The spreading of the back-pay began at noon in the taproom of the Low Sunder staging post.
The great oak tables, where Tomas had first unsealed the brass dispatch metal tube four days before, were now stacked with heavy leather sacks of minted silver coin: four-crown thalers, single silver crowns, and rolls of copper silver coins drawn from the country treasury under Magistrate Pell’s emergency warrants.
Tomas Reed sat at the center of the table, his master forced payout ledger open before him, his Provost’s seal ring resting beside the inkpot.
Beside him sat Marra Vane. It held her father’s service book. Nessa Vale, who checked the weight of each coin sack using her brass balance scales.
One by one, the twenty-eight veterans of the Fourteenth Battalion were called forward by name.
“Private Elan Thorne,” Tomas called out.
The old soldier stepped to the table, his service cap clutched in his hands. His missing fingers were tucked against his chest.
Tomas counted out six hundred silver crowns—the full balance of his fifteen years of back-pay, clothing allowances, and disability supplements. The silver coins clinked with a heavy, musical chime as they were stacked into six neat towers on the pine wood.
