The rain over Lowbank had turned to a persistent, greasy drizzle that clung to the river stones like animal fat. In the damp back kitchen behind Sister Merrow’s kitchen soup vats, the air carried the sharp green rust off the brass arch sleepers, the warm bitter-salt tang of slaking lime, and the pervasive silt stench rising from the floor drain.
Pella Rook sat at the scarred oak frame stand table with her elbows planted on either side of the district survey sheet. Her sleeves were turned up past her wrists, revealing dark smudges of dark oak-ink along the heel of her right palm. Across the bench, Eren Tal was step by step scraping the dried gray residue of pipe lime from the jaws of a wooden bench clamp with a flat scraper. Each stroke came with a dry, rhythmic scratch that marked the minutes.
On the table between them lay twelve folded slips of rough grey paper. Each slip bore a name, a street number, and a desperate plea for drainage intervention. Three were stained with tea. Two smelled of wet cellar coal. One had been delivered at midnight by a trembling baker who claimed boiling water was seeping through his flour bins.
