Inside Vault Seven, the air was dead, bone-cold, and smelling of rusted metal and dry stone dust. The chamber was small, barely eight feet square, hollowed directly out of the granite foundation bedrock of the river bluff.
In the center of the vault, resting upon a heavy frame stand of seasoned heart-oak, sat the cargo.
Seventeen massive metal bars of raw silver bullion lay stacked in a neat pyramid. Each bar was twenty inches long, four inches wide, and three inches deep, with a coarse, crystal-clear skin that glittered faintly in the amber glare of Tomas’s horn lantern. Across the top face of every single metal bar was struck the deep, clear die-stamp of the Royal Mint of Bellwether: the triple-tower arms, the year mark 021, and the weight designation 50 CROWNS.
Eight hundred and fifty silver crowns. The exact sum authorized eighteen years ago by the Country Council to rebuild Blast Fire Number Four and replace the defective relief valves.
Renn Tal knelt beside the frame stand, his gnarled fingers trembling as he touched the cold metal. He pulled his magnifying glass from his pocket and examined the mint die on the apex bar.
“This is the metal, Tomas,” Tal whispered, his voice cracking with an emotion that sounded like a sob. “I saw these exact seventeen bars unloaded from the Mint wagon at the fire yard three days before the blast. Inspector Vaelen and I signed the transport receipt together. Crane told us the metal had to be…
