The smell of scorched hair and singed pitch pine stayed in the washhouse back kitchen with the acrid persistence of a heavy-duty accident. Young Tavi sat hunched on a three-legged milking stool beside the cold graywater water tank, his knees drawn up to his chin, his head buried in his trembling hands. His right eyebrow was fully gone, reduced to a powdery smear of white ash. The fringe of his unruly brown hair was curled into crisp, blackened beads that smelled like burning horn. Across his forehead, the skin was raw and pink from the instant heat flash. Even so, Sister Merrow’s prompt intervention with a bucket of sour cabbage water had halted the burn before the tissue could blister.
Sister Merrow stood over him like a stone monument of righteous town fury. Her wooden soup ladle was held in her fist like a sergeant’s cane. She was soaked from the waist down where the cabbage salt water had splashed back from Tavi’s smock, her woolen apron dripping greasy drops onto the flat stone slabs. Beside her, Eren Tal was carefully inspecting the ceiling floor beams above the larder doorway with Hal Rook’s brass rule, poking at a patch of blackened pine timber where the flashover had licked the wood three seconds before choking in the draft.
‘You total, massive, feather-headed fool,’ Merrow said. Her voice dropped into a low, terrifying growl that carried more weight than an academy anathema. ‘In fifty years in the kitchens of Lathmere, I have seen men do stupid things. I have seen a brewer drop an oil lamp into a mash tun. I have seen an apprentice drop a frozen ham onto his master’s toe. But never, in all my days on the river, have I seen a lad strike a pitch-pine torch inside a room containing twelve sacks of milled wheat flour.’
Tavi sniffled, a mixture of ash and tears streaking his blackened cheeks. ‘I... I only wanted to burn the bugs, Sister. The beetles were climbing the sacks. I thought if I waved the torch, the smoke would make them drop off. My uncle used to smoke river hornets—’
‘Your uncle is a barge-drudge who doesn’t know his backside from a rudder-post!’ Merrow snapped, bringing the wooden ladle down on the edge of the water barrel with a crack like a pistol shot. ‘A hornet lives in an open willow tree, boy! Flour lives in a closed cellar! Do you know what flour dust is?! Answer me before I take this ladle to your britches!’
Tavi shrank back against the damp stone wall, his teeth chattering. ‘It’s... It’s ground wheat, Sister.’
‘It’s fuel!’ Eren Tal’s deep voice cut in, cold and hard as an iron anvil. Eren stepped down from his bench. He held out a handful of white flour he had scooped from the top of the bread table. He held his palm flat toward the apprentice. ‘Look at this grain, Tavi. When wheat is milled between two granite stones, it isn’t just broken. It’s atomized. Every tiny grain of starch is surrounded by air. When you throw a handful of flour into the air, you’re creating a cloud of dry, flammable dust with ten thousand square feet of surface area exposed to oxygen. If a single spark touches that cloud in a closed room, it doesn’t burn like a candle. It detonates like academy blasting powder.’
Eren opened his fingers, letting the fine white powder sift downward through the air. ‘The only reason you have skin on your face right now, boy, is because Sister Merrow’s larder is damp from the river seep. The humidity weighed down the dust cloud. If this had been a dry August morning, that spark would have blown the larder door into the canal and carried you and Sister Merrow through the front window in three dozen pieces. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’
Tavi nodded wildly, a fresh sob catching in his throat as the reality of what he had almost done settled into his bones.
Pella Rook walked over from the Courtesy Arch, holding her quartz slate in one hand and a pot of cold elderflower ointment in the other. She knelt beside the trembling boy, dipped two fingers into the cooling salve. Then she gently smoothed it across his singed forehead. Tavi winced as the ointment touched the raw skin. But the cool grease right away cut the burning throb.
‘Keep still, Tavi,’ Pella said softly. ‘The ointment will stop the skin from peeling. But Eren and Sister Merrow are telling you the truth. In Harrowby, they call it a backup deflagration. Ada told me about an explosion in a grain elevator near the railway docks. Five men died because an apprentice swept the floor with an unshielded kerosene lamp burning on a shelf. A craftsperson has to respect the physics of the workplace.’
