The air along the marble dike of the High Valley of the Silver Tarns was bone-chillingly cold. But Tomas Reed felt only the searing, focused heat of a carrier preparing to execute an audited accounting.
He stood beside the marble pylon, his feet planted firmly upon the white flat stone slabs. His left hand gripped the leather straps of his ash pack frame to stabilize his stance. His left forearm scar throbbed with a rhythmic, pulsing warmth beneath the calfskin brace, reacting to the closeness of massive, unrecorded civic debt.
In the discipline of the Last Claim, a clerk didn’t guess. An clerk didn’t estimate based on political rhetoric or merchant rumors. The Class Rank conferred a specific, unbending office transparency. The power to measure the physical reality of a duty against its registered record and extract the exact mismatch with court certainty.
Tomas closed his eyes.
He centered his breathing. That let the sound of the wind, the splashing fountains, and the distant music from Chancellor Vane’s villa fade from his awareness. He visualized the great double-entry ledger of the High Kingdom. On the left column, the sworn promises of sovereign charters. On the right column, the physical receipts of manual labor and stored mass.
