The workshop loft above the Old Ferry Landing was quiet save for the drumming of autumn rain against the cedar shingles and the rhythmic, hollow slosh of the river against the quay wooden support posts. Pella sat at a wide pine drafting table. She was surrounded by thirty years of town drainage records, Hal Rook’s grease-pencil notebooks, and the careful transcripts from Docket Forty-Four B. A single kerosene lantern cast long, amber shadows across the whitewashed stone walls.
Across the table, Eren Tal was smoothing the edges of a two-foot wooden model water chute with a small block plane, fine curls of yellow cedar falling like ribbons onto the floor. A mug of cold boiled tea sat beside a plate of sourdough crust, untouched since sunset. The damp wet stonework of the workshop chimney radiated a faint, comforting warmth from the dying forge fire below.
“Look at the patent filings from Year Ten, Eren,” Pella said, her voice filled with a mixture of technical awe and deep sorrow. “This was when Sorell submitted his first design for the Hollow Crown to the Collegiate Senate. He didn’t call it an energy engine. He called it The Perpetual Sluice Warden. He described it as a total ringing dam that would freeze the river’s seasonal variance into a flat, predictable line.”
