The morning sun lit up the Grand Plaza of Sunder-Foot, where three hundred citizens and mountain smallholders had gathered before the bronze doors of the country court.
On the courthouse steps stood apprentice Olla and Hester Quill’s senior clerk, Master Vane the scrivener (no relation to the deposed curator). He was surrounded by twelve iron-bound deed-boxes seized from the offices of the Dragon-Slayer Heritage Trust. Beside the steps sat a large iron balance scale. It was flanked by two armed court guards in royal scarlet livery.
Tomas Reed stood at the center of the terrace, his cart driver pack frame on the flat stone slabs beside him. Beside him stood Elder Ronald and carter Joram, representing the twelve cantons of Split-Stone.
“By decree of the High Circuit Court of the Northern Marches,” apprentice Olla proclaimed, his clear young voice carrying across the plaza, “the assets of the dissolved Dragon-Slayer Heritage Trust are hereby liquidated at public auction under Section Sixteen of the Grand Town Livery Act.”
Olla raised an iron auction mallet, tapping the oak podium three times.
The mood in the Grand Plaza of Sunder-Foot was unlike any gathering the country seat had ever witnessed.
For two decades, the square had been the private domain of carriage nobles, mining trade ring directors, and silk-robed advocates. The common folk of the mountain had entered only with lowered eyes, hats in hand. It carried copper pennies to pay their water checks or petitioning for the release of sons trapped in the…
