In the wheelwright’s shed, the rain drummed steadily against the cedar shingles. But inside the workshop the only sound was the harsh scratch of dark oak-ink on heavy rag parchment. Pella sat at Eren’s drafting desk, a clean dip pen held in her ink-stained fingers. She stared down at the blank lines of the town contract template.
Across the bench, Eren was carefully sharpening an adze blade with an oiled whetstone, the steady scrape-scrape of steel against slate setting a rhythmic boundary in the room. He had laid five distinct items across the timber bench. A two-foot length of lead pipe, three forged iron joint dog-irons, a block of animal fat, an oak wedge, and a brass line-weight bob.
The workshop smelled of dry sawdust, boiled tea, and cold iron metal shavings. In the corner by the stove, Tavi sat on an overturned nail keg, diligently chewing through a thick sourdough crust spread with cold bacon dripping. Meanwhile, he watched the carpenter’s hands move. On the floorboards, pale white rings of pipe lime marked where Eren’s damp boots had tracked in slurry from the Nine Lanterns alley.
‘Write two silver coins for the first test check,’ Eren said without pausing his whetstone. ‘Not copper bits. Silver coins, tested by weight against the harbor scale.’
Pella looked up, her forehead creased with worry. ‘Two silver coins just to walk down the cellar steps, Eren? Sister Merrow fed forty families yesterday on less than twenty coppers. If we ask seven silver coins for the whole job, Orv will scream that we’re robbing him in broad daylight.’
Eren set the whetstