For three hours, the circular round hall echoed with the rapid scratching of quills, the wild clicking of brass counting frame beads, and the quiet, careful murmurings of four versions of Ren Vale.
They had established an auditing station on the third step of the star-iron dais. Mira sat nearby on a rolled blanket, keeping the animal fat stove lit, boiling salted broth and ensuring the lanterns didn’t gutter out in the draft. Her quartz right arm rested flat against the stone, acting as a natural ringing ground that kept the tablet’s static spark discharge from frying their paper.
Necro-Scribe Ren stood to the left of the obelisk, his finger-bone metal pen tracing the ancient lines of text. Meanwhile, Vane Vale knelt on the right, filling sheet after sheet of fresh thick parchment with rapid columns of counts.
“Look at Clause Three,” Ren commanded. He pointed his ivory awl at the fourth paragraph of the star-iron stone carving. “Read the definition of the Parties of the First Part.”
Necro-Scribe Ren cleared his throat, his dark glasses glinting in the lantern light.
“The Party of the First Part,” the Bone Notary read in his flat, careful flat voice: “The High Conservators of the Seventh Dawn, acting as chosen receivers for the dying astral core known as Sol-Khorat. Tasked with the sole and exclusive duty of managing the salvage, containing the earth-shaking fractures, and executing the orderly escape of the world-size population within a lawful term of one thousand solar cycles.”
