The washroom behind Sister Merrow’s kitchen had been scrubbed with strong lye before the noon bells began ringing across the Lowbank wharves. The sharp, bitter-salt smell of wood ash soap competed with the heavy steam of boiling cabbage and salted salt-pork drifting from the soup cooking pots in the outer courtyard, where sixty dock laborers stood in the autumn drizzle waiting for their rations.
On the damp flat stone slabs of the washroom, the Brass Courtesy Arch stood anchored to its four cured ash sleepers. The gaps in the rune tracks—the deliberate three-eighths-inch breaks that allowed the arch to breathe without drawing compulsory magical arcs—gleamed with a soft, dull copper hue.
Above the arch, the dark slate work order clicked into position:
The brass gear catch atop the arch gave a clear, metal ping. The shimmering kerosene-like distortion inside the oval parted like thin silk. The cool, clean air of an English autumn rolled into the humid washroom. He carried the distant rumble of a diesel bus and the smell of wet tarmac.
Jo Saye stepped onto the flat stone slabs of Lathmere wearing her heavy navy wool cardigan, her steel-rimmed glasses resting on a braided cord around her neck. A canvas tool roll tucked firmly under her arm. Her gray hair was pinned in its neat, sensible bun. Her thumb carried the dimpled brass tailor’s thimble she had used for forty years at Threadbare Alterations.
