Over a steaming platter of smoked eels, boiled potatoes, and dark turnip bread in Sister Merrow’s kitchen, the Lowbank Upkeep Backup conducted its first formal employment transaction. On a fresh sheet of plain rag paper, Pella wrote out the terms of Corvin’s employment as the workshop’s chief recording scribe.
The contract was devoid of academy oaths of fealty or mystical covenants. It was written in the clear, robust trade language of the Watermen’s Guild. Corvin agreed to maintain the workshop’s pressure ledgers, copy archival blueprints, and transcribe tracking data reports from Harrowby. In return, the committee guaranteed him a weekly wage of one silver coin, a warm dry cot in the cooperage loft, three hot meals a day from Merrow’s hearth, and legal protection under the town backup charter.
‘Read Article Four carefully, Corvin,’ Sister Merrow insisted. She leaned over his shoulder with an iron ladle. ‘No nonstop writing past the fourth hour of the afternoon without a thirty-minute interval for tea and bread. If I catch you hunched over that desk with an animal fat candle past midnight, I will confiscate your ink-horn and put you to work chopping firewood.’
Corvin stared at the thick parchment, his hand trembling as he held the goose quill. For five years at the College, he had lived under the terror of the whip, the branding iron, and the constant threat of dismissal into the debt mines. To see his labor valued as an honest exchange between equals was more overwhelming than the…
