The cold in the High Court of Rolls was not the biting frost of the northern marshes. But the dead limestone chill of four hundred years of preserved thick parchment. It seeped through the soles of Tomas Reed’s greased boots, finding the hairline crack where a granite slab had settled unevenly beneath his heel. He didn’t shift his feet. A porter who shifted on stone wasted animal fat, leather, and balance. Instead, he kept his weight centered over his hips, thumbs hooked lightly in his hemp belt. Meanwhile, Hester Quill drew the final red line across the sheepskin ledger.
The scratch of her goose quill was the only sound in the vaulted chamber, save for the dry rustle of draft parchment high in the high window row rafters. Fifty feet above, narrow lancet windows admitted the gray dawn of Crown-Reach, pale as watered milk and smelling of sea coal and wet soot from the royal foundries.
“That’s the seventy-fourth storehouse,” Hester said without lifting her eyes, her ink-stained fingers steady. “The Merchant Bank of the Golden Anchor. Seven accounts opened under the charter of thirty-five years ago, all bearing the backup seal of the Holt Trade ring. Four thousand two hundred and ten crowns in uncalled dock-wait bonds, held against grain burned in the canal barges before it ever reached the lower docks.”
