The black pigskin dispatch case lay open across the cedar plank table in the center of the eight-sided vault.
Under the bright yellow flare of two salvaged gas mantles, the three rolls of uncorrupted calfskin thick parchment gleamed like polished ivory. They had survived thirty feet of floodwater untouched by moisture, protected by three layers of bees-waxed linen and the lead-lined sleeves of the High court’s highest diplomatic courier grade.
Ren Vale stood on one side of the table, his mammoth-ivory awl resting beside a small dish of vinegar solvent he had mixed to clean the dried wax seals.
Across from him stood Vane Vale, his kidskin gloves peeled back to his knuckles, his gray eyes shining with the cold, hungry intensity of a careful accountant who had just uncovered forty years of fraudulent double-entry bookkeeping.
Around the outer edge of the table pressed the refugee elders. Master Weaver Corin, two elder dockmaster foremen with scarred hands, three laundresses clutching damp shawls. An apprentice blacksmith whose apron was stiff with cold soot. Behind them, seated quietly on an empty water cask, Mira Vale was using her left hand to mend the frayed hem of a child’s wool tunic, her right quartz arm resting on her lap like a fancy sceptre.
