Examiner Corvin Hest stood on the wet timber landing of the ferry kitchen porch, his gray college mantle pulled tight against the cold drizzle that blew in from the harbor. His leather boots, polished to a mirror finish that morning on the high terrace, were already spattered with the greasy yellow mud of Lowbank’s lower lane. Behind him stood four college court guards in boiled leather cuirasses, their hands resting on the pommels of heavy iron truncheons. Between two of the men sat a heavy oak crate heavy with wrought-iron straps and lined with lead-cloth. A relic transport chest used only for seizing unlisted magical items.
Corvin adjusted the wire glasses on his nose, checking an official scroll stamped with the red wax seal of the College Trial. His young face was pale, tight around the lips. He was twenty-eight years old, an accredited junior judge who took pride in the orderly filing of summoner licenses and the precise accounting of ritual chalk. He had spent three years cataloging spirit-binding failures in the college basement. He knew the rules, he respected the hierarchy. He hated coming down into the reek of the lower wards.
Beside him, the two lead court guards shifted the transport chest. Its heavy iron runners scraped loudly against the porch planks. One of the guards spat a yellow gob of pipe tobacco onto Sister Merrow’s scrubbed doorstep, his dull eyes scanning the alley where dock workers were beginning to gather beneath the dripping roof edges of the ropewalk.
The kitchen door swung open with a screech of rusted iron hinges. Sister Merrow filled the doorway, her massive shoulders braced against the door post. She wore her grease-stained cook’s apron over her gray wool dress. Her right hand rested heavily upon her ash cane. She didn’t step aside. She didn’t bow. Her dark, sunken eyes looked past Corvin’s glasses to the lead-lined relic crate resting on her porch planks.
‘You’re blocking the milk delivery, Judge,’ Merrow said, her voice flat and cold as cellar gravel. ‘The boy will be here with the handcart in ten minutes, and he doesn’t like having to haul around college cloaks.’
Corvin cleared his throat, unrolling the parchment scroll with a sharp, formal snap. ‘Sister Merrow. In the name of the High Sanctum of the College of Summoners, and by the special power of Master Davin Sorell, High Warden of the Confluence Sluices, I’m here to execute a court warrant.’
He held up the parchment. He pointed to the crimson wax impression that bore the emblem of the open book and the binding circles.
‘A report was filed with the Judge’s office this morning,’ Corvin recited, his voice steadying into office rhythm. ‘An unlisted Class-II brass summoning portal has been actively operated within these premises without a master’s oversight, without town locked deposit registration, and in direct rule-break of the Sluice Emergency Ordinances. The ancient object is to be surrendered right away into this lead chest for court impound.’
Pella emerged from the cellar stairway behind Merrow. She wiped coal dust and pipe lime from her cheek with the back of her sleeve. Her boots left wet, gray footprints on the kitchen floorboards. Eren Tal followed closely. His iron pry-bar was held loosely at his side, its heavy chisel point resting lightly against the floor. He didn’t raise the bar, but his six-foot frame and wide carpenter’s shoulders made the narrow kitchen hallway look exceptionally crowded.
‘An unlisted portal, Corvin?’ Pella asked, her voice quiet. She stepped past Merrow onto the threshold, standing two paces from the judge. ‘That arch sat in the college scrap cellars behind the coal store for thirty years. I hauled it out myself when Master Vane ordered the junk cleared to make room for Sorell’s crystal crates. It had two broken legs and green rust thick enough to scrape with a butter knife. The college logged it as scrap brass and deducted eight copper bits from my tuition fees for hauling it away.’
Corvin flinched slightly, but held his ground. He knew Pella. They had sat in the same lecture hall three years ago during Master Vane’s lectures on circle ringing tones. ‘Salvage of scrap doesn’t convey title to high thaumaturgical hardware, Pella. You failed your apprentice trials. You hold no seal. You have no legal right to strike a transit line, much less draw entities across an unmetered boundary. If that arch opens a channel to an unstable outside plane during the high flood crest, the feedback could tear the town water gate drain tubes out of their mountings.’
‘The drain tubes are tearing themselves out of their mountings right now,’ Eren interrupted, his deep voice rumbling like an empty barrel. ‘And it isn’t our arch that’s doing it. Why don’t you take your four pretty guards down into the gallery behind the larder and look at the bronze collar Master Sorell bolted to the baked-clay trunk? The one dumping boiling lime into our street cobbles?’
Corvin’s eyes darted toward the cellar door, a flicker of genuine uncertainty crossing his pale brow. ‘That... That is an authorized town high-pressure experiment. It has nothing to do with this warrant. Surrender the brass arch, Pella. Don’t force me to order the court guards across this doorstep.’
Pella reached into her apron pocket and pulled out her brass check measuring tongs. She clicked the sliding scale with her thumb, the sound sharp as a cocked latch. ‘You want the arch, Corvin? You bring an order signed by the Town Council. You bring Town elder Vesk and Chief Land-mapper Korr Var. Under the Lowbank Maritime Salvage Charter of Year 104, any rig recovered from scrap and restored using civilian funds is protected under mechanic’s debt claim until adjudicated by a civil court. You aren’t in the High Terrace now. You’re on the harbor line.’
The lead court guard shifted his weight, his leather sword sheath slapping against his thigh. He leaned toward Corvin. He muttered under his breath: ‘Sir, there’s twenty wagon drivers gathering at the corner with dock hooks. If we start swinging truncheons down here, we won’t get that lead chest back up the hill.’
Corvin’s face flushed red, his pride fighting his caution. ‘I’m offering you a peaceful handover, Pella. If you refuse, Master Sorell will declare this district an active hazard zone. No flour deliveries. No town timber allocations. You will starve in this kitchen.’
Sister Merrow took one step forward, her ash cane planting itself like an iron pile into the porch planking. ‘Starve?’ Merrow repeated, her voice dropping into a register that made the court guard’s hand slide off his truncheon handle knob. ‘I fed three regiments on boiled mule harness during the siege of the Red Redoubt, young man. I have forty sacks of dried beans in the loft, ten kegs of salt herring in the shed, and three hundred watermen who owe me their lives for stitching up their frostbite. You tell Master Sorell that if he cuts off our flour, Lowbank will stop unloading his coal barges at the quayside. We’ll see how his crystal engines run when his stokeholes are cold as river ice.’
Corvin swallowed, his fingers crumpling the edge of the parchment warrant. ‘This is open defiance of the High Sanctum, Sister. The law doesn’t negotiate with kitchen cooks.’
The four court guards shifted their weight, their hands tightening on their truncheons. The lead guard took a half-step forward, his iron-toed boot touching the porch threshold.
Sister Merrow didn’t reach for a weapon. She simply turned her head toward the kitchen hearth and called out in her flat military voice: ‘Tavi. Set the spit.’
Before the lead guard could plant his foot, Merrow grabbed the four-foot iron roasting spit that lay beside the kitchen door. A solid bar of forged iron an inch thick, used for turning whole mutton carcasses over the pit fire. With a swift, practiced movement that belied her limp, she slammed the heavy oak door shut directly in the guard’s face. The thick timber struck the frame with a booming thud that shook the porch timbers.
Inside, the heavy iron spit slid into the massive forged brackets bolted across the door frame. It dropped into place with a clear, ringing clack.
Outside on the porch, a guard shouted and banged the butt of his truncheon against the oak planks. The wood shuddered, but the three-inch seasoned oak didn’t give an inch.
‘Sister Merrow!’ Corvin’s muffled voice yelled through the keyhole, cracked with fury and alarm. ‘Barring an officer of the High Sanctum is an act of town sedition! I will return with a sapper squad and an arch-breaker warrant! You have forty-eight hours to clear this room, or the court guards will take the door off its hinges!’
Merrow leaned against the barred door, her breath steady. Her dark eyes looked at Pella through the dim kitchen light.
‘Forty-eight hours,’ Merrow said calmly. ‘The boy will take his guards down to the Crown Gate tavern to warm their fingers over brandy. We have two days before they bring the heavy tools. Pella, go to the washroom. Call that plumber woman. We need to know how to stop that drain tube before Sorell brings the tunnel diggers.’