, the magistrate reached down to the oak charter table, lifted the heavy iron-clasped calfskin volume of the Bound Common Charter (#12), and held it upright against her dark wool riding coat so that the red wax seals of the guilds and the forty-eight burgage signatures faced the market square.
“Under Clause Four of the Common Charter of Harth, ratified on the second day of this twelfth life,” Lady Signe called out, her crisp courtroom voice cutting through the river mist from the bridge gate to the guildhall eaves, “the subterranean cooling waters of the valley and the stone sluices of the North and South Weirs are held in common moiety by the forty-eight Shareholders of this borough. Neither the King’s Champion nor the military watch may alter the water-gauge by a single hair’s breadth without a polled vote of the Charter.”
She laid the open Charter flat on the oak lectern beside the Town Ledger and took the carved ivory bone stylus (#11) in her right hand.
“You have heard Master Bram and Master Holt,” Signe said to the forty-eight householders standing at the front of the crowd around the market cross. “Right now, seven minutes of water stand between the Crown Furnace beneath our feet and a steam explosion that will boil every cellar in Harth. Five minutes is the…