Sister Merrow crossed her arms, exhaling a long, ragged breath that ruffled the damp linen of her collar. ‘The boy is banned from open flames for the rest of the winter. He doesn’t light a candle. He doesn’t stoke the hearth. He doesn’t strike a flint. If he needs to see in the dark, he carries a tin horn lantern with a double-mesh gauze screen, or he walks in the dark until his eyes adjust. Is that understood, Master Apprentice?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ Tavi whispered, keeping his eyes fixed humbly on his grimy boots. ‘Understood.’
Eren walked back to the barred larder door, unhooked the brass check latch. Then he peered through the four-inch watching slot. Inside, the darkness was still thick with the dry, rustling rattle of thousands of crawling beetles. The brief flame flash had not driven the insects away. If anything, the sudden burst of heat had agitated them further. Hundreds of the jet-black bugs were now swarming over the scorched timbers of the ceiling, their antennae thrashing wildly as they searched for an escape route from the rising underground heat.
‘They aren’t leaving, Pella,’ Eren said, shaking his head. ‘And we can’t use smoke. We can’t use fire. If we try to shovel them into buckets, we’ll crush half of them against the flour sacks and turn the wheat into black paste. How does your foreign technician handle an insect swarm?’
Pella stood up, wiping the grease from her fingers onto a clean rag. ‘Imran Bell doesn’t use fire, Eren. In fact, he told Ada that using open flame on an insect colony is the hallmark of an amateur who doesn’t understand biology. When you burn a swarm, you trigger their panic reflex. The workers scatter, scatter into the floorboards, and lay emergency egg clutches in every dark crack they can find. You don’t fight insects with heat. You manage them with heat and shape.’
Outside in the alleyway, the heavy iron boots of the town patrol clattered against the wet cobblestones. A sharp, arrogant rap sounded on the kitchen porch door. Three rapid strikes with an iron-tipped official staff. It was followed by the authoritative rattle of a college brass seal.
‘Sister Merrow!’ an imperious, reedy voice called through the oak panels. ‘Open this door in the name of the High Sanctum! We have detected a secret smoke discharge and an active pestilence manifestation within this home! Open right away, or the ward court guards will break the latch!’
Merrow’s eyes flashed with fierce, combative fire. She snatched her heavy cast-iron skillet from the hearth hook with her left hand, her right hand resting on the iron door-bar. ‘Speak of the devil,’ the old woman spat, ‘and his clerks come running with wax seals and empty promises. Pella, get your slate ready. The College has arrived to offer us a cure that’s ten times worse than the rot.’
Pella slipped the Courtesy Bridge slate under her work apron, checking that the quartz display was dimmed to avoid academy detection. She stepped to Merrow’s side, planting her feet firmly on the flat stone slabs. ‘Let them in, Sister. But don’t let them step past the entry mat. We know their cures: brimstone, debt, and an eviction notice.’
Merrow lifted the heavy oak bar with a single, practiced jerk of her shoulders. She threw the door open, framing her wide, tough dark shape against the gray morning mist. On the porch stood Junior Judge Corvin Hest. He was flanked by two academy cleansing summoners in sulfur-yellow wool robes and carrying smoking brass censers suspended from iron chains. Behind them, two town watchmen stood awkwardly with axe-spears. It looked distinctly uncomfortable beneath Merrow’s blistering glare.
‘Good morning, Examiner Hest,’ Sister Merrow said, her tone dripping with sweet, lethal malice. ‘If you’ve come for breakfast, the porridge is cold and the cook is armed. State your town business, or get your boots off my scrubbed porch.’
Tavi remained on his low stool, the elderflower salve cooling his forehead, his hands resting obediently on his knees. For the first time since he had entered the kitchen as a ragged ten-year-old orphan from the ferry docks, the boy began to understand that craft was not a game of speed or bravado. He looked at Eren’s bandaged arm, then at Pella’s calm, careful notes on the slate, and finally at Sister Merrow’s iron skillet. ‘I won’t do it again, Sister,’ Tavi whispered, his voice clear and steady. ‘Next time, I’ll ask the heat before I strike a spark.’ Merrow looked down at him, her stern expression yielding to a very faint, gruff softening around her mouth. ‘See that you do, boy. Now get the vinegar rag and wipe down the hearthstone. We have an honest technician crossing the threshold, and I won’t have him stepping in cabbage grease.’