In the Grand Scroll hall of the former High court, the high vaulted ceiling echoed not with the hushed intrigues of ducal secretaries, but with the steady, rhythmic scrape of fifty quill pens and the sharp metal click of brass fine-tuning tools. Forty-eight master drafting tables of seasoned maple had been arranged in a wide horseshoe around the central registry dais, each table chosen with the carved wooden crest of a town borough of the Continental River Basin.
At the center of the hall stood Nessa Vale, wearing her oiled leather land-mapper’s smock, her silver sound horn resting on its brass tripod beside her worktable. Beside her stood Tomas Reed, holding his ash-wood pack frame upright against his hip. On the table between them lay forty-eight matching slate folios—thin box-shaped leaves of fine-grained gray slate quarried from the White Steps, held within protective frames of seasoned white oak and bound with brass corner brackets.
Tomas reached down to adjust the lower brass buckle of his left calfskin wrist brace. He felt the familiar, steady pressure of the leather against his scarred grip tendons. The deep, puckered tissue from his old injury always tightened when rain was brewing over the river bluffs. But the rigid brace locked his forearm bone into solid posture, preserving the functional sixty-five percent grip strength he needed to manipulate the heavy slate frames without slippage.
