At fifteen minutes past noon, the bronze striker atop the Courtesy Arch chimed twice and the shimmering oval opened in the center of Sister Merrow’s washroom. Across the threshold stepped Imran Bell in his clean navy cargo overalls with his canvas sample satchel slung over one shoulder, followed thirty seconds later by Ada Morland wearing her buckled calfskin squeezing brace over her scarred left forearm and Jo Saye carrying a rolled linen pattern tube under her wool cardigan.
Before Ada had even set her thermos of lentil soup on the corner of the bread table, Pella rushed forward holding Kel Dorr’s tracing of Schedule C-9 and Korr Var’s squared correlation chart. In three rapid, breathless sentences—her cheeks hot with righteous anger—she announced that Master Davin Sorell had deliberately built a soul-eating engine to murder the river spirit Senn and that they should march straight to Councilor Elna Vesk’s residence before two bells to demand Sorell’s immediate arrest for fraud and public endangerment.
Imran Bell didn’t join in the anger. Instead, the thirty-six-year-old pest control technician set his sample satchel carefully on the dry end of the pine bench, took off his fogged glasses to wipe them with a clean chamois cloth. Then it looked down at the thick parchment tracing with the quiet, careful patience he had learned in university ecology labs and Yorkshire commercial kitchens.
