Pale morning fog drifted through the iron-barred cellar windows of Sister Merrow’s kitchen back kitchen. She carried the damp chill of the Gray Rush across the flat stone slabs. The room smelled of cold sheep fat, steeped blackberry-and-chicory leaves, wet river silt, and the unfamiliar, heavy perfume of almond pomade from the Upper Terraces. At the far end of the scrubbed pine worktable, an unglazed clay pot jar held the workshop’s leftover silver coins beside a stack of grease-stained slates.
Pella Rook stood beside the wash trough with Hal Rook’s seven-inch brass measuring tongs and a clean linen drying cloth in her grip. Her hands were dusted with coarse soda ash from cleaning the wash troughs, her shoulders aching from the dawn shift. Four years of scrubbing academy summoning circles had left pale crescent scars across her knuckles. The morning damp always settled into her wrists before the peat fire caught.
“He didn’t bring his exam guards this time,” Foreman Eren Tal murmured from the corner by the ash timber shores, his palm resting flat against the handle of his firmer chisel. “Walked down the boat ramp stairs alone in velvet boots. Left two mud rings on the threshold stone.”
