The Red Matriarch spread the western casualty map before two senior mages and pinned Stonehaven beneath one cracked, ink-stained fingernail. Corrected estimates lay beside it, where three settlement marks still sat under old stains that no scrubbing managed to lift.
The southern charter map stayed rolled at the table's edge, keeping today's profitable grant well away from the recorded losses.
'Let the petitioners confuse a fat deed with a safe expedition, the ink corrects everyone eventually.'
"They hear mineral corridors and start choosing which nephew collects the toll," she pressed Stonehaven's mark beneath her nail while the nearer mage watched, "and not one of them asks why those western valleys kept their quarantine ribbons when every other road reopened."
The first mage set a casualty ledger beside her hand without covering the map, "The companies we sent toward the eastern sinkholes never filed another report, Matriarch, and even their reserve camp stopped answering."
