The iron vault doors of the municipal armory clanged shut with a heavy, ringing finality, locking the seized northern crossbows away beneath the provincial seal.
Hannah Harper stood before the disbursement desk, her fingers smoothing the edges of an official transfer receipt freshly stamped in vermilion ink. Across the counter, the quartermaster dipped his quill into lampblack ink and logged the transaction into the civic registers, crediting eighteen thousand silver bars to the Golden Ledger trade account for the immediate purchase of military surplus. Because the weapons were contraband confiscated under municipal public safety warrants, the provincial statutes awarded eighty percent of the liquidation value directly to the reporting corporate entity, turning the illegal shipment into l
