The Toll Charter

The charter leads to where the Tollkeepers carry their drink — the Flooded Archive, where the Archivist guards a vault with a Hubstone. A Toll Charter is the right to a toll on every current, with the wardens' seals. "Every current pays the toll," the Tollkeepers write: whoever gathers all forty-two currents into reliquaries will turn the Wheel himself.

The charter tells where the drink goes: to the counting rooms of the Flooded Archive. Read a Toll Tap with the Loupe — the drink streams off toward the archive, and the line tells how far away it is.

The archive's counting hall is guarded by the Archivist — a Reckoner automaton the Tollkeepers rewound and hung with reliquaries. He strikes along a line with his measuring rod and shifts the sluices: half the hall goes under water, where your feet drag and you cannot jump. Listen for the clank and move to the dry half.

Wounded, he takes his toll: the reliquary lids open, a Conduit cast near him goes into a reliquary and comes back in a volley, the charge of your things seeps toward him, and blows land at half strength. But a cast of the opposite Spring cracks a full reliquary: his winding slips, and the Archivist is open.