The courtyard of the Nine Lanterns boarding house was a narrow, cobblestone well hemmed in by four stories of leaning oak framing and damp grey plaster. Overhead, crisscrossing lines of wet laundry dripped grey wash-water onto the flat stone slabs. He smelled of animal fat soap and boiled cabbage.
At the center of the yard, Master Corley stood with his arms crossed over a grease-stained wool doublet. He was a short, thick-necked landlord with broken veins across his nose and the sharp, suspicious eyes of a man who spent his life calculating the cost of an inch of candle animal fat. Around him, thirty tenants—washerwomen with chapped red forearms, elderly dock wagon drivers with stiff knees, and seamstresses holding sleeping infants—crowded along the timber galleries and open back kitchen doorways.
“I called for a summoner,” Corley barked. He spat a wad of bitter chicory onto the stones. Pella and Eren walked through the alley archway. “I didn’t call for a carpenter and a girl carrying two wash-tubs. I have four inches of boiling muck bubbling up through my flat stone slabs right now. The smell is driving the third-floor lodgers onto the street. I have two silver coins here, Pella. I want you to open your little brass gateway, pull through an elemental or an iron-demon, and freeze that drain shut.”
