The Courtesy Arch chimed with a deep, authoritative bell tone at half-past two. Its brass members shook with clean, unforced deep ring. Pella Rook sat on the ash crate in the back kitchen, her hands folded flat in her lap. She watched the amber glyphs along the header settle into their clear, sharp-angled tracks. Beside her on the deal table, Korr Var had unrolled a long strip of town parchment, its header stamped with the official seal of the Admiralty Court of Lathmere. The air smelled of wet stonework, cold river mud, and the sharp tang of pipe lime from the trench.
Across the threshold, the combined delegation from Harrowby sat in Jo Saye’s alteration workshop. Jo with her tailor’s shears in her apron, Imran with his light metal clipboard, and Ada Morland propped in an armchair, her left arm resting on Eren’s smooth ash splint. Outside the Harrowby window, the afternoon rain was clearing. That let a watery beam of autumn sunlight cut through the drifting coal smoke. On the corner of the cutting table, a clay pot teapot sat beside a crust of sourdough crust, evidence of a hurried midday meal.
“We’re convened,” Korr Var declared into the brass sky-slit, his dip pen fresh with dense black dark oak-ink. “In accordance with the mutual salvage conventions of the Three Rivers, this hearing will record the working terms under which voluntary inter-realm technical labor may resume. Miss Morland, as the injured lead artisan, present your terms.”
