At four bells on the seventh afternoon, a lacquered two-man sedan chair trimmed with gilt bronze moldings squeezed past the herring barrows at the mouth of Fish Market Alley and halted directly before Sister Merrow’s back kitchen porch.
Two liveried porters lowered the poles onto the wet cobblestones. Meanwhile, a footman in silver-braided broadcloth held a waxed silk umbrella over his master’s powdered wig.
Out stepped Master Vane-Kett, a wealthy silk factor from the third tier of the Upper Terraces whose velvet-lined cloak smelled strongly of imported bergamot pomade.
Drawn by the unusual sight of an Upper Terrace equipage in Lowbank, fourteen Fish Street residents—including Widow Orla, Mistress Vane, Cooper Hobb, and Master Tailor Dima Fen—gathered along the wet alley wall beside the four-column cedar Triage Board Eren had hung beneath the porch roof edges.
Master Vane-Kett didn’t deign to mount the two stone steps into the back kitchen. Instead, he tapped his silver-headed cane against the threshold rail. Then he held out a plump velvet pouch that chinked with heavy Mint silver.
“You’re the Rook girl who operates the foreign high-pressure artisan,” Vane-Kett announced in the loud, nasal rhythm of a town elder addressing a market stall. “My house steward tells me your woman balanced the pressure at the Nine Lanterns in twenty-four minutes. Since Tuesday afternoon, the marble dolphin cascade in my upper terrace courtyard has dropped to an embarrassing trickle. Councilman Vesk’s cousins are dining under my arbor tomorrow evening. Here are nine silver coins—three times your…
