Dusk came early to Lowbank on the seventh evening. That brought a cold harbor mist that smelled of salted herring, coal smoke, and the bitter-salt steam drifting up from the street gullies.
Inside Sister Merrow’s kitchen washroom, two animal fat lamps threw steady amber light across the scrubbed pine bread table where Pella Rook sat reconciling the Nine Lanterns material receipts in her ledger.
In the corner iron strongbox sat six silver coins and four copper pence of untouched emergency reserve. The first real working capital the Courtesy Workshop had ever possessed.
Before Pella could blot the final line of the water tank account, the heavy iron knocker on the alley wicket sounded three rapid, urgent raps.
Thirteen-year-old Tavi, who had been wiping down the brass uprights of the dormant Courtesy Arch with a dry flannel rag, sprang to the door. Then it lifted the oak latch.
On the wet cobbles outside stood three of Fish Street’s most substantial working householders: Master Bren the animal fat chandler in his grease-shiny leather apron, Mistress Ketter from the salt-fish curing shed, and Widow Orla from the corner bakehouse on Weaver Lane.
Behind them crowded four tenement renters holding horn lanterns, all talking at once. They saw the clean chalk columns on Sister Merrow’s wall.
