The summons from the High Senate arrived at the Lowbank workshop wrapped in oiled silk and sealed with the red wax of the City Board. By ten in the morning on the twenty-first day, the gray stone halls of the Senate House were lined with town watchmen, their blackened breastplates glistening under the smoky glare of pitch cressets.
Pella Rook walked between Senior Inspector Korr Var and Master Carpenter Eren Tal. She wore her clean working tunic of gray wool, Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs secured in her leather belt. Then she carried a pine case containing the broken halves of the quarry spirit token. Behind them, two draymen in oiled leather aprons carried the snapped six-inch iron gudgeon from Miller Tom’s mill on a heavy timber hand-barrow.
The Senate Grand Chamber was packed to capacity. On the right-hand benches sat seventy patricians and senior summoners from the High Terrace, their azure and scarlet silk robes trimmed with ermine, their golden sigils catching the gray daylight from the high window row windows. On the left sat eighty guildmasters, wagon drivers, and watermen from the Lower Wards, their wool tunics damp. Their boots smelled of river silt and animal fat.
At the raised center desk sat Councilor Elna Vesk. He was flanked by the eleven senior senators of the Safety Board. Before her lay the open town charter and an hourglass tuned in five-minute marks. She struck her boxwood gavel once, the sharp crack cutting through the rising murmur of the…
