Valdrenne
Valdrenne discounts other people's paper. Bills come in at a fraction of face and are held to maturity, which is most of what the counting house at Cropmarch does in a year. Valdrenne maintains a permanent Forge delegation.
Asked *whose are you?*, Valdrenne answers that the line runs between dragon and mortal. It wears human shape and recognises the other wyrms as its peers; the people around it are subjects, clients or weather. The distinction makes Valdrenne easy to bargain with and hard to shame. The tradition is arcane, which at Cropmarch means a college, an archive and a filing habit. It wrote the case law the Accords are now read through.
The holding
Barleystaith — the wharves that answer to a proxy
Clay bank where the Ferravant leaves the survey, brick counting-house, grain wharves, no acre ploughed
Below the last survey stone the Ferravant leaves the Aurelmarch through clay banks, and Barleystaith stands on the western one: a brick counting-house, two grain wharves, a stable yard, and not an acre ploughed inside the perimeter. Everything on the wharves has been bought, weighed and sold again, most of it wheat off the Hundred and the Meads going down by lighter towards the Ostrovek Sound. The anchorage at the river mouth is five days downstream and belongs to Vaskaryn, which is the subject of the suit. Halvresk's posts are four days north-east and Meketri's wagon camps two days north.
Connections
Nobody has signed at Barleystaith since the plate went cold, and the clerks have carried on regardless: bills accepted, freight insured, ninety quarters a year taken off Skarveth's ford at sixty days.
Allies takes this house’s side 1
Neutral trades, and no more than that 3
Farrowgate 59 Valdrenne carries forty thousand crowns of Farrowgate's first-century mint debt at full value, the largest single asset on its books. Valdrenne has never written the figure down.
Drusenberg 62 Valdrenne ships twelve hundred quarters of wheat a year round the sound to Drusenberg, which has no farmland and no intention of buying through foreign market halls. Freight, insurance and the river toll come to a fifth of the delivered price, and the toll figure is given aloud and never written down.
Skarveth 65 Valdrenne farms nothing and buys ninety quarters a year from Skarveth for its wharf hands and stables. Skarveth is paid on a two-month bill and has started asking for cash at the ford instead.
Enemies has something open against it 4
Vaskaryn 21 Valdrenne lent against Vaskaryn's toll income for twenty years and holds a claim on the last three seasons of it, and separately sued over an anchorage it bought that turned out not to include the moorings. Valdrenne has no living members left, the case has sat in court for a hundred and forty years, and Vaskaryn has quietly slipped eleven months behind on payments.
Ravenscarp 41 Valdrenne holds 140 pledges on grain wharves and has nobody alive who can release any of them, so eleven debtors hired Ravenscarp to establish who can. Ravenscarp has filed twice and been told the register is not amended for dead houses. Its own practice relies on that answer everywhere else.
Halvresk 47 Halvresk took Valdrenne's bills at nearly full value for twenty years and now takes them at two-thirds. It holds four thousand crowns of them, has nobody it can summon to pay, and has offered the lot to Serathorne at half.
Serathorne 63 Serathorne bought Valdrenne's bills cheaply, then found it cannot summon a house with nobody alive in it, and has asked the Forge which official answers for a dead house's debts. It wants a ruling that administrators can be forced to pay, and about a third of the banking houses on the ring have written in since the case was posted.
The full account — 8 houses, 9 arrangements
Nobody has signed at Barleystaith since the plate went cold, and the clerks have carried on regardless: bills accepted, freight insured, ninety quarters a year taken off Skarveth's ford at sixty days. Twelve hundred quarters of wheat still go round the sound to Drusenberg on the terms agreed before. The Highcourt business runs under a proxy assigned to Naskarre at forty crowns a season, so three names on the Fallowgate plate now speak for two houses, which four embassies have noted in writing and none has acted on. Halvresk holds four thousand crowns of Barleystaith bills and can summon nobody to pay them, Serathorne has asked the Forge which officer answers for a cold plate's paper, and nothing on the wharves is covered by Clause I any longer.
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Valdrenne lighters twelve hundred quarters of wheat a year down the Ferravant and round the sound to Drusenberg, which has no ploughland and no intention of buying through Corvantine market halls. Freight, insurance and the mouth toll come to a fifth of the delivered price, and Vaskaryn gives the mouth toll figure aloud and not on paper.
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Valdrenne carries forty thousand crowns of first-century Farrowgate mint paper on its book at full face value, the largest single asset the counting-house shows. Valdrenne has never written it down, and its own creditors read the entry every year and say nothing about it either.
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Valdrenne advanced against Vaskaryn' toll receipts for twenty years and holds the last three seasons' assignment. Since the Valdrenne plate went cold, Vaskaryn has paid eleven months in arrears and has been waiting to see who writes.
Valdrenne bought the Ostrovek anchorage charter from a Vaskaryn factor and found that the moorings were not in it, and the suit has sat at Ferrovane's appeal court for a hundred and forty years. Valdrenne has no living names left to answer the adjournments Vaskaryn's clerks ask for, and asks for none of its own.
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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.
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Valdrenne ploughs nothing and buys ninety quarters a year off Skarveth for its own wharf hands and stable. Skarveth is paid on the counting-house bill at sixty days and has begun asking for coin at the ford instead.
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The Watch's Coinvault side rediscounted Valdrenne bills at ninety-six for twenty years and now takes them at sixty-eight. Halvresk holds four thousand crowns of them, cannot summon a name to pay, and has offered the lot to Serathorne at fifty.
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Serathorne bought Valdrenne bills at the coast, cannot summon a house with no living name, and has asked the Forge which officer answers for a cold plate's paper. Serathorne wants a ruling that a receivership can be compelled, and about a third of the Coinvault houses on the ring have written to Ferrovane since the filing was posted.
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Valdrenne's loan book still carries 140 pledges on Ferravant grain wharves with no living name able to discharge any of them, so eleven debtors retained Ravenscarp to establish who may. The Natron Shelves has filed twice and been told the register is not amended for cold houses, which is the same answer its own practice depends on everywhere else.
Coinvault factors on the ring price Barleystaith paper as though somebody were still paying quarterly out of the Ferravant wharves. Said in the Aurelmarch
The public record
- Plate
- 71 of 81
- Seat
- Cropmarch
- Holding
- Barleystaith
- Region
- the Aurelmarch
- Position
- hex 5,16 in r4c2
- Extent
- a holding and its outfields (2 of 10)
- Culture
- Corvantine
- Thick on this ground
- Corvantine, Vaskarne
- Iron
- Cold
- Living names
- none
- Roster
- —
- Ancestry
- Human
- Kinship
- Undivided
- Major activity
- Coinvault
- Minor activity
- Highcourt
- Tradition
- Arcane
- Alignment
- CN
- Stake
- Breaks
- Band
- Minor
- Weights
- 2
Arms
A counting-table standing out in a stubble field, coins stacked in neat columns along its top, a coronet resting on the empty bench beside it.
Azure, a key Or; in base a coronet Or; a bordure of cold iron. (Plate 71; no living name.)
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.