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The Hedge Knight's Ledger
In Ashcombe, an oath is not a promise.
- ~34 min (estimated)
- 7664 words
- 29 scenes
- 4 branch points
- 4 endings
30 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
Cover art · art review pending · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
It is an object. It is struck in debt-iron on the floor of the east range, it is put in a hand, and while it is in a hand it is read. Sir Rowan Holt, 37, struck a service oath to the Duke of Ashcombe nineteen years ago and did not read the terms back before he let go of it, and the oath has been accruing ever since. He cannot break it, refuse it, set it down, or leave it behind. He can be held to it. He has been sent up the Hollow Mill road in the snow to audit the ducal armoury, which is where the household's obligations are kept, and to report on a debt of four hundred and ten thousand marks that has been growing in a building nobody is allowed to enter. The debt is real. The war is real. Nine years ago the House could not pay, so the household manager struck a maintenance oath on her own plate and began placing the names of her own servants on a roll under a rail in a room with a drai
Content notice6 topics · tap to review
- Coerced or uninformed labour used as a debt instrument
- Institutional fraud in a household's books
- Self-harm and self-destruction proposed as a solution
- A public reading of a private roll
- Reported deaths of supporting characters, not depicted
- A character who has never once been asked and never says so
Cast
- S Sir Rowan Holt Hedge knight of the ducal house of Ashcombe, the auditor, and the viewpoint character; struck a service oath at twenty-eight and has been accruing for nineteen years no portrait yet
- L Lady Ivet Caul Household manager of the ducal house of Ashcombe, holder of the maintenance oath that makes keeping lawful, and position eight on the roll she has signed every night for nine years no portrait yet
- B Bess Kenn The armourer's clerk, three years on the roll in the day-book, and the author of the second book that is the only record not written in a figure no portrait yet