By noon on Day 15, the news of the twelve-pound pressure drop had traveled through the alleys of the Lower Wards faster than the river mist.
It wasn’t carried by town criers or academy heralds. It was carried by washerwomen carrying empty buckets from dry cellars, by coopers who found their floor beams no longer sweating hot salt water, and by brewery wagon drivers whose drainage drain pits had dropped below the alarm pegs for the first time since the spring equinox.
In Sister Merrow’s kitchen courtyard, the daily line of sixty dockers and washerwomen had turned into an impromptu neighborhood assembly.
On the pine frame stand tables usually reserved for peeling cabbages and slicing salt pork, the residents of Fish Street and Slipway Lane had piled an astonishing array of grateful trade offerings. Three salted cods from the lower fish-curing sheds, a half-barrel of dark malt vinegar, six loaves of caraway rye bread fresh from the baker’s oven, and two heavy clay pot crocks of yellow hog’s lard for Eren’s timber axles.
“We don’t take charity for town upkeep,” Sister Merrow said in her flat, definitive voice, though she didn’t push the bread away as she sliced thick portions for the apprentice boys. “The workshop is funded by checked contracts and silver locked deposit. Eat your broth and keep your voices down. The academy watch has doubled its pickets on the bridge.”
