In the quiet of the estate’s library after the court had adjourned, Tomas Reed sat at a walnut desk beneath an unlit chandelier. Nessa Vale knelt before him with a basin of warm vinegar water and clean linen, gently unwrapping the dressing from his punctured right heel.
The puncture wound was inflamed and angry, the edges purple where the rusted iron of the caltrop had torn the flesh. But the acid wash had kept the bog-rot at bay. Nessa dusted the hole with powdered sulfur and bound the foot in fresh wool with practiced, tender smooth speed.
“You walked six miles on a punctured heel, Tomas,” Nessa said. She looked up with her quiet, intelligent brown eyes. “The tendon will be stiff for months.”
“The weight was on the wagon, Nessa,” Tomas replied softly. “I only had to walk beside the horse.”
Tomas touched the open page of his master field ledger. The system slate flared in the shadowed room. Its forty-four-character border settled into the deep, permanent granite-grey light of Master Tax clerk status. He confirmed thirty-one seals bound and fifty thousand crowns frozen under sovereign debt claim.
Around them, the high walnut shelves of Marshal Brand’s private library smelled of gold-trimmed calfskin bindings, cedarwood oil, and cold hearth-ash. Not a single volume on those polished tiers had ever been opened to record the price of a bushel of winter rye or the daily wage of a ditch-carter. They were fancy histories of ancient chivalric houses. They were bound…
