On the morning following the final de-crowning of the Spire, the broad flat stone slab terrace in front of the King’s Bench Registry was transformed into an engine of civic payback. Eight long frame stand tables of split oak had been erected under the roofed porch, groaning beneath the physical weight of one hundred and fifty iron-bound oak silver coin-boxes, each packed with one hundred shining silver crowns from the Royal Mint.
Hester Quill sat behind the central table, her reading glasses perched on her nose. She was flanked by two senior circuit judges and four elected ward elders from Weaver’s Row. Under the extraordinary payback order signed by King Roderick and ratified by Chief Justice Lord Maren, the fifteen thousand silver crowns seized from Horace Vane’s fraudulent Foundation Endowment had not been absorbed into the general treasury. Instead, they had been chartered as an irrevocable public reconstruction trust, dedicated entirely to repairing the foundations and chimneys of the working wards damaged by decades of stone-built neglect.
Before the tables stood a queue of several hundred working people. Master carpenters with wooden rules tucked into their leather aprons, stone masons carrying trowels, ditchers in mud-stained boots, and elderly widows clutching approved damage dockets. There was no chaotic jostling, no shouting, and no bribery. Every claim had been surveyed in advance by Nessa Vale’s sight team, mapped to the exact tenement parcel. Then she audited against the parish rent rolls.
