The numbers that Marta Engel brought to the Committee’s emergency evening session at Guild Hall were, in the precise sense of the word, sobering. They were lower than expected. They were lower in almost every category. And they carried the particular authority of having been weighed, measured, and recorded rather than estimated.

The Merchants’ Guild’s first physical stockpile audit — inspectors entering warehouses with scales, inventory sheets, and the mandate to count every sack, barrel, and crate of eastern spice held in the city — was completed shortly after 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon. Fourteen Guild member businesses and three communal storage facilities were assessed. The results were consolidated by Engel, the wholesale broker, and presented to the full Committee at 6:00.

Total eastern spice reserves held by Guild members stand at approximately 4,200 pounds across 32 tracked varieties — roughly 15 per cent below the 4,900 pounds that members’ self-reported figures had indicated.

“The discrepancy is not dishonesty,” Engel said. “It is optimism. When you report from memory, you remember what you had last week. When you weigh what you have today, the number is smaller.”

The Critical Varieties

The audit’s most consequential finding concerns the short-supply varieties — the spices that will run out first and that most visibly define the crisis for restaurants and home kitchens alike.

Velveroot: 29 pounds. Down from the 34-pound estimate reported on Tuesday and the 38 estimated on Monday. At the current rate of rationed distribution — approximately 2 to 3 pounds per day across restaurants and retail — the city’s supply will be exhausted within 10 to 12 days. This is shorter than the 14-day window the Committee was working from.

Black cardamom: 118 pounds. Approximately three weeks at rationed levels, down from the estimated four weeks.

Saffron bark: 240 pounds. Four to five weeks, broadly in line with previous estimates.

Golden peppervine: 195 pounds. Three to four weeks, slightly below the earlier five-to-six-week estimate — a significant downward revision.

Smoked coriander seed: 680 pounds. Eight to ten weeks, consistent with prior reporting. The most resilient stock.

Committee chair Haroun Nazari said the results would prompt an immediate tightening of rationing for velveroot and golden peppervine. “We will reduce distribution to existing restaurant accounts only, and we will reduce the per-account allocation,” he said. “Retail sales of velveroot cease as of tomorrow.”

The Non-Guild Question

The audit’s reach, as expected, stopped at the Guild’s jurisdictional boundary. The six or more non-Guild merchants known to be selling above the 250 per cent cap were not inspected. Their holdings are unknown and unregulated.

This sharpens the Committee’s frustration with the Council’s deferral of the emergency pricing ordinance. “We now know exactly what we have, and it is less than we thought,” Nazari said. “And we still have no legal authority over the twenty per cent of the market that is undermining our rationing. Every pound sold above the cap by a non-Guild vendor is a pound that our framework cannot account for.”

Alistair Ferris, the Guild trade secretary, confirmed that the Council has indicated the ordinance may be taken up on Tuesday, 10 March — the day after the commission debate. “We understand the Council’s priorities,” Ferris said, with a restraint that suggested he understood them without necessarily approving of them.

The ESI

The Eastern Spice Index closed Wednesday at 339 — its sixth consecutive daily decline, and the lowest reading since 18 February. But Engel cautioned, as she has before, that the declining index reflects rationing discipline, not improving supply.

“If we released all restrictions and sold freely, the index would be above 450 within forty-eight hours,” she said. “The number is going down because we are choosing to let it go down. The stockpile is going down regardless.”

No Sarenne-routed cargo carrying eastern spices is expected to reach Bobington before the week of 16 March. The March gales are adding two to three days to every transit.