Ferrovane

Ferrovane has sued Brakkenstone over the smelter water channels, which take enough of the Thurmgar headwater that the Solmarch barge head has gone unnavigable in August four years out of nine. Ferrovane wants the draw capped by survey measure and Brakkenstone answers that a gate takes what a gate needs.

Silver and lead pigs come down the Solmarch to the barge head, about nine hundred tons a season, and every one of them pays Ferrovane's toll on the way out. Brakkenstone has costed the drove road round to the west three times and the saving has come out short of the extra nine days each time.

Ferrovane's assessors distrained twelve of Skarveth's oxen in 810 AF on the ground that the Ferravant ford toll appears in no rate table anyone can buy for two coppers. Skarveth's answer is that the ford was tolled by assembly decision four generations before the survey reached it, and the court has asked for that minute in writing.

Ferrovane has administered Farrowgate under receivership since 118 AF and holds its court roll, its market charter and the mint keys. Ferrovane's position is that the receivership runs until the plate is amended, and the plate has not been amended since the sky came down on it.

The Ironfurrow Concession is confirmed at Ferrovane every ninth year for three hundred crowns and a survey of the granges. Vaddrek's return enters the stair as one gate and the surveyors enter it as six holdings, and both figures have gone into the register every ninth year since 743 AF without either side asking the court to choose.

Ferrovane's court hall, its gaol and its readers are victualled off the Ironfurrow granges under a standing contract renewed with the concession. Ferrovane pays the survey rate and Vaddrek delivers on the Kazdrunn hundredweight, and the difference is written off each year as cartage.

Aldemarch's assessors read two years at Ferrovane before they are let near a rate book, sixty crowns a head, twenty-eight of them since 800 AF. Ferrovane also keeps the appeal court that hears Aldemarch's assessments, which Aldemarch's clerks call convenient and Ferrovane's readers call ordinary.

Ferrovane struck Meldrath off its list of recognised halls the year the Meldrath plate went cold, and no Meldrath certificate has been accepted for a court clerkship since. Meldrath halved its fees and began taking men Ferrovane had failed, and there are now two grades of clerk on the Solmarch road who will not sit in the same room.

Ferrovane's court hall takes Kurohane's concession clerks for a year each, so that the ridge-track concession can be pleaded in Corvantine form when the Reach records office disputes it. Kurohane pays 600 silver a clerk and a first refusal on mast timber, and Ferrovane takes no clerk from the house on the other side of the same concession.

The Cistern Road carries the Reach dead down off the plain to the Solmarch barge head, thirty or forty a year in dry cases, and Ferrovane's toll house charges a third again on anything with a body in it. Pardahni pays the surcharge, records it as an insult, and the shortest stage that avoids the toll house adds nine days.

Kaldwyn supplies Ferrovane's toll office with the sailing lists of every hull leaving the Storvald Gulf without a stamp from the Anvilwater transfer, at four silver a name. Ferrovane assesses cartage licences off those lists in a court hall three cells inland and where they come from has not come up in open session.