The morning mist off the Gray Rush was freezing cold. Just then, the sound of iron-rimmed wheels began clattering down the steep cobbles of Fish Street.
Pella Rook stood on the greasy stone curb outside Sister Merrow’s courtyard with her boots planted eight inches apart, her woolen cart driver apron pulled tight against the icy sleet. Her palms were tucked into her deep canvas pockets, her fingers wrapped around Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs. Beside her on the stone floor stood Senior Surveyor Korr Var, wearing his scarlet silk sash of town office over his dark frieze coat, holding the heavy brass staff of the City Water Board firmly against the granite flags.
Around the corner from the upper bridge came the College Watch.
Twelve beadles marched two abreast in heavy yellow wool surcoats, their steel sallets glistening with freezing drizzle. Each man carried a heavy ash-handled timber sledge or an eight-foot iron crowbar over his shoulder. In their midst, four apprentice blacksmiths were hauling two heavy, four-wheeled iron fire bowls filled with glowing coke, their hand bellows puffing rhythmic clouds of white sulfur smoke into the morning fog. Behind the fire bowls rumbled a heavy cart loaded with four massive pigs of blue mountain lead and two half-inch boiler plates drilled with rivet holes.
