Meketri
Meketri is paid to hold a margin. Its posts stand within sight of each other along the frontier road, and the neighbours behind them pay in grain, hides and silence about the toll. Meketri feeds itself from ground it holds outright.
The Wright of Meketri is one of the catfolk first. It sits at its own people's tables, marries into them where the law allows, and takes an insult to them as an insult. Its institutions are primal: thin borders and herding country, with the weakest adherence to the Accords. A wyrm in a trackless waste owes nobody much.
The holding
the Nine Wells Drift — the wells the survey does not list
Deep grass on black earth, nine dug wells, wagon camps, unfenced and absent from the survey
Black earth under deep grass on the western Aurelmarch, unfenced, nine dug wells strung across it and wagon camps shifting between them. The herds supply the holding, while grain, tools and cloth are bought in Corvantine market halls at rates set for customers who cannot plead there. No boundary stone stands on the Drift and no survey sheet lists it, so the census has carried the wells as an outstanding item for six hundred years. Halvresk's posts look down on the northern wells from the badlands rim, Valdrenne's wharves lie two days south-west, and Pardahni's pens are a week east on the Cistern Road.
Connections
Cattle pay for everything.
Allies takes this house’s side 4
Pardahni 22 Two of Meketri's nine wells carry water rights for Pardahni's road, cut into a tomb wall and copied onto papyrus for the drovers. Pardahni draws four hundred barrels a season and pays in hides.
Maeryvane 24 A house that appears in no survey cannot bring a case at Ferrovane, so Maeryvane brings Meketri's for thirty crowns a time. It has appeared for Meketri nine times since 802, seven of them against Halvresk, and filed every one under its own name.
Thelanor 30 Sixty head of Meketri's cattle are driven up to Thelanor each autumn and killed there, which is most of what Thelanor eats through the winter. Meketri takes half the price in salt and half in schooling, because a house that appears in no survey needs somebody who can read what the survey says about it.
Ravenscarp 41 Ravenscarp is hired to argue that Meketri is not land under the treaty because it appears in no survey, which suits Meketri exactly until somebody asks who owns its nine wells. The fee is paid in cattle, and the case is filed under Ravenscarp's own name.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 1
Enemies has something open against it 1
The full account — 6 houses, 6 arrangements
Cattle pay for everything. Sixty head go up to Thelanor's enclosure each autumn and come back as salt and as winters of reading for four young men, a house absent from the survey needing somebody who can read what the survey says about it. Ravenscarp is retained on cattle delivered at the Sunjara Wintering to argue that the Drift is not land within Clause II, which serves until somebody asks who holds the nine wells. Vaddrek's iron furnace makes the well-gear and the wagon tyres and bills in hundredweight, asked twice for Sekhemrite measure and sending hundredweight both times. Two of the nine wells carry registered water shares cut into a tomb wall in the Reach; the census does not include them.
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Sixty head of Nine Wells cattle are driven up to Thelanor's every autumn and killed at the enclosure, which is most of what Thelanor eats through the winter. Meketri takes half the price in salt and half in schooling, four of its young men reading at the enclosure each winter, a house absent from the survey needing somebody who can read what the survey says about it.
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Two of the nine wells carry registered shares for the Cistern Road, cut into the wall of a Meketri tomb at the Reach and copied on papyrus for the drovers. Pardahni draws four hundred barrels a season for the cattle pens and pays in hides, and neither house has told the survey that a water right exists on ground it does not list.
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Halvresk's hired watch has collected a grass fee off the Nine Wells drovers since 793 AF and the census records no such charge. Two of Meketri's men were shot at the third well in 808 AF, the Watch entered it as a toll dispute, and the wells have been closed to Halvrask remounts ever since.
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Ironfurrow's iron furnace makes the well-gear, chain and wagon tyres for Meketri and takes cattle in payment at its own valuation. Meketri has asked twice for the account in Sekhemrite measure and been sent it in hundredweight both times.
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Ravenscarp is retained to argue that Meketri is not land within Clause II because it appears in no survey, which suits Meketri exactly until somebody asks who holds the nine wells. The fee is taken in cattle delivered at Sekhemra, and the pleading is filed under Ravenscarp's own name.
Drovers on the grass have it that the two registered shares in the Reach are worth more than every head the Drift can walk to market. Said in the Aurelmarch
The public record
- Plate
- 37 of 81
- Seat
- Sunjara Flats
- Holding
- the Nine Wells Drift
- Region
- the Aurelmarch
- Position
- hex 6,15 in r4c2
- Extent
- a broad march (5 of 10)
- Culture
- Sekhemri · among strangers here
- Thick on this ground
- Corvantine, Vaskarne
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 5
- Roster
- Small
- Ancestry
- Catfolk
- Kinship
- Kinsworn
- Major activity
- Marchward
- Minor activity
- Furrowhold
- Tradition
- Primal
- Alignment
- CN
- Stake
- Breaks
- Band
- Rotten plate
- Weights
- 1
Arms
A cat-headed boundary stele on cracked salt flats, a sheaf of sorghum bound to its base, a low sun behind.
Vert, party per pale by a line Or, a tower and a sun in splendour Or; in base a garb Or; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 37; five living names.)
The field colour is the house's tradition and the bound edge is the state of its plate, and neither is the house's to choose.