At one-twenty in the afternoon, sixty-five minutes into the overtime crossing, the new listening network took its physical form across the riverfront. It was the total antithesis of the Summoners’ College. No grand marble towers, no gold-trimmed thrones, and no single master commanding an entire valley from on high.
Three small, independent circles were formed, each consisting of an ordinary deal table, a bowl of clean well water. A pair of brass measuring tongs connected to a short copper ground spike. At the First Gate, high in the timber water gate loft above the turning basin, Kel Dorr sat with his sleeves rolled up, his tin apprentice badge resting in the salvage box, his hand resting on the first branch of the wire.
Two hundred paces to the east, in the ancient stone gatehouse of the marsh water chute, Corvin Hest took his seat, his signed legal warrants laid out before him like sacred shape, his measuring tongs tuned to the second ringing. And in the upper gallery of the Ferry Museum, Pella Rook took her place before Hal Rook’s model, her father’s measuring tongs in her hands, her heart beating with the deep, quiet rhythm of an honest craft. The three points formed a triangle of shared responsibility across the dark water.
