Aldemarch

The Ward's watch keeps the charter road and the timber convoys as far as the ridge gap for a tenth of the timber fee, paid at the survey post. Maeryvane enters each payment in its own roll as a courtesy and not a rent, and the ward clerks copy the entry out without comment.

Maeryvane's agency has appeared for eleven years in the re-survey suit over the ridge-foot boundary the Solmarch moved in the flood, and declines in writing, each time it is asked, to name the party paying its costs. Aldemarch and Ferrovane of Ferrovane are the only two houses the ground could belong to, and both of them go on retaining Maeryvane for other work.

The towpath under the library is Ward ground, leased to Ythelas at a rent last set six hundred years ago and payable in the schooling of clerks. The Ward's auditors have raised a re-valuation twice in ten years and have not pressed it either time.

Ythelas's examine and certify the Ward's assize clerks, thirty-one of them last year, and take the fee out of the walled granary in wheat rather than coin. A library on beech terraces grows no bread, and the grain is entered against the fee at Ferrovane's price of the day it moves.

The Ward's census return has left Thalassil's reed graziers off the roll for six audits, which keeps something over four hundred people out of the assessment. Thalassil pays for the omission with its voice at the Sixtongue harbour court, where a Corvantine marchward has none.

Wraymoor's tide-mill grinds the Ward's coast wheat on toll, one sack in twenty, and Aldemarch's carts come down the Solmarch bank because no other mill below the ridge will work to a survey measure. Wraymoor eats out of that toll and buys nothing it can avoid buying.

Quellborne brokered Aldemarch's settlement of 819 and took its fee as a standing right of pre-emption over Aldemarch's Solmarch granary surplus, exercised twice since. Aldemarch's clerks think the fee high and concede that the pre-emption is why the barges keep loading.

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.

The vault at Faenlorn holds 60,000 silver of Aldemarch granary receipts, lodged as security for the garrison-road contract of 794. Faenlorn's clerks post the assessment twice a year, once by Corvantine survey and once by elven reckoning, and Aldemarch pays the difference rather than argue it.

Draveholt still books its mast timber fee against a Solmiryn charter, and since that plate cracked Solmiryn's weighbridge has been held by Aldemarch's ward garrison. Draveholt has demanded production of the charter four times and been sent a survey extract instead.

Corvantine grain convoys for Aldemarch land at the landings because there is no other deep water on that coast, and Vaskaryn charges by the load, with a surcharge on winter hulls. Aldemarch's quartermasters have costed the overland road twice and paid the toll both times; the Ward wants nothing that opens the treaty question and the landings are positioned for the day something does, and neither house raises it at the tide gauge.

Aldemarch bought the right to march men through the ridge-gap gate from Solmiryn in the ninety-first year and still produces the deed on request. The Ward has garrisoned the gate since the plate cracked and pays nothing for the ground under it.

Nine hundred quarters of rye come down the Solmarch from Sorrenmark's each year for the garrison, at a price set in Ferrovane's market and not at either gate. The Ward's granary is built to hold eighteen months and its officers mention the figure whenever the price is discussed.