A prosperous grain-mill owner from the upper road arrives at the kitchen expecting Ada to replace his broken eighteen-foot water-wheel in a single miraculous visit. She stood inside the threshold of the washroom workshop on Fish Street. Prosperous Miller Hobb Vane and Pella Rook set a velvet coin-pouch containing six silver crowns tossed carelessly onto Sister Merrow’s scrubbed pine table where the lantern light fell cleanest across the work surface. Meanwhile, Foreman Eren Tal checked the entry under the heading of Master Vane of the Upper Barley Mill.
The technical core of master vane of the upper barley mill needed inspecting the snapped oak gudgeon-pin sketch that showed three winters of neglected animal fat lubrication and rotten wood slot wedges. Throughout this phase of the ballad-seller’s exaggeration and the flood of merchant requests, the crew held fast to triage discipline over public spectacle. Every brass fitting, every stitched seam. Every thirty-minute lunch crossing had to answer to physical measurement rather than guild politics.
“I don’t need a week of noisy carpenters cluttering my mill-race with work frames,” Miller Vane declared. He tapped his silver-headed cane against the flat stone slabs. “Bring your lightning-woman through the brass frame for ten minutes between her tea-breaks, let her wave her iron wand over my broken wheel. The six silver crowns are yours.”
