The Cut Page
Participants
- Iveth Ammerly — dated the cut
- Clemency Vare — opened the case
- Oswy Hebden — sat down on the stairs
- Kit Farrow — found the razor
Afternoon of day 3, in the lowest level of the Wax Vaults under Sealwright Hall. After a fight in the dark with the vaults’ smirches, the Wardens carried the Crown’s lease-case to the reading table at the foot of the vault stairs, and Clemency Vare broke the Company’s seal on it.
What happened
The first leaf was whole: the parties, the bounds of the vale, the term of three hundred summers. The second leaf was gone. Someone had drawn a razor down the fold, close and straight, and taken it, seal and all. Iveth Ammerly laid the stub against the grain of the vellum and said the cut was less than a month old. Clemency checked with her own glass and agreed.
Behind the shelf where the case had stood, Kit Farrow found a folding razor wrapped in a twist of gold embroidery thread. Oswy Hebden, who had come down to watch, sat on the vault stairs and was quiet for a long time.
Consequences
- Whoever took the leaf knew exactly which case, which shelf and which leaf.
- The apprentice Jory Penwarden, who held keys to the lowest vault, has been missing since ten days before the fair.
- The Crown’s copy cannot tell anyone the rent. The Wardens need the Founder’s counterpart, which the Hall’s own register says was buried with her.