The audit of the sixty thousand crowns occupied the remainder of the afternoon, transforming the damp basement archive of High-Arch into a careful battleground of ink, numbers, and physical evidence.
Tomas Reed, Hester Quill, and Nessa Vale sat around the long oak reading table beneath the yellow glow of four animal fat lamps. Spread out before them were three parallel stacks of documentation. On the left, the High court’s green calfskin waste ledgers. In the center, the approved shipping manifests and tollgate registers of the High-Arch Turnpike Trust. And on the right, the physical evidence collected from the riverbed beneath Pier Six.
Tomas had taken off his dark wool coat, working in his linen shirt with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, his left wrist brace cinched tight to support his forearm as he compared the line-item vouchers.
“Voucher One,” Tomas said, reading from the ledger. “Fifteenth of September, Year 030. Payee: Sunder Hydraulic Supply Company. Consideration: Four thousand five hundred silver crowns for six hundred barrels of Grade-A Pozzolana Heavy Lime, quarried at the Mount Vane pits and delivered to the Pier Six staging depot.”
He turned to Nessa. “Check the Turnpike registers for September of Year 030.”
Nessa brought out her brass-framed magnifying glass, scanning the handwritten cartage rolls of the High-Arch Turnpike. The only road over which heavy freight could be hauled into the Eleanor Gorge.
