The temptation sat in Pella’s chest like a cold iron weight, sharp-edged and persistent.
For three weeks, she had watched the power of the Summoners’ College bear down upon Lowbank. She had seen the town councilmen in their fur-trimmed mantles nodding along to Master Sorell’s dramatic demonstrations. She had seen the armed academy court guards posted at the corner of Fish Street, their bronze-plated truncheons resting against their hips. She had felt the fragile, exhausting vulnerability of running a workshop whose entire defensive rig consisted of an unpicked wool coat, a handful of borrowed wrenches. A brass bell that anyone could steal with a crowbar.
Sorell had fifty indentured summoners. He had the High Municipal Guard, the gold reserves of the Water Board, and thirty years of academy precedent backing his right to drown the lower docks in the name of civic progress.
If Senn was an ancient elemental presence—if it held the weight of three converging mountain rivers in its currents—could it not spare a single splinter of its power? A combat aspect. An avatar of cold water and river shale. A mantle of high-pressure force that Pella could draw around the workshop to smash Sorell’s court guards into the cobbles if they came with an injunction to board up the brass arch.
