The kitchen board in Sister Merrow’s refectory had always smelled of stale cabbage water, cured bacon rind, and the sour yeast of morning bread dough. For three weeks it had been covered in pinned scraps of rag paper, grease-penciled slate slips, and handwritten notices from dock wagon drivers whose cellar drains were backing up with river mud. But the church bell of Saint Jude-in-the-Fens tolled five in the evening. Then, Eren Tal cleared the board with a single, brutal sweep of his forearm.
Paper scraps fluttered down to the damp sawdust on the flags. A butcher’s request for a grease trap cleanout, a cooper’s plea for a cellar check, a hearing from a cart driver about a flooded wheel pit. Eren didn’t pick them up. He took four forged iron tacks from his leather apron pocket. He set a heavy deal board across the center of the frame. Then he drove the tacks home with four sharp, ringing blows of his wooden mallet.
The board was surfaced in planed sheepskin parchment, stretched tight over ash laths and ruled in double red columns with grease pencils. At the top, written in Korr Var’s clear, blocky land-mapper’s script with black dark oak-ink, were the words: Payback LEDGER · INJURY INDEMNITY ACCOUNT FOR ADA MORLAND.
