By the evening of the second day after the breach, the great stone hall of Split-Stone was transformed into a careful accounting registry.
Seven heavy frame stand tables of heart-pine had been cleared of farming tools and set end-to-end beneath the high, arched windows. On the tables sat dozens of wicker baskets filled with thousands of scraps of yellowed paper, carved wooden tally sticks, stamped brass tokens, and wax-sealed notary affidavits. Twenty years of commercial extortion documented in the painful, penny-by-penny records of three hundred and forty tenant families.
Tomas Reed sat in the center of the middle table, his charcoal-gray wool sleeves rolled to his elbows. His left arm rested on a padded felt cushion, the calfskin brace buckled comfortably around the healing wrist. In his right hand he held an iron-tipped goose quill, writing steadily across sheets of heavy linen-rag thick parchment imported from the bookbinders’ lane in Bellwether.
Beside him sat apprentice Olla, sent up from the lowlands by Hester Quill three days prior on the express post-coach. Olla was nineteen, wiry, with ink-stained fingers and an encyclopedic memory for lawful precedent. Across the table, Nessa Vale was cross-checking every land description against her sound survey charts. Meanwhile, Elder Ronald checked the identities of the elderly smallholders who stood in a patient, solemn line that stretched out the door and into the moonlit market square.
