At seven bells on the eighteenth morning. Meanwhile, the oak skids of the eighteen-foot tabletop water chute rested beneath oiled tarpaulins in the Ferry Market courtyard, a sharp, hesitant knock sounded at the alley door of Sister Merrow’s washroom. Foreman Eren Tal set down his brass spirit level on the scrubbed pine bench, wiped his palms on his canvas apron. Then he lifted the iron latch. Outside in the cold river mist stood twenty-one-year-old Kel Dorr, his threadbare academy oilskin cape dripping harbor rain onto the flat stone slabs and a flat leather draughting portfolio clutched tightly against his ribs.
Pella Rook looked up from the charcoal filter logs she had been checking beside Master Engineer Korr Var. Ever since Kel had helped release the over-strained stone-carrier spirit outside the lower gate, the young former summoner had kept his distance from the Upper Terrace quadrangles during daylight hours, earning his bread by sorting scrap bronze and copying harmless wharf tallies for the town clerks. Today his pale cheeks were flushed with the brisk climb down the bluff steps. His knuckles were white around the brass buckles of the portfolio.
“I didn’t steal this, Pella,” Kel Dorr said before anyone in the back kitchen could speak, stepping across the threshold and holding up a yellow parchment borrowers’ slip stamped with the blue town audit seal of Clerk Varo Nenn. “When the Board of Works subpoenaed the eastern bridge pillar stonework schedules last week, the College construction clerks bundled three folios of…
