The Ferry Market turning basin was a broad, cobblestone tiered arena that had served the river trade of Lathmere for two hundred years. In normal seasons, it was packed with fishmongers’ stalls, cabbage crates, coils of tarred mooring hemp, and barrels of pickled herrings. But on this wet autumn morning, every stall had been cleared back against the surrounding brick tenement walls.
In the center of the vast circular plaza, four heavy oak carpenters’ frame stands had been erected by Eren Tal’s crew, leveled with care across the wet flat stone slabs. On the frame stands rested the clip-on components of Hal Rook’s scale high-pressure rig. Three twenty-foot water chutes made of seasoned white cedar, their joints lined with red lead and secured by brass draw-latches.
Around the outer edge of the frame stands, forty laundresses from the South Docks stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Their heavy canvas aprons were tied over their wool shawls. They formed a solid, disciplined barrier to keep the surging crowd from jostling the delicate instruments. Each woman wore a scarlet Courtesy ribbon pinned to her shoulder. Then she held a five-foot ash clothes-prop in her calloused hands, planted firmly on the stones.
Behind them stood sixty lightermen from Renn Vos’s guild, their dark oilskin coats glistening in the rain. They didn’t carry weapons—Korr Var had forbidden even boat-hooks within the market square—but their broad shoulders and quiet, resolute presence were an unmoving wall that no academy court guard would dare challenge without an infantry regiment at his…
