At two bells past noon on the seventh day, after the midday soup kettles had been scrubbed and stacked on the drying rack, Sister Merrow cleared the long pine bread table in the main kitchen so Pella could unroll the six-foot linen plat of the Fourth Ward.
Foreman Eren Tal anchored the four corners of the starched linen sheet with heavy cast-iron sash weights, while thirteen-year-old Tavi stood at the head of the table holding a small wooden pillbox of twelve brass-headed map pins whose tips he had dipped in melted crimson sealing wax.
Beside Pella’s right elbow lay the seven stamped academy refusal writs collected from Dima Fen, Cooper Hobb, Widow Orla, and their neighbors, alongside the five extra refusal and deferral records from the morning’s triage queue.
Bright gray afternoon light slanted through the high window row windows, lighting up every property boundary, alley curb, and wharf piling drawn on the 1:240 town scale.
“We plot by measured chain-distance from the corner of Weaver Lane, not by eye,” Eren Tal instructed, laying his three-foot boxwood folding rule and brass carpenter’s square across the upper tier of the map. “Tavi, read the house number, the cellar water heat. The date of the College’s refusal writ. Pella, verify the lot frontage with Hal’s measuring tongs before the pin goes in.”
