Before dropping the coal cellar stairs, Ada Morland stopped squarely in front of the washroom briefing slate. She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose to read Pella’s chalked figures line by line.
“Ninety-two degrees surrounding, ash wooden props checked by Eren, zero overnight heat excursions noted,” Ada read aloud. She tapped the slate frame with her wrench knuckle. “Hotter than I like for a cellar, Pella, but thirteen degrees inside our hard abort line. Because you’ve logged a clean overnight board, we go down and get your court numbers.”
Pella’s throat squeezed tight so tightly she could only nod. Her hand was pressed flat against the outside of her apron pocket where Tab Zero-Four lay hidden like a live coal.
At exactly twelve-fifteen by the bells of St. Jude-by-the-Wall, the Courtesy Arch in Sister Merrow’s washroom hummed with a deep, authoritative deep ring that rattled the pewter spoons on the dresser shelf.
A smell of rain-soaked Yorkshire asphalt, wet wool, and warm machine oil cut through the steam of the laundry tubs.
Through the shimmering brass oval stepped Ada Morland.
She was dressed for heavy-duty trade. Thick navy-blue drill overalls treated with fire-retardant borate wash, steel-toed boots laced tight to the ankle. A leather tool apron buckled over her broad hips. Around both wrists, Jo Saye’s chemical tell-tale cuffs gleamed in the window light—pale, milky yellow, fully unreactive to the cool fifty-four-degree draft of the back kitchen.
