In the quiet wagon tent beneath the chalk ridge, the only light came from two animal fat lamps sheltered inside glass lanterns to keep out the swirling dust. Tomas Reed sat at a rough deal table, his master ledger open beside the official parchment transcript of Cadastral Roll 404.
Across from him sat Nessa Vale, her brass magnifying glass screwed into her right eye, lighting up the yellowed calfskin with a packed beam of lamplight. On her left, her sound horn rested against the tabletop. It caught the fine, rhythmic scratching of Tomas’s bone scraper as he tested the parchment grain.
“Look closely at the map point column,” Tomas murmured, leaning over the thick parchment. His scarred left hand held the sheepskin flat against the warped boards, his thumb anchoring the lower margin. “The hand that wrote ‘East-South forty-two’ was trained in the modern country high court—narrow upright strokes, heavy downward serifs, and dilute iron ink that dries brown around the edges. But the header was written fifty years ago in Thorne’s bold, angular court-hand.”
Nessa leaned in, her magnifying glass hovering two inches above the letters. “The thick parchment surface has been shaved. See how the skin grain is thin and fuzzy beneath the numeral four? The original scribe used a heavy goose quill that bit deep into the epidermal layer of the calfskin. Whoever altered this document used a curved scraper’s blade to shave off the top layer of skin before applying new ink.”
