The back kitchen of Sister Merrow’s medicine room had been cleared of all domestic wash-tubs and vegetable baskets. In their place, the long pine table was scrubbed clean, lit up by three brass lanterns hung from the ceiling beams.
Pella Rook stood at the center of the table, an unrolled thick parchment dispatch contract spread out before her. The document was written not in the high, flowery calligraphy of academy lawyers, but in the sharp, readable script of town trade agreements. Every clause numbered, every debt defined. Every boundary of human consent stated in black dark oak-ink.
Beside her, Corvin Hest sat with his iron pen dipped and ready, his gray eyes scanning the text for procedural ambiguities. Across the table stood Councilor Vesk, his town signet ring resting on the thick parchment alongside a stack of heavy silver coins freshly drawn from the city treasury.
The brass Courtesy Arch in the corner hummed with a deep, ringing chord as all three Harrowby audio channels engaged at the same time.
“Attention, Harrowby dispatch,” Pella spoke into the central sound horn. Her voice carried the formal, steady pace of an authorized lead coordinator. “This is Lead Coordinator Pella Rook, convening the formal ratification of Emergency Overtime Dispatch Eighty-Eight D under the governing charter of the Courtesy Bridge.”
