At dawn on the fourth day of winter, High Bailiff Raymond Thorn led twenty mounted court guards through the wrought-iron gates of the Brand Estate. In their leather saddlebags were eighty sticks of red royal sealing wax, two brass impression stamps bearing the King’s Bench lion, and twenty iron chains.
Tomas Reed and Hester Quill rode on the buckboard of the light baggage cart behind the court guards. Tomas’s right boot rested gently on a sack of dry grain, his heel wrapped in fresh carded wool to cushion the deep caltrop puncture.
They didn’t enter the Great Ballroom today. They went straight to the Estate Rent Office in the west wing.
The chief land steward, trembling behind an oak desk piled with tenant ledgers, was ordered to step into the courtyard. With careful, office finality, Bailiff Thorn and Hester Quill audited the rent rolls.
Every page was stamped with the sovereign sequestration mark. Five commercial grain elevators in High Redoubt, three water-driven flour mills on the Green River, two timber concessions in the pine bluffs, and twelve thousand crowns in annual tenant farm rents were placed into the receivership of the Crown Court trial.
Marshal Brand watched from the second-floor library balcony, wearing a plain grey wool coat stripped of all braid and medals. Two royal guards in scarlet tabards stood outside his door. Under the court decree, he was confined to his private chambers, his golden pension revoked, his horses sequestered to pay the court unpaid debts.
