Elder Vane’s parlor smelled of dried savory, old calfskin, and the bitter dust of dry limestone hearths.
The elder was seventy-one years old, a former stone-mason whose broad shoulders were now bent by decades of hauling cut stone blocks up the mountain stairs. His eyes, milky around the irises with the onset of waterfalls, tracked Tomas’s hands as Tomas laid the three lead document cylinders upon the scarred pine table.
“You come from Bellwether,” Vane said, his voice slow and heavy as a grinding wheel. “We haven’t seen a clerk from the Lower House in twelve years. When the water failed, we sent three riders down to the High Court with our petitions. The first was turned back at the toll-gate for lack of passage coin. The second died of lung-rot in the debtor’s prison. The third came back with a printed proclamation saying our water rights had been passed to the Dragon-Slayer Trust to offset the cost of the Heroic Expedition.”
Tomas drew his ivory-handled knife, carefully cutting the lead solder that sealed the first metal tube. He drew out a tightly rolled scroll of heavy sheepskin thick parchment, yellowed at the edges but preserved against damp by a thick coating of beeswax.
