Sekhemra

The Sunjara iron furnaces turn out ninety tons of bar and cart iron a year and the Cistern Road takes half of it for tyres, chain and pen iron. Both houses settle in Sekhemrite form, cut into a wall at Pardahni, which no Corvantine records office will accept as an instrument and neither of them has needed one to.

Pardahni escorts the Sunjara charcoal trains and horse lines from the spine foot to the barge head, sixteen riders to a train, paid in charcoal and remounts. The two houses are kin on the water records office and neither will put the escort in writing, since a written escort contract at Ferrovane would make Sekhemra answerable for what the riders do on Corvantine ground.

The Staple's pack trains to the Forge hire Sekhemra's riders for the badlands stage at nine crowns the train, which is the whole of what the Wintering's Marchward side earns. Quellborne renews annually, has used no other company since 810, and will not put its reason in writing.

Quellborne acts for the survey on the assessment of Sekhemra's grass and has re-entered the camp on the roll in each of the last nine years, at a rate Sekhemra pays late and under protest. The catfolk house points at Pardahni's herds, who pay nothing at all, and the census answers that the item is outstanding and has been for six hundred years.

The Sunjara iron furnaces burn less charcoal in winter than they make and send four thousand sacks up to Brakkenstone, measured in Sekhemrite loads and paid on the Kazdrunn hundredweight. The conversion has been disputed at every renewal since 780 AF and settled each time by splitting the difference and writing neither figure down.

Wexhollow winters three hundred horses at Sekhemra, and the charter names the animals as Wexhollow's and the riders as nobody's. Sekhemra takes eleven silver a head and a tenth of whatever the company is paid for work the charter does not describe.

Sekhemra takes 500 hundredweight of oats and the whole of Gundvarr's chaff each October for its horse lines, and the two houses have shared a weighbridge since 806. Sekhemra settles in bar iron at Vurrgast's price, which suits the granary and irritates everyone who wanted the crop sold for coin.

Sekhemra's iron furnaces run on Vurrgast pig and Emberdeep coal, 400 tons a year up the mule road in the seven cart months and stockpiled for the other five. Vurrgast sells at the market rate and has twice refused the wintering camp the hold's own charcoal, which is why the iron furnaces burn Meldrath cordwood at a worse price.

Sekhemra cuts 3,000 cords a year in Meldrath's oak on a licence Meldrath's proctors renew and no living Meldrath name has signed since the roll closed. The payments go into an office and are entered without query, and the cut was doubled in 818.