The morning light that filtered through the shattered high window row windows of the storehouse was gray, cold, and clean, lighting up a scene of triumphant desolation. The air inside the vaulted chamber was freezing, filled with thin plumes of white steam rising from the soggy ash heaps. On the terrace outside, sixty miners and apprentices sat exhausted on overturned crates, drinking hot chicory tea from tin cups, their faces streaked with soot like warriors returning from an underground war.
Inside the vault, Tomas Reed sat at a dry limestone table that had been scrubbed clean of soot by Linnea and Marek. Beside him lay the crowning prize of the salvage: an iron-bound chest of dark Spanish cedar, its heavy brass clasps melted shut by the heat of the fire.
Brom stood beside the table, holding a sharp cold-chisel and a four-pound lump hammer. With two precise, crushing blows, he snapped off the melted brass padlocks. The cedar lid groaned and fell back.
Inside lay sixteen thick octavo volumes, bound in pigskin and wrapped in waterproof oiled silk. They were the private office ledgers of Guildmaster Karr. The Master Locked deposit & Sub-Mortgage Accounts of the Northern Cantons (Years 710–739).
