Warm lantern light gleamed off the newly washed flat stone slabs of the kitchen washroom as dusk settled over Lowbank. That turned the brass frame of the Courtesy Arch into a quiet band of gold against the whitewashed brick pier. The cellar smelled of beeswax polish, damp slate dust, and the savoury steam of mutton broth simmering on Sister Merrow’s iron range in the next room. Pella Rook knelt before the dark slate casing beneath the arch with a quarter-inch steel firmer chisel and a boxwood carver’s mallet.
The tight, gnawing knot that had lived behind her breastbone since the morning she walked out of the academy check hall had vanished, replaced by the calm, settled fatigue of an engineer who had tested every joint in her line to destruction and found the metal sound. With crisp, measured taps of the boxwood mallet, she finished cutting the last letter of Rule Seven into the black stone doorstep.
With a stiff horsehair brush she swept the white stone powder into the cut cleanly grooves so that the chiseled words stood out sharp and readable even by a single animal fat dip: RULE 7. NO SPECIALIST CROSSES WITHOUT A NAMED LOCAL OBSERVER STANDING BY WITH THIRTY-SECOND Pullback Power. Every working hazard raised by Corvin’s audit had now been answered with checked physical law.
