Anet Rell lays the day’s gathered herbs on a folded cloth, keeping the leaves away from the damp stone. The bundle is small enough to lift with two fingers. The blue thread tied around it will tell a buyer that the remedy steward checked its origin; the fee for that check was the same as for a much larger lot.
Rell gathered the herbs above the outer road and brought them to the covered remedy row before the morning exchange. She says she can still sell a small lot, but only if the buyer accepts a price that recovers the check. If she waits to gather more, the leaves dry past the point the row will accept.
Tessa Orun keeps the tag beside the price board, not hidden from buyers. She supports the origin mark because substitutions are hard to detect once bundles are tied. She also says the fee makes the row favor sellers who can gather enough at once to spread the cost.
The question is not whether the mark helps. It is whether the same test could charge by lot size without making the tag less trustworthy. A steward who weighs a tiny bundle still spends time recording its origin; a seller with a single handful should not be made to pay for a claim the check cannot support.
The hall will compare the fee with the last three market prices before changing the rule. Rell has kept the receipt folded into the thread’s paper sleeve, ready to show what the buyer never sees on the board.
