In the dry afternoon heat, Tomas Reed and Nessa Vale spread the town supply vouchers across three upturned grain barrels outside the courthouse records office. A crowd of forty town wagon drivers, blacksmiths, and shopkeepers had gathered along the railing. They were drawn by the sound of Tomas’s clear, unbending voice as he audited the receipts.
Tomas held up a thick parchment invoice dated thirty-eight years before, bearing the elaborate copperplate heading of the Northern Quartz & Mineral Company.
“Invoice Number Four-Hundred-Twelve,” Tomas read aloud, his voice carrying across the square. “Three hundred tons of washed quartz filter gravel, shipped from the capital quarries to Dry-Wells for the sweet-water straining beds. Amount billed: eight hundred silver crowns. Signed as received by Town Factor Vance Corley.”
Nessa stepped forward, holding the approved shipping rolls of the Grand River Navigation Trust. The only licensed freight company running barges between the capital and the southern steppe during that era.
“I have examined the freight manifests of the Navigation Trust for the entire thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth years of King Alden the Second,” Nessa announced, her finger tracing the column of barge names. “Every ton of timber, coal, and salt carried down the river is registered by date, barge number, and lighterman. In those twenty-four months, not one barge of quartz gravel was ever loaded or dispatched to Dry-Wells. The Northern Quartz Company had been dissolved by bankruptcy five years before this invoice was written.”
