Naskarre

Naskarre burns the gorge woods below its own falls and carts nine hundred sacks of charcoal a year down to Kazdrun, which cannot fire a bloom on peat. The price is agreed on a tally-stick at the marsh road head and settled in cut lead at the gate, so both houses keep two sets of figures.

The charcoal carts go back up loaded, sixty bog-iron blooms a year to Naskarre's forge, set against the fuel account and reconciled each spring. Kazdrun has twice held the blooms back over a short sack count and Naskarre has twice stopped burning.

Two Drusenmark springs above Naskarre failed the year the Sixth Gate drove its lower underground passage, and Naskarre has formally read the loss at every summer assembly since. Emberkeel's answer each time has been a copy of its gate register and the observation that a gate below is not a holding above.

Valdrenne has no living name to sit at the Forge, and its Highcourt business has been done since 804 AF under a proxy assigned to Naskarre at forty crowns a season. Three names on Naskarre's plate now speak for two houses, which four embassies have noted in writing and none has acted on.

Naskarre has stopped reciting Malgareth's debt at the summer assembly, on the argument that a Vaskarni obligation must be formally read to a living creditor and Malgareth has produced none for eleven years. The counting-yard's factors answered in writing, which under assembly practice is no answer.

Charcoal for Ancarien's forge is burned in the Rooken gorge woods below Naskarre and comes up the cart road in eleven loads a year. Naskarre carries three names on the roster and has no second customer, which both houses understand and only Ancarien mentions.

Ancarien holds the coppice charter for the Rooken gorge woods, granted before the signing and running on the original grant, and has asked the Forge what a charge of nine hundred sacks a year amounts to under it. Naskarre pleads that a charter left unrenewed for eight centuries has been abandoned, which Ancarien's readers regard as their own argument turned round.

Naskarre stands on granite and grows nothing, and takes forty quarters of oats a year up the cart road from Skarveth. Skarveth delivers to the marsh road head and no further, the gorge track having taken two of its wagons since 802 AF.

Caelithil brokered Naskarre's match into the marsh villages in 799 AF and takes a tenth of the settlement, payable whether the match holds or not. Caelithil has offered to arrange a second and has had no answer, a house of three names being unable to afford one that fails in public.

Naskarre retains Caelithil to speak for the upper Rooken villages at the Forge and pays in charcoal delivered to the shrine stair rather than in coin. Naskarre wants the spring case pressed and Caelithil wants it pending, since a pending case brings the villages up the stair twice a year.

Naskarre borrowed 7,000 silver against three years of charcoal to reline its furnace, and the note is held at Kurohane, five cells and two cultures east. Naskarre is hair-trigger, so a missed payment is the act of the house, and Kurohane's factors ride up the gorge road twice a year to be seen doing it.