The Merchant Guildhouse of Crown-Reach sat high above the city on the Terrace of Gold, enclosed within a private walled park of ancient cedar trees and guarded by iron-tipped palisades twelve feet high. Its private council chamber was an amazing circular room paneled in polished black walnut, warmed by two massive marble fireplaces that burned up seasoned cherry-wood. Then he carpeted in deep crimson wool brought from the eastern empires.
At midnight on the ninth day of the audit, an emergency session of the realm’s financial elite was convened in the firelight. Around the long oval table sat seven men. Grand Master Vane of the Adventurers’ Guild, wearing a heavy doublet of black velvet slashed with gold satin. Lord Chancellor Malakor, a thin, hawk-faced man of sixty with cold, calculating eyes and the Great Seal of the Realm hanging from his neck. Governor Alden Garrow, his hands trembling as he sipped spiced wine. And four senior directors of the capital banking houses.
On the table between them lay a sheaf of dispatch slips from Broad Street, detailing the forced payout of thirty thousand crowns of bank assets by Tomas Reed’s apprentices.
“It’s an insurrection,” Grand Master Vane said, his fist slamming onto the walnut table until the crystal wine goblets rang. “A common cart driver from the wash-cellars of Bellwether is sitting in our banking hall, handing out corporate assets to street vagrants! He has imprisoned Karr in High Karst. He has seized the northern records. And tomorrow he intends…
