Bright mid-morning light streamed through the clean, unbarred high window row windows above Sister Merrow’s refectory table, warming the scrubbed sycamore boards after the chill of the river vaults. The room smelled of hot barley porridge, strong black chicory, dry linen drafting scrolls. The sharp vinegar bite of dark oak-ink. At the far end of the hearth, Master Tailor Dima Fen was brushing dried grey sewer silt off Korr Var’s waxed canvas coat, inspecting the horsehide elbow cups and brass-and-leather cuffs with quiet pride.
Her eyes were clear, the fatigue of the long night forgotten in the exhilaration of hard data. Pella stood at the center of the table with Hal Rook’s heavy brass parallel rule and a red grease pencil. Spread across the wood before her lay Korr Var’s forty-year town drainage linen roll, Auditor Varo Nenn’s stolen foundry vouchers and midnight spike logs. The fresh grey lead squeeze-impression pulled from Lateral Eight-B two hours ago.
Consolidating Korr Var’s official town drainage maps with the Courtesy Workshop’s heat telemetries to plan the 14-minute triple check. With the eighteen silver coins paid into the town registry, Sorell could no longer legally bar them from the surface galleries. But they needed a tight, timed together multi-trade plan to triangulate the exact chamber beneath the shuttered Ferry Museum where the illegal bronze bypass was venting.
