Watery midday light angled through the high coal grate of Sister Merrow’s back washroom, glinting off a battered iron check lantern set beside the wooden wash tub. The air smelled of damp wool, rancid mutton-lard waterproofing, sharp vinegar compresses. The gritty gray limestone dust that clung to anyone who crawled the lower interceptors. On the bench lay an Imperial Pattern Four canvas hauberk, its stiff collar stained dark with sweat and rust.
Senior Town Surveyor Korr Var stood on an upturned cooper’s firkin with a notched boxwood scaling rule and a battered iron check lantern resting at his feet. His left shoulder was heavily bruised, the skin chafed raw from three hours wedged inside an eight-inch drainage lateral. At forty-nine, Korr stood five feet four inches in his woolen socks, with a slight leftward curve in his upper spine from twenty-six years of carrying a fourteen-pound brass transit case down narrow sewer shafts.
Town Engineer Korr Var couldn’t complete his load-bearing survey of Sector 8 because standard academy check armor was cast for six-foot retainers and pinched his collarbone until his arms went numb. Every time he had tried to reach the unlogged Silt Gallery blow-off tap that Auditor Varo Nenn had flagged in the midnight watchbooks, the thick, unbending armscye of the guild coat had choked off the pulse in his left wrist.
