The second wax-sealed oak firkin recovered from the altar of Saint Jude contained the financial truth of the Val-Mora campaign.
In the private vestry behind the High-Fen Cathedral Court, Hester Quill and Tomas Reed spread the contents across two long deal tables. Under three oil lamps, Hester examined the castle paymaster’s iron-bound ledger. A six-hundred-page parchment folio detailing every copper coin, silver coin, and gold crown disbursed during the final year of the siege.
Tomas ran his bone metal pen down the final summary column.
“On the tenth day of the harvest moon, nineteen years ago,” Tomas read, his finger resting upon the black ink entry, “the Provincial Military Treasury delivered three heavy ironbound chests to Fortress Val-Mora. Total specie: three thousand royal gold crowns, minted at the Royal Tower of Saint Eleanor. Purpose: quarterly unpaid debts of pay for the Fourth Levy and full bereavement endowments for fallen soldiers’ widows.”
Hester pulled an approved transcript from her town archive hamper. The official claim filed by Sir Justinian and the Grand Adventurers’ Guild three weeks after the castle wall fell.
“Look at the Guild’s declaration,” Hester said, her glasses glinting in the lamp light. “Sir Justinian swore under oath that during the pullback, the paymaster’s wagon broke an axle on the corduroy road, overturned into the Great Sump, and sank beneath forty feet of quick-peat. He claimed the entire three-thousand-crown treasury was unrecoverable and total loss.”
