The dawn river fog over Lowbank always carried the greasy stench of boiled animal fat and drowned reeds. At six in the morning, the light filtered down through the high limestone retaining walls of the Upper Terraces like sour skimmed milk, gray and thin, coating the muddy slipways in an oily sheen. Down along the ferry spit, the iron chain of the old cable barge creaked against its rotting oak gallows with every sluggish heave of the Three Rivers. It was a rhythmic, sullen complaint. Three links scraping over hardwood, a hollow splash of slack chain hitting the silt, and then the dull shudder traveling through the mud into the foundation timbers of the disused ferry workshop.
Pella Rook sat at the corner of the long sycamore bench in Sister Merrow’s kitchen. She scraped green rust from the pivot pin of her brass measuring tongs with a scrap of oiled emery cloth. The measuring tongs were seven inches long, salvaged four years ago from a scrap heap outside the College foundry, their legs filed down and tuned with tiny tick marks in her father’s hand. Every stroke of the emery cloth made a dry, rasping hiss that blended into the crackle of peat in the hearth. Her hands were stiff from the night chill, the skin across her knuckles marked with pale, healed scars from slipped wrenches and lime washes. She wore her faded bottle-green apprentice tunic, patched at both elbows with boiled ox-hide, and a heavy hemp apron with…
