The courtroom in the Low Sunder gatehouse was filled with the rhythmic scratch of three scriveners’ quills and the metal clink of brass calculating counters moving across a counting frame.
Judge Corin Pell sat with Tomas Reed and Nessa Vale, step by step working through the master forced payout balance sheet for the Fourteenth Mountain Battalion and the Sunder Pass Endowment.
General Orson Brant and Senior Quartermaster Vance sat on a low wooden bench against the stone wall, guarded by four armed court guards, their faces gray, their heads bowed, stripped of all arrogance.
Tomas laid his accounting quires before the judge.
“We have three distinct liabilities to settle, Judge,” Tomas said, his voice flat, steady, and cold and exact.
“Itemize the first,” Pell directed, checking the figures with his magnifying glass.
“The first debt is the original Crown Locked deposit Account Forty-Four B,” Tomas stated. “Consigned fifteen years ago to guarantee Relief Train Alpha. Principal bond: twenty-two hundred silver crowns. Lawful delay supplement at five percent per annum: sixteen hundred and fifty crowns. Total liquid locked deposit payable: three thousand eight hundred and fifty silver crowns.”
Magistrate Pell nodded. “Checked. The funds are currently frozen in the High court vault in Bellwether. I issue an immediate court warrant releasing the full three thousand eight hundred and fifty crowns to the custody of Provost Reed for spreading to the living claimants.”
