At a quarter to five on the twenty-fifth afternoon, the iron-shod wheels of the town heavy cart rumbled into Fish Market Alley to the sound of cheers from thirty neighbors gathered beneath the dripping roof edges. Master Tailor Dima Fen stepped down from his loft with his shears in his pocket, Widow Orla looked out from her bakehouse door with flour on her forearms, and thirteen-year-old Tavi had the alley wicket propped wide open and the four thread-caps already unscrewed from the iron anchor-studs on the washroom floor.
Yet inside the back kitchen, neither Pella Rook nor Foreman Eren Tal treated the return of the fourteen brass members as amagical triumph that solved their problems by merely reappearing. In the ethos of the Courtesy Workshop, a recovered tool—especially one that had been abused in Master Sorell’s assembly bay—was a piece of safety equipment that had to be stripped, cleaned, plumbed, and tested before a single human life was trusted to its threshold.
“Clear the bread table and bring the spirit level and the turpentine rags, Tavi,” Eren Tal ordered as the town spear guards helped carry the wrapped bronze uprights across the threshold and accepted mugs of hot spiced cider from Sister Merrow in the main kitchen. “We don’t put a single nut on the anchor-studs until Pella and I have scrubbed the foundry grease off every contact face.”
