The records chamber of the Dry-Wells town treasury was buried in the windowless cellar of the courthouse. There, the cold air smelled of damp limestone, sulfur, and crumbling thick parchment. Two oil lamps with mica chimneys cast flickering yellow halos across the iron-banded chests stacked along the wall.
Tomas Reed sat at a narrow desk of rough-hewn pine, his master tax clerk’s ledger open beside a heavy calfskin folio stamped with the country treasury crest. His scarred left forearm rested against the damp wood, the stiff calfskin brace holding the healing tendons rigid. He turned the brittle sheepskin leaves with his right hand.
Beside him stood Nessa Vale. It held a brass fine-scale measuring tongs and a small bottle of clove oil to soften the cracked wax seals. Her sound horn hung from its velvet strap. It caught the slow, rhythmic dripping of water drops from the vaulted ceiling.
“Here is the appropriation,” Tomas said, tracing a bold line of black dark oak-ink entered forty years before. “Royal Warrant Seven-Twelve. Four thousand silver crowns appropriated directly from the Crown Resettlement Fund for the ‘Digging, Timbering, and Upkeep of Three Deep Sweet-Water Filtration Wells in the Southern Steppe Basin.’”
Nessa leaned over his shoulder, her brow furrowing in the dim lamplight. “Four thousand crowns is a huge sum for water works. In the capital, four thousand crowns would build an aqueduct of cut granite across two miles of marshland. What were the technical specifications?”
