The taproom of the Low Sunder staging post was quiet by the third hour of the evening. The packers and wagon drivers had drifted away to their cabins, leaving only the dying coals of the fireplace and the rhythmic scratching of Tomas’s steel nib against linen paper.
On the table sat three copies of the scraped voucher, each approved with Bailiff Harl’s wax seal and co-signed by Nessa Vale as field land-mapper. Beside the papers lay Tomas’s master ledger, its columns laid out in double-entry commercial accounting.
Nessa sat across from him, cleaning the lens of her transit with chamois leather. A spirit lamp burned on the bench beside her, casting a yellow circle across the brass gears.
“The locked deposit is larger than fourteen hundred crowns,” Tomas said without looking up. “Look at the delay supplement clause in the original Crown patent.”
Nessa glanced up, holding her brass horn ready. “Military escrows don’t compound interest like commercial paper. The Crown caps delay fees at five percent per annum.”
“Five percent per annum on a principal of twenty-two hundred crowns,” Tomas said, his pen moving down the page. “That’s one hundred and ten crowns a year. Over fifteen years, the delay supplement has piled up sixteen hundred and fifty crowns.”
