The spirit-thick parchment unrolled across the hard speckled rock drafting table with a crisp, dry rustle that sounded like autumn leaves.
It was ancient sheepskin, cured five hundred years ago with walnut lye and dusted with powdered chalk. But its surface was spotless. It was smooth, ivory-pale, and free of the oily grease that ruined modern commercial paper. Ren Prime anchored the four corners with bronze weights, then reached into his apron for his stone pestle and ink-slab.
“You’re going to write an audit,” Mira said. She watched him grind a block of pressed pine soot against the stone with steady, circular motions. That added three drops of distilled well-water.
“Not an audit,” Ren replied, his eyes focused entirely on the black slurry forming beneath the pestle. “An inquest. Vane was right about one thing: you don’t fight a creditor with a broadsword. You fight him by proving his title is fraudulent.”
He dipped the silver tip of his carved mammoth ivory awl into the fresh black ink. The tiny blood vessel pool inside the metal pen drew up the fluid. It held it suspended by water’s skin.
Ren leaned over the parchment. He didn’t write with the flourishing calligraphy of the high court scribes. He wrote with the tight, economical, careful script of a keeper recording the defects of a damaged lease:
