Jo Saye had not taken three steps toward the pine dough-table before she stopped dead in her sensible brown shoes. She didn’t look at the basted reed smock. She didn’t look at Dima Fen’s polished brass shears. She stared down at the far corner of the four-inch-thick tabletop. There, a faint, white powdery film clung to the open grain of the wood around an iron dough-scraper. Her lips thinned into a straight, uncompromising line that any junior apprentice in Harrowby would have recognized as the herald of immediate punishment correction.
‘Pella,’ Jo said, her voice dropping into a quiet, icy register that made young Tavi take a half-step backward toward the larder door. ‘What did I tell you on the audio link yesterday about the working surface?’
Pella blinked, looking from Jo to the scrubbed pine bench. ‘We scrubbed it, Jo. Eren and Tavi spent an hour on it with river sand and boiling water. Sister Merrow washed it down with vinegar before the bells rang noon.’
‘You washed the middle,’ Jo said. He extended a gloved forefinger. Then he ran it firmly along the underside of the table’s bullnose lip. She held up her finger. The tip was coated in a pale gray smudge of dried sourdough flour and hardened lard. ‘Look at that. Sourdough starch. And swine fat.’
Dima Fen bristled, stepping forward with his brass shears held like a small sword. ‘Madame! That is Sister Merrow’s bread board! Three hundred watermen eat the loaves kneaded on that timber every week! Sourdough is the lifeblood of Lowbank! A speck of honest flour never hurt a coat!’
‘A speck of flour on a Sunday waistcoat ruins the velvet, Mr. Fen,’ Jo replied. That turned her tough gaze upon the tailor. ‘And a speck of flour on an unsealed reed seam in a high-pressure steam gallery is an invitation to manslaughter. Do you know what happens to wheat starch when exposed to sixty-degree steam under forty pounds of pressure?’
Dima paused, his glasses slipping down his nose as his skilled brain processed the question. ‘It... It hydrates?’
‘It gelatinizes,’ Jo said crisply. He unbuckled her Gladstone bag. Then he pulled out a stiff bristle scrubbing brush and a cake of yellow carbolic soap. ‘It turns into thick, gummy paste. If that flour dust gets into the shingled steam vents on Eren’s back, it will cook into glue within five minutes. The vents will stick shut. The rising body heat won’t be able to escape. Within twenty minutes in that gallery, your carpenter’s inner body heat will hit forty degrees, and he’ll pass out face-down in the boiling slurry with nobody to pull him out.’
The back kitchen was dead silent. Eren Tal looked down at his bandaged arm, then at the flour dust under the table rim, his jaw tightening. He reached out with his uninjured right hand, grabbed a stiff wire brush from the hearth bucket. Then he stepped to the bench. ‘Give me the vinegar, Tavi.’
‘No, Eren,’ Jo commanded, her tone brooking no argument. ‘You sit back down on that stool and keep that burned arm raised. You’re the client today, not the cleaning lad. Pella, take this carbolic. Tavi, fetch two kettles of boiling water from the hearth. We have eighteen minutes left on my work order, and I’m not pinning a single seam until this wood is clean enough to perform an appendectomy on.’
For the next four minutes, the back kitchen was a whirlwind of relentless, disciplined trade sanitation. Pella and Tavi worked side-by-side, scouring the heavy pine timber with boiling water, yellow carbolic soap, and coarse vinegar rags. Jo stood over them like a factory checker. He pointed her wooden curve rule at every knot-hole, every iron bracket. Every joint where old grease could hide. Dima Fen, humbled by the chemistry lesson, took a clean linen cloth and carefully wiped down his shears, his pins. His wooden weights until they shone like mirrors.
Pella finally wiped the wood dry with a clean linen towel. Then, Jo stepped forward and inspected the grain. She ran her palm across the timber. It was bone-dry, fragrant with carbolic and vinegar, and entirely free of grease. She nodded once, satisfied.
‘Right,’ Jo said, laying out a clean square of raw, unwhitened muslin across the pine. ‘Now we have a workbench. In Harrowby, we don’t start a job until the bench is true. A sloppy bench makes a sloppy seam, and a sloppy seam fails when the strain comes. Eren, stand up. Let’s get this coat over your shoulders.’
Eren stood up, stepping to the bench. Jo lifted the basted reed smock, slipping the left sleeve carefully over his bandaged forearm with practiced, gentle smooth speed that belied her strict manner. The bias-cut marsh reed draped over his wide shoulders with surprising grace, the golden ribbons molding to the curves of his shoulder muscles and chest like flexible basketry. The natural spring in the fiber held the fabric away from his bare skin. That created an insulating air gap two inches deep.
Jo stepped behind him, her hands moving with blinding speed as she began setting the steel pins along the shoulder seams. ‘Look at this back panel, Dima,’ she called out, her mouth holding three spare pins. ‘See how the shingled flap sits two inches below the shoulder blade? When he reaches forward, the flap opens half an inch to let the air out. When he drops his arms, the weight of the reed pulls the flap flat against the backing. It’s an automatic check valve. No hinges, no springs. Just gravity and shape.’
Dima leaned in close, his glasses reflecting the lantern light. He nodded slowly with total, humble respect. ‘Gravity and shape,’ the old tailor whispered. ‘By the Three Rivers, that woman knows an elbow.’ On the wall, the slate clock clicked: 13m 45s.
Outside in the lane, the muted shouts of the college court guards echoed through the drizzle. Another cart was turned back from the bridge barricade. Inside the back kitchen, the scent of carbolic soap and damp reed had replaced the sour stench of fear. For twenty minutes, the small room was not a besieged kitchen in a starving ward. It was an accredited workshop running under the highest standards of an honest trade.
Tavi emptied the dirty scrub water into the waste drain, setting the wooden bucket neatly on its hook. He looked at Pella with wide, sober eyes. ‘She didn’t use a wand, Pella,’ the boy whispered. ‘She just used soap and a ruler.’ Pella smiled quietly, her fingers tracing the edge of the clean bench. ‘That’s the secret, Tavi. The College thinks power is shouting spells from a marble balcony. But real work is keeping the grease out of the seams.’
Sister Merrow returned from the pantry with an iron kettle of fresh tea. She set four tin mugs on the dry corner of the bench. ‘Drink this before the clock beats you,’ Merrow said. Her dark eyes looked at Jo with deep, unrushed respect. ‘It’s boiled mint and dry chicory. It cuts the carbolic.’ Jo took a mug with a nod of thanks, blowing across the steaming rim before taking a sip. ‘Not bad, Sister. A bit bitter, but it puts iron in the blood. Now, let’s see this coat move under load.’
Jo turned back to the table, her hands smoothing the clean muslin sheet over the newly scrubbed pine. ‘Now, look at the selvedges,’ she instructed Dima, her finger tracing the outer rim of the reed canvas. ‘When you boil the marsh reed in soda ash, the outer pectin dissolves, but the plant fiber fibrils at the cut edge begin to fray. If you leave that edge raw, the steam will penetrate the inner core of the reed, swelling the fibers unevenly and causing the coat to warp into a stiff bell. We must bind every single edge with double-turned bias tape made of raw, unwhitened flax. Three stitches per inch, no more, no less.’ Dima nodded vigorously, his pencil scratching the instructions into his greasy pocket notebook. ‘Double-turned bias tape. Three stitches to the inch. I have two hanks of flax thread from the lower marshes, spun by the net-makers’ widows. It’s strong enough to tow a skiff.’ ‘Then it’s strong enough to keep Eren alive,’ Jo replied without pause.
Eren Tal stood tall in the center of the back kitchen. He felt the unique weight of the reed smock settle across his broad shoulders. It was unlike any working coat he had ever worn. The leather jerkins he used in the timber yard were heavy, stiff. Then he soaked up water until they weighed forty pounds, freezing his chest in winter and stewing his skin in summer. The linen shirts he wore under his apron were paper-thin, easily torn on rough cedar splinters and offering zero defense against white-hot vapors. But this reed coat was light, floating, and cool against his unbandaged skin. He held its own shape away from his ribs like an arched timber truss. ‘It feels like wearing a cedar boat upside down,’ Eren observed, flexing his right shoulder to test the ease across his shoulder blade. Jo smiled—a very small, tight, but entirely genuine smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. ‘That’s the finest compliment a tailor can receive, Eren. A coat should be a shelter, not a cage. Now let’s test your moving envelope before my clock runs down.’