The Heartlands has never had coinage. Value is reckoned in Heartwood and paid in goods. A practitioner who wants the Crown behind them when a client won't pay has to hold a Registry licence and enter their work on it, and then owes a fifth of whatever that work was reckoned at. That fifth is usually paid in days of service, and the Registry sends them wherever it likes. A great deal of practitioner work is done for room and board precisely to stay clear of all this.

No coinage, and never has been

The Heartlands has never minted anything. Trade runs on goods and labour and on knowing the person you're dealing with.

Heartwood is the yardstick. Most things are never actually traded for Heartwood, but everyone measures against it. Worth three days' Heartwood means the same in a Lowlands river town as on the crystal pack, between two people who have never met.

A day's Heartwood has only ever been a turn of phrase. Every market agrees on its value to within a hair, and no two districts agree on where the expression came from. I've been told, always confidently, that it's what a man can carry in a day, what a household burns in a day, what a Grove-crew is issued in a day, and what a day of honest work is worth. Each of the four comes from people who have never heard the other three, and none of them can be traced.

The Registry built its whole system of assessment on top of the phrase, and it can't define it either.

What a licence is

The Registry assesses a practitioner once. That fixes their tier, and the tier fixes their band, which is what a day of their work is reckoned at.

A licence card carries the tier and the Source and has ruled space on it for work. The practitioner carries the card, and the card is the ledger.

A mark is one day's Heartwood. Nobody ever holds a mark, since there's no coin or token for it. It's a number written in the ruled space on your card.

What happens when you take a job

Nothing at all, unless somebody asks for it to be written down.

If it is written down, the Registry assesses it at your band, and a fifth of the assessed figure is owed. Whatever actually changed hands between you and the client is none of the Registry's business, and nothing gets adjusted for it. Take two chickens for a job reckoned at nine marks and you still owe on nine.

Anything under a mark goes unrecorded. The Registry has no interest in a fifth of a chicken and has written a rule saying so.

What the entry buys you is standing. If the client won't pay, you walk to a post and show the card, and the Registry goes after them, which it's very good at. Work that was never entered has no remedy of any kind. Work done without a licence has worse than none, because an unlicensed practitioner has no standing to complain in the first place.

Every practitioner weighs that bargain before starting a job, since recourse is only worth its fifth when the client might not pay.

Paying in days

The levy is reckoned in marks, but it's usually paid in days.

A licensed practitioner settles what they owe by giving the Registry days of work, reckoned at their own band, and the Registry decides where they go. They can also commute the debt instead, paying the marks in goods and keeping their time.

The choice is free, and nearly everyone makes it the same way. You serve if your days have nothing better to do, and you pay if they have.

Days worked count, and days walked don't. It's the most resented rule in the Dominion, and every practitioner I raised it with was already complaining before I'd finished the question. A posting to an outer holding can eat a fortnight of your life to work off three days of marks, and the Registry doesn't pay for the road.

The arithmetic comes out at roughly one day of service owed for every five days of entered work, whatever your tier. What changes enormously is what that fifth is worth in goods, which is far higher at the top. So the Registry's material income comes from a handful of senior practitioners buying their time back, and its labour comes from everyone else.

Working for room and board

A huge amount of practitioner work in the Boundary Lands is done for a bed, meals and goodwill.

Since nobody calls it payment, there's nothing to enter and nothing owed. Both sides generally prefer the version of the story in which the village couldn't have afforded a fee, and now and then that version is even true.

What people are really buying from an unlicensed practitioner is that nobody can call them away, and the low price is a side effect. It's why wanderers stay unlicensed. It costs them every protection the Crown offers, and plenty of them think that a fair trade.

How a village gets help

There are three ways, and they cost very different things.

File a notice. It costs nothing. You report the trouble at the nearest Registry post, a Recorder reads the report and sets a band, and it goes up on the board. There it waits until a practitioner turns up to work off their obligation, and you get whoever comes.

Endorse the notice. You attach something to it, whether goods, stock, a claim or an artifact. That turns it into paid work, and it gets taken quickly, because now somebody wants it.

Hire directly, or ask a House. Hiring directly is fast and expensive, and you choose your practitioner. Petitioning a House costs no goods and leaves you in a debt with no stated end, and anywhere within reach of a House it's usually the first thing people try.

How long a notice waits

That depends entirely on where you filed it, and the Registry prints its own answer on every district map.

A settlement can't argue its way into a better band, because the Recorder sets the band from the report. Endorsement is the only lever it has.

Coverage sets the floor, and wealth can buy a faster answer above it. A prosperous holding in a poorly graded district can buy a response it has no entitlement to. A holding that has had a bad year can't, and a bad year is very often the reason for the notice in the first place.

Reading a notice board

A post pins its notices up in a row.

District · Farrow's Bridge · standing since the ninth District · Cold Aston · endorsed: nine days' Heartwood, lodging Regional · Tarn Holding · endorsed: one artifact, unassessed

The band tells you how bad the trouble is, and the endorsement tells you how frightened they are. When the two don't match, someone has left something out of the report, and it's worth finding out what before you walk out there.