The toll-house at Mile Seven stood like a squat stone castle where the Silt Road narrowed between two steep salt-marsh bluffs. Across the thirty-foot raised stone road hung two massive wrought-iron chains, each link forged as thick as a man’s wrist, secured to iron capstans inside the toll-keeper’s fortified lodge. For twenty years, no cart, heavy cart, or pack mule had passed this barrier without paying four copper silver coins to the armed hired blades of the Delta Navigation Trade ring.
A light autumn drizzle was falling, greasing the granite slabs of the roadway, when Tomas Reed arrived at the foot of the barrier. Behind him marched Bailiff Cole and four sworn parish constables wearing white armbands. He was followed by sixty common wagon drivers, lightermen, and draymen from Fen Hollow. Sile Rook walked on Tomas’s left. He carried a pair of six-foot steel pinch-bars across his shoulder like a pair of muskets.
In the upper window of the toll-lodge, the iron shutter creaked open. Head Toll-Collector Orvin leaned out. His pig-like face was flushed with gin, a heavy crossbow propped on the stone doorstep. “Turn those wagons around, Reed!” Orvin barked, his voice carrying over the rushing wind of the salt-marshes. “Warrant 44-B is under appeal to the High Bench! Until the Lord High judge signs the writ of execution, this raised stone road is Trade ring private property! Any trespasser eats a steel bolt!”
