Three tin animal fat lanterns swayed from the ash rungs of a fourteen-foot check ladder propped against the hayloft beam behind Eren Tal’s wheelwright shop. The night air smelled of wet river mud, cold autumn drizzle, damp cedar shavings, and the sour animal fat smoke curling from the lantern vents. Around the base of the ladder, the puddles reflected the yellow light like spilled oil.
Senior Town Surveyor Korr Var stood at the bottom rung with his three-pound iron scaling hammer and a weighted drop-line slung at his hip, buttoned to the chin inside the newly assembled flax-and-foam-stone survey coat. His legs were stiff from climbing through wet stonework channels, his breath steaming white in the autumn chill. Master Tailor Dima Fen stood to his right with a piece of white tailor’s chalk. Meanwhile, Pella Rook held Hal Rook’s brass rule ready at belt height.
Testing whether Jo’s underarm gussets and Eren’s foam-stone panels allowed dynamic climbing movement without shifting out of position. Earlier in the week, a standard guild tunic had snagged Korr’s elbow on an iron ladder dog in the West Weir shaft, nearly pitching him twenty feet onto the stones. Unless the new coat cleared a dynamic upright climb with zero hem pull, neither Jo Saye nor Dima Fen would sign the deployment ticket.
