At three bells on the eighteenth afternoon, Pella Rook, Senior Engineer Korr Var, and Kel Dorr met Examiner Corvin Hest beneath the vaulted stone cloister of St. Jude’s Almshouse, halfway between the lower canal locks and the steep steps leading up to the Summoners’ College. Corvin had chosen the quiet courtyard himself. Over the past week, as Master Davin Sorell tightened security around the Hollow Crown’s upper command ring, any junior judge seen walking down Fish Market Alley risked having his chamber keys taken away by Proctor Vane’s wardens.
Corvin stood beside the dry stone well-head in his dark wool academy coat, his silver-piped collar buttoned to the chin against the river wind and his horn-rimmed glasses reflecting the gray clouds. He had witnessed the leaking throttle inside the Old Ferry Intake and helped audit the cellar heat levels. Even so, he still carried himself with the stiff, precise stance of a man who had spent ten years believing that the Summoners’ College was the only bulwark between Lathmere and chaos.
Without dramatic preamble, Korr Var unrolled the three-column correlation sheet across the flat limestone coping of the well-head, weighting its corners with two smooth river cobbles. Meanwhile, Kel Dorr laid the approved tracing of Schedule C-9 beside it.
