The Courtesy Arch stood silent in the nook. Its brass uprights shone with a faint, oily sheen of copper green rust where the river damp had settled overnight. Between the twin curved members, the spatial sky-slit was narrowed to a two-foot square window, framed by the dormant rune tracks. Through the opening, the gray daylight of Harrowby revealed Ada Morland’s kitchen. A scrubbed pine table, a tin kettle whistling softly on a gas burner. A row of polished copper saucepans hanging from an iron ceiling rack.
Ada sat stiffly in a low wooden armchair, her left arm extended across a clean linen towel laid over the table. Her face was gray and drawn, the sharp lines around her mouth etched deep by pain. Her woolen work sleeve had been slit to the shoulder with tailor’s shears and pinned out of the way. From her wrist to four inches below the elbow, the skin was a mottled landscape of angry crimson, yellowish fluid blisters, and raw, weeping flesh where the cotton sleeve had peeled away during the emergency extraction.
Beside her stood Ben Morland, his thick flannel shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows. It held an enamel bowl of boiled water. He didn’t look at Pella or Korr. His jaw was set like a vice, his knuckles white around the rim of the bowl. The smell of boiled tea from the hearth hung heavy in the damp air, clashing with the cold healing tang of the washroom.
