At three o’clock in the afternoon, the heavy iron bell of St. Jude-in-the-Mud began to toll a slow, deliberate three-stroke set that rolled across the rooftops of Lowbank like distant thunder: one... Two... Three... Pause. One... Two... Three... Pause.
It wasn’t an alarm of sudden disaster. It was the pre-announced signal for the first full-scale civic escape drill in the four-hundred-year history of the lower river wards. Across Fish Street, Wharf Street, and Cooperage Row, shop doors opened, iron shutters rattled shut, and four hundred and twenty working residents stepped out into the damp afternoon air with calm, practiced discipline.
Pella Rook stood on the high platform at the junction of the new raised oak walkways, Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs in her left hand, a pocket watch ticking in her right. Beside her, Auditor Varo Nenn held his field slate, his pen poised over a fresh sheet of parchment.
The air was chilly and smelled of wet stonework, chimney smoke. The sharp bitter-salt tang of fresh pipe lime whitewash applied to the high hall handrails. Down below, the cobblestones were damp with autumn mist. But along the raised walkways, sixty timber wagon drivers and coopers wearing crimson armbands were stationed at every ramp and stair, guiding their neighbors with firm, cheerful smooth speed.
