When the reading of the individual sentences concluded at the eleventh bell, the public session of the Guild Hall assize moved immediately to its final order of business: the disposition of the physical infrastructure and the three hundred disarmed soldiers of the Northern Host who had crossed the river behind Captain Iven’s truce banner.
Up on the dais, notary Corve Penner laid a wide double-folio sheet of heavy parchment across the walnut table before the four elected guild trustees.
“By the articles of incorporation of the Harth Civic Trust,” Lady Signe Lorr announced as she dipped a fresh goose quill into her brass inkhorn and handed it to Master of Masons Marris Gault, “the subterranean stone vault beneath the River Lantern—together with the vented chimney shaft, the bronze scrap remaining in the dry basin, and the upper ironwork of the north aqueduct sluice—is permanently transferred from disputed military occupancy into the joint municipal stewardship of the four craft guilds, to be maintained solely as a flood-relief drain and a public foundation.”
Marris Gault took the quill in her broad, stone-dusted fingers, leaned over the desk, and signed her name and the crossed-trowel mark of the Masons’ Guild at the top of the column. She passed the pen to Mistress of Salt and Tallow Bessa Karr, who wrote her bold, square signature beside it.
