The dry vault behind Sister Merrow’s medicine room was the only room in Lower Lowbank built upon a natural sandstone outcrop that rose four feet above the historic flood mark of the Great Sluice. The walls were unplastered, built of dense gray sandstone cut stone blocks joined with lead seams, fully free of the weeping lime and mold that infested the surrounding basements.
Sister Merrow sat behind a small deal writing desk, an iron-gall inkpot balanced in a lead ring to keep it from tipping as the rhythmic shakes of the river rumbled through the bedrock. Before her lay the heavy, thick parchment-bound Lowbank Parish Locked deposit Ledger, its pages yellowed by fifty years of recorded births, apprentice indentures, and burial fees.
Beside the desk stood Councilor Vesk. His town seal ring was held in his palm. Corvin Hest, who held a pair of brass apothecary balance scales suspended from a small wooden gallows.
“Entry eighty-eight,” Merrow spoke aloud, her steel pen scratching with slow, uncompromising deliberation across the thick parchment. “Emergency Overtime Wage Guarantee for the Courtesy Bridge Specialists. Thirty-six silver coins drawn against the town grain revenues under Executive Warrant Eighty-Eight D.”
Corvin placed a two-silver coin weight of polished brass into the left pan of the apothecary scale. Then he dropped two of the silver coins from the canvas bag into the right pan with a pair of horn-tipped tweezers.
