Junior Examiner Corvin Hest stood in the arched stone doorway of the Ferry Landing back kitchen, his dark wool academy robe pulled tight around his thin shoulders to ward off the damp river mist. In his left hand he clutched a leather-bound portfolio containing three unsigned arrest warrants for illicit extra-flat summoning. In his right hand he held his six-inch silver focus metal pen, primed to detect rogue demon familiars. A draft of cold air from the alley carried the sharp, familiar silt stench of the low-water mudflats.
He had expected to find a scene of dark, secret chaos. Unlicensed spirits bound to iron cooking pots, sulfur ash smoking on the floorboards. Pella Rook desperately chanting forbidden binding litanies over scared dockworkers. Master Sorell had told the Examination Board that Lowbank was harboring an uncontrolled flat rift that threatened the balance of the entire lower harbor.
Instead, Corvin saw four people engaged in what looked like a bizarrely careful carpenter’s drill. On the floor flags, yellow grease pencil marks defined clear working safety zones. Above the hearth hung an eighty-twenty bronze stop-bell, polished and stamped with the town mark of the Sea-court. Sister Merrow was kneeling by a wooden wash trough, wearing a heavy duck canvas smock with an unpicked cuff. Tavi stood three paces back, watching her wrist like a terrier watching a rat hole.
