At the ninth hour of the morning, the carriage of Magistrate Valen arrived at the gravel ridge, escorted by twelve mounted archers of the Provincial Watch.
Magistrate Valen stepped down into the mud, his ermine-trimmed gray wool mantle pulled tight against the biting delta wind. Behind him walked Hester Quill. It carried two heavy wicker hampers stuffed with legal folios, and Elder Mallow. He held the ancient land-tax maps of the marsh.
Tomas stood at the head of the sledge line, his boots caked in white lime plaster, his scarred left arm resting in a clean black sling.
Magistrate Valen walked the entire length of the six sledges, stopping at each wagon to inspect the official white chalk-stone seals and boxwood inventory pegs. He touched the dry plaster on Crate Sixty. He felt the cold, inert balance of the stopped ordnance.
“Sixty crates,” Valen said, his voice grave and solemn in the morning air. “Six hundred globes of live military fire. And for nineteen years, the Grand Adventurers’ Guild held an official release certificate swearing this ground was clean of all explosives.”
Valen turned to Hester Quill. “Produce Clearance Docket Eight-Fourteen-B.”
Hester drew the yellowed parchment from her portfolio. The document signed nineteen years earlier by Sir Justinian, certifying that the Val-Mora magazine had been totally destroyed by controlled blast.
