The Lease of Quillet

Current Holder: Iveth Ammerly

Origin: The Tally Cliffs

The contract by which Queen Maudry rented the Vale of Quillet from Orpiment for three hundred summers. It was written in two copies on the signing stone above the Tally Cliffs in Lease Year 1. Each copy runs to two leaves, and each is sealed with a bar of amber wax pressed across the foot of the second leaf, stamped with a marigold and a dragon’s claw.

The two copies

The Crown’s copy was kept in the Keep’s muniment room until the High Water of Lease Year 161, and in the lowest level of the Wax Vaults at Sealwright Hall ever since. When the Wardens opened its case on day 3, the second leaf, which carries the rent clause and everything after it, had been cut out with a razor, cleanly, within the last month.

The counterpart was buried with the Founder in Maudry’s Barrow. The Wardens brought it out on day 6. Its first leaf and the top of its second leaf are legible. The rest of the second leaf lies under the amber seal, and Iveth Ammerly is softening the wax by a degree a day rather than cut it.

What the Wardens have read

From the counterpart, in the Founder’s spelling:

The Tenant shall hold the Vale from the foot of the Falls to the Reed Water for three hundred summers, in quiet enjoyment, and the Lessor shall not trouble the Tenant’s people nor the Tenant the Lessor’s rest.

For rent the Tenant shall give, at the Lammas moon of the three hundredth summer, one song that has never before been sung, made by the Vale and given freely, to be sung to the Lessor upon the stone where this was sealed.

Below the rent clause, at the very edge of the wax, a heading shows: Of Default, and of Tender. The rest is under the seal.

Properties

The amber seals are Sealwright work of the first generation, far stronger than anything the Company presses now. A sealed copy cannot be altered without the alteration showing, which is why the thief had to cut a whole leaf rather than change a word.