In the small private study behind the main hall, Hester Quill sat behind a dark wood desk that looked as though it had been salvaged from the wreck of a royal galleon. At eighty-four, her body was thin and fragile, her white hair bundled under an outmoded lace cap. But her gray eyes behind her steel-rimmed glasses were as sharp and hungry as an osprey’s over a trout pool.
She didn’t rise when Tomas and Nessa entered. She merely pointed with the tip of her ivory paper-knife toward two low armchairs upholstered in horsehair.
“Sit down, both of you,” Hester said, her voice crackling like dry autumn reeds. “Nessa, put that hearing horn away. I have spent sixty years shouting at deaf judges. I have no intention of whispering in my own study.”
Nessa laughed, slipping the horn into her lap. But she leaned forward so she could read the old jurist’s lips.
On the desk before Hester lay a single sheet of thick parchment, broad as a cart-wheel, its surface crowded with hundreds of tiny signed names, wax seals, and notary stamps. At the bottom of the sheet sat the great crimson seal of King Alden. He was flanked by the seven distinctive wax impressions of the Seven River Communities: the salt-cellar of Fen Hollow, the flail of Brook End, the chisel of White Steps, the wagon wheel of Caravan Way, the sledge of Old Flint, the boat-hook of Reed Bank, and the shears of Willow Stair.
