By three in the morning, the rain had settled into a quiet, relentless drizzle that coated the roofs of Lowbank in a sheen of black oil. The streets were deserted except for the town watchmen pacing their rounds with iron rattles and hooded lanterns. Their heavy footsteps splashed through the flooded gutters. In the bakeries along Fish Street, the ovens remained unlit. No baker wanted to risk an oven fire with river water already seeping through the cellar floorboards.
In Sister Merrow’s washroom, the fire in the stone hearth had burned down to a mound of glowing birch embers that cast long, red shadows across the timber ceiling. Pella sat on the low stool before the Courtesy Arch, her knees pulled to her chest. She watched the faint blue soft glow shimmer across the polished brass ring. The arch was silent, its oval portal showing only the dark, empty inside of Ada Morland’s workshop in Harrowby. There, an electric wall clock with a white dial clicked away the night hours in another world.
Beside her, young Tavi lay asleep on a pile of dry woolen blankets, his small hands clutching Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs like a soldier clutching a sidearm. His breathing was soft, steady, and untroubled, the deep, unbroken sleep of a boy who believed that the adults around him knew how to fix whatever was broken in the world.
