The ink on Hester Quill’s legal foolscap was still wet, giving off the sharp, acidic tang of copper burning acid and oak gall as she dusted the lines with powdered foam-stone sand. She didn’t use sand from the High court shaker. She used her own personal supply of calcined oyster shell. It dried the ink in six seconds without leaving gray smudges across the official margins.
“Before you put one foot into that swamp, Tomas Reed,” Hester said, her voice crackling with the sharp power of a veteran barrister who has just found an unanswerable precedent in the yearbooks, “you’ll sign this caveat. And Sile will sign it as witness. And Nessa will sign it as sworn land-mapper.”
She spun the sheet around on the baize table. She pressed the heavy pewter inkwell against the top corner to keep the draft from lifting in the draft from the hall.
Tomas stepped to the table, his ash-wood pack frame creaking softly against his shoulder harness. “What’s it?”
“It’s a Caveat of Sovereign Encumbrance,” Hester stated, pointing her quill at the title line. “I have drafted it under the ancient Court trial of Clarendon and the Third Statute of Westminster. It formally registers the existence of the First Coronation Promise with the Supreme Bench, the High Exchequer. The Court of the Lord Warden.”
