The rhythmic thunder that shook Fish Street on the morning of the tenth day was not the natural pulse of the river. It was a harsh, bone-splintering impact that rattled the tin plates on kitchen shelves and sent chimney swifts screaming into the autumn sky. Pella Rook was half-way down the wheelwright’s alley. She carried a coil of chalked surveying twine, when the second shock wave hit. The cobblestones beneath her boots leaped an inch into the air, splashing puddles of black harbor muck across her canvas trousers.
She broke into a run, her boots skidding on the greasy stone boat ramp. Around the corner. There, the narrow apartments of Fish Street gave way to the grand marble outer edge of the College construction works, a crowd of fifty dockers and washerwomen stood pressed against the walls, frozen in terror. The air smelled of crushed limestone powder, scorched wool. The bitter ozone reek of strained summoning gold. In the center of the thoroughfare, a four-legged earth carrier spirit—a massive creature formed of compacted river gravel and tightly packed shale—was trapped in a violent, clockwork convulsion.
Upon its back, bound with glowing golden ropes of academy compulsion, sat a ten-ton dressed cut stone block of gray granite, meant for the upper castle walls of the Hollow Crown. But the timber ramp leading to Foundation Platform Four had been torn down two hours earlier by an impatient subcontractor. The spirit had reached the end of its physical path. But its binding command…
