Fish Street smelled of boiled cabbage, wet soot, and the bitter sulfur tang of river slow leak bubbling up through the cellar floorboards.
The street was narrow, a steep cobbled gully running between four-story tenement blocks whose upper overhangs nearly touched across the alley. At the lower end. There, the cobbles met the wharf wall, brown river water was already creeping over the curb, swirling around the legs of handcarts and floating heaps of discarded cabbage leaves.
Pella Rook hurried down the greasy stone steps, her wool tunic soaked through and her breath coming in short, white puffs. She carried her canvas shoulder bag containing her chalk, measuring tongs thin wedges, and emergency sealing animal fat. Behind her, Mira Os—a widowed seamstress with three grown sons in the cart hauling trade—strode with a broom handle in one hand and a bundle of red escape rags in the other.
“He won’t budge, Pella,” Mira said. She pointed her broom handle toward a cellar door half-sunk at the bottom of a stone area-way. “Torren Vale. He’s barred the hatch from the inside. He says the last time the College ordered a flood escape, three cartloads of his seasoned Italian walnut were stolen by high-terrace looters while he was shivering in the cathedral refugee yard.”
