The great timber hall of the Crown-Reach Shipyard Guildhall was cold enough to turn the breath of four hundred people into white smoke.
High above the floor, heavy pitch-pine tie-beams spanned sixty feet of open air, blackened by soot from two iron fire bowls glowing dull orange at either end of the hall. The room smelled of sulfur, damp wool, dried harbor mud, and tarred oakum from the slipways. Outside, the morning tide slapped against the granite quays.
On a raised dais at the north end sat a twenty-foot heart-oak frame stand table holding two iron-strapped chests brought under court guard escort from the Admiralty High Court vaults. Their bronze padlocks had been struck open and their lids thrown back to reveal canvas-wrapped rolls of heavy silver coin. Eight thousand five hundred crowns minted with the royal anchor and the scales of the High Bench.
Tomas Reed sat at the center. His left sleeve was buttoned at the wrist, the calfskin brace supporting his scarred left forearm as his fingers steadied the master muster roll. Beside his right elbow lay the heavy brass seal of the High Judge, an iron metal pen, and a pot of black dark oak-ink.
To his right, Hester Quill arranged her documents with the care of a siege engineer, her glasses catching the animal fat light as she checked twelve-year-old embossed wax seals with her ivory folio-knife.
