Vorlaine

Cuiveril draws its household water off Vorlaine's cisterns, sixty jars a day in the dry months at a rate fixed by the settlement of 812, and the ash-garden takes as much again. Vorlaine has held the rate for nine years and asked three times for a reader's place in the archive, which Cuiveril grants aloud and will not write down.

Marrowe's alum pans and its burning ground take 200 jars a week off the fourth surface opening from June to September, the largest single draw Vorlaine sells. The records office set a surcharge on the burning ground and Marrowe pays it quarterly under written protest.

Vorlaine holds the cisterns at the fourth surface opening and Ravenscarp keeps the records office stair at the seventh, and the Natron Shelves have petitioned four times to have the upper draw capped in a dry year. Vorlaine is quietly positioned for the day the records office stops meaning anything, Ravenscarp cannot survive that day, and each of them knows which way the other faces.

Vorlaine reports which cistern shares at the Pardah's fourth surface opening have fallen behind on the washing charge, and Vaskaryn buys the defaulted shares through a Reach factor so that no Vaskarni name reaches the records office. Both houses are Breaks, and a water share is the only asset either holds that a war would not burn.

Vorlaine's office re-assessed Vaethril's stage rents in 776 on the ground that a leased cavern mouth counts as a surface opening. Vaethril withholds the difference, the lease stands, and the arrears are formally read at each renewal and not collected.

Stonewrit brokered Vorlaine's settlement of 812 and took its fee as a standing share at the fourth surface opening, which it has since sublet twice to embassies the water records office would not serve. Vorlaine's people call the fee extortionate at every renewal and renew it.

Every load of burial salt going west off Vorlaine pays Belgrund's four coppers per hundredweight, on a schedule raised in 806 and again in 819. Vorlaine's carters keep a copy of the older schedule and read it aloud at the gate, which alters nothing and is done at every crossing.

Nothing grows on tufa, so the whole of Vorlaine's bread comes down the cavern road off Umbermere's flats, 700 hundredweight a year. Half is settled in coin and half in a quarterly list of who has been enquiring after Umbermere's cistern records, which Umbermere reads and does not acknowledge receiving.

Erevanth lends against Reach water shares where no Corvantine house will, and holds a third of Vorlaine's fourth-surface opening draw as security on 1,900 crowns advanced in 816. Erevanth's charter is older than the records office, which is the only reason a lender can take a cistern and expect to keep it.

Reach junior registrars read level-books at Sarventhal for two years before they are trusted with a marked stair, forty marks a head, payable whether the clerk finishes or not. Vorlaine sends six a year and has complained about the arithmetic teaching in four of the last five.

Drennhold and the Reach water records office have exchanged the same letter about the boundary of the upper underground passages every year since the signing. Vorlaine's office drafts the reply in the first week of the year and reads the incoming letter when it arrives in the third month.