By the seventh hour of the following morning, the windowless cave of the Sub-Basal Master Vault had been transformed into the careful engine of the Land-wide Payback. Thirty-six long tables of rough-hewn pine had been carried down the winding stone stairs by the draymen, arranged in four disciplined rows beneath eighty hanging brass lard-oil lanterns. At each table sat an apprentice scribe trained in the rigorous double-entry bookkeeping methods of Fen Hollow, equipped with slate boards, bone ink-scrapers, brass fine-tuning measuring tongs, and heavy stone inkwells filled with soot ink.
At the head of the gallery sat Hester Quill, her iron-bound ledger portfolio spread open before her beside the Master Balance of the High Court. A amazing brass scale capable of detecting the weight of a single dried barleycorn. Beside her stood Tomas Reed, wearing his faded canvas work vest with its iron cargo rings sewn into the shoulders. His ash-wood pack frame rested against the red granite column behind him. Its familiar cedar-and-leather scent anchored the underground chamber in the practical reality of road labor.
Tomas reached down to adjust the lower brass buckle on his left forearm. He felt the stiff calfskin brace support his scarred tendon sheath against the damp chill of the bedrock. His left hand had sixty-five percent of its former strength. But he lifted a heavy bundle of thirty sheepskin folios from the cedar shelves. Then, his thumb and index finger locked onto the rawhide ties with unbending clockwork care.
