Sitting on the granite steps of the master stone base, beneath the yellow glare of the safety lamps, Tomas Reed opened his master ledger case.
The silence of the Deep Gallery was complete—a vast, underground cathedral where eighty master stonecutters lay at rest. He was surrounded by their clean tools and their chiseled words.
Nessa Vale sat on an upturned timber block beside Tomas, her boxwood ruler and drafting thick parchment spread across her knees. Mara Flint sat on the stone step below them, her hands resting on Dennis Cole’s canteen, her eyes fixed on the distant iron drop-gate forty yards away where Sile Rook stood guard.
Tomas took out his approved intake vouchers. His bottle of was dark oak-ink, and his fine steel-nibbed copying pen.
“We make two complete duplicate transcriptions,” Tomas said, his voice quiet, disciplined, and measured. “One for the Provincial High Court in Bellwether, and one for the Council of Seven Communities. Every name, every wage balance, every word of the twenty-two daily entries must be copied down to the exact stroke of Dennis Cole’s hand.”
Nessa dipped her pen into the inkpot. “I’ll transcribe the daily chronological log. You take the eighty-man muster roll and the wage ledger, Tomas.”
