The High Chamber of the Circuit Bond Court was packed to the timber rafters with six hundred citizens of Bellwether. Draymen in canvas aprons sat shoulder to shoulder with guild apprentices, hospice nurses, and elderly weavers from the lower fens. Behind the heavy oak court bench sat Magistrate Kroll. He was flanked by two circuit tax clerks in black wool robes.
In the center of the courtroom floor stood the great iron balance of the registry, its brass pans polished bright. Beside the balance sat the approved master locked deposit chest of Master Quest LC-001, unlocked. Then he opened under court watch.
“The court has audited the master completion certificate presented by Steward Tomas Reed,” Magistrate Kroll announced. His deep voice carried into the crowded street outside. “The record shows that all seven hundred and thirteen deposits have been pulled out, identified, and delivered to their lawful successors under lawful rule-following. The dead-letter condition of Last Claim is fully satisfied. The court hereby decrees Master Quest LC-001 lawfully closed.”
A roar of cheers erupted from the commoners. It shook the leaded glass windows, until Kroll brought his heavy ivory gavel down with three sharp cracks.
“We proceed to the audit of the twelve hundred crowns of bonded locked deposit,” Kroll continued. “The court finds that nine hundred crowns of the original fund were unlawfully converted into town running scrip by the former guild administration. Those nine hundred crowns are hereby declared a first-priority court debt claim against all real property and toll revenues of the Guild of Navigators, to be liquidated and repaid within twelve months.”
Kroll signaled to the clerk of court. “The three hundred crowns of liquid bullion held in the registry vault are ordered disbursed right away under the direction of Steward Reed and Advocate Quill.”
Tomas stepped to the table with Hester Quill. Working with calm, deliberate smooth speed, they divided the shining gold coins into eight leather bags. Forty gold crowns were assigned to each of the seven river communities for the immediate repair of dikes, bridges, and communal wells. Twenty crowns were delivered to Nurse Rilla Venn for the hill hospice bandage fund. One hundred crowns were assigned to Hester’s legal defense trust for commoners. And the leftover one hundred crowns were counted into Tomas’s open hand—his lawful carrier’s fee.
Tomas looked down at the pile of gold sovereigns. He had carried four-silver coin loads through the freezing mud for nine years. One hundred crowns was more money than his family had earned in a decade of washing sheets. Yet he felt no dizzying rush of triumph, only the quiet, weight-bearing gravity of an honest wage paid for an honest delivery.
Before he touched a single coin of his own hundred-crown stack, however, Senior Assessor Morrel—a thin-lipped judge from the Upper Commercial Bench who still wore the silver collar of the merchant banking houses—leaned over the oak rail of the court dais and cleared his throat loudly.
“May it please the Chief Judge,” Assessor Morrel said. He tapped his ivory pencil against the printed fee-table of the Court of Exchequer. “Before the clerk releases the hundred-crown carrier’s commission in specie, the Revenue Office notes that Master Quest LC-001 was originally registered as a First-Class Sovereign Undertaking. Under Schedule C of the Guild Brokerage Heavy tax, an unchartered back-door porter who lacks a Master Hauler’s Patent is capped at a maximum lawful recovery of twenty silver coins per day of labor, with the leftover balance of ninety-six gold crowns reverting to the Town Registry Fee Fund as an office windfall tax.”
Across the packed floor of the High Chamber, six hundred draymen, weavers, and quarrymen stiffened on their benches. A low, angry growl rumbled from the back rows where Mara Flint’s wedge-men and Eren Moss’s canal boatmen stood shoulder to shoulder.
Tomas didn’t raise his voice or look back at the crowd. He kept his left forearm resting evenly in its oiled calfskin brace against his waistcoat. He used his right hand to slide the original Year One Locked deposit Servant contract—recovered from the sub-basement vault with Clerk Berran’s seal—across the green baize table to the foot of the court bench.
“Assessor Morrel is reading from the Guild Brokerage Heavy tax of Year Fourteen, Your Honor,” Tomas said clearly. His voice carried to every corner of the timbered hall. “But a bonded locked deposit contract is governed by the law in force on the day the gold was locked into the chest. Look at Clause Seven of the Year One Servant contract, written by Oren Voss and witnessed by the Circuit Protonotary: The Carrier’s Hundred shall be paid in full weight of royal gold, without tallage, brokerage, guild-tithe, or registry deduction, to whatsoever hand brings the seven hundred and thirteenth receipt across the threshold of this Court.”
Hester Quill stepped beside Tomas. She opened her black calfskin statute book to the Precedents of the Exchequer. “Plus, Your Honor, under the Statute of Westminster on Bailments, a municipality that has stood in fraudulent default on a locked deposit trust for thirty-nine years forfeits all standing to levy office fees upon the trust corpus. If the Revenue Office wishes to deduct a four-percent registry fee, they’re welcome to deduct it from the taken away stipends of the High Ward tax clerks who signed off on the false audits.”
Magistrate Kroll looked down over the rims of his iron glasses at Assessor Morrel, his heavy gray brows drawn into a flat, unamused line. “The Year One Servant contract is explicit, Tax clerk. This court won’t clip a working carrier’s coin to feed a treasury that spent four decades hiding the principal. The brokerage claim is disallowed with prejudice. Steward Reed takes the full hundred crowns in minted sovereign gold, free of tax or tallage.”
At the clerk’s table, Master Clerk Berran weighed out the hundred gold sovereigns on the great brass pans of the registry balance. He dropped the standard Troy brass weights into the left pan until the iron needle stood dead-plumb in the stirrup. Every coin was struck from heavy High Bluffs bullion. He was stamped with the vintage of the old Duke’s reign before the guild began debasing the town silver scrip.
When Berran pushed the weighed gold across the dark wood counter, Tomas didn’t sweep the coins into his own coat pocket. With his right hand, he counted the sovereigns out into four neat piles upon the green baize cloth in plain sight of the six hundred citizens in the gallery.
First, he counted twenty gold crowns into a leather pouch and handed it across the rail to Sile Rook and young Jory, who had carried the tall oak body-shield and wheeled the padded hand-barrows through the freezing under-road drains and orchard mud without asking a penny for their boots or blood. Sile tried to push the leather pouch back with his scarred knuckles. He muttered that a watchman’s pay was enough, until Tomas cited the Carrier’s Sub-Haulage Schedule. Then he tucked the drawstring firmly into Sile’s belt.
Next, Tomas counted thirty crowns into a heavy linen money-belt stamped with the mark of the Reed Family Laundry. Enough to pay five full years of the twelve-crown guaranteed lease on his parents’ washhouse, with ten crowns left over to buy his father Bram a sound six-year-old heavy cart-mare and a new set of iron-tired ash wheels for the flat-cart.
That left fifty gold sovereigns gleaming on the baize cloth. Tomas drew a clean canvas sample-bag from his satchel, dropped the fifty coins inside one by one until the heavy gold clinked solid against the stitched seam. Then he walked three paces to where Nessa Vale stood beside her brass leveling tripod.
He took fifty coins, slid them into a clean canvas bag, and handed them to Nessa Vale. “For your survey instruments, Nessa. And for the silver hearing aid you need.”
Nessa looked at the bag, her eyes widening behind her glasses. Then she closed her fingers around the gold with a firm, silent nod of thanks.