They pulled back to the dry shelter of the old cooperage cellar behind Lowbank Slipway. The room smelled of dried oak shavings, rancid fish oil, and decades of salt-cured herring. On a scarred workbench between two cooper’s cradles, Eren Tal had set an oil lamp and a bowl of cold boiled potatoes sprinkled with coarse gray salt. Outside, the steady rhythm of rain on the cedar shingles was punctuated by the deep, hollow clunk of river barges nudging their fender piles.
Corvin sat on an upturned keg, his knees drawn up. His hands grabbed a mug of steaming water that smelled faintly of willow bark. Before him on the timber bench lay two sheets of heavy tracing paper, their edges frayed from being hurriedly stuffed into an inner robe pocket. Korr Var flattened the sheets with his palm, anchoring the corners with a pair of rusty iron hoop-clamps.
‘Explain what we’re looking at, Corvin,’ Korr Var said quietly. ‘If these papers go before the Council, they must stand under cross-check from Sorell’s legal exam guards.’
Corvin swallowed, his throat making a dry click. ‘The upper sheet is the true log from the third watch yesterday. It was copied by Apprentice Jan from the brass fine-scale on Gate Three. The leaf was down four feet six inches, exactly where Hal Rook set the autumn baseline twenty years ago. The lower sheet is the official transcript presented to Councilman Vesk this morning, signed by Sorell and Examiner Nenn.’
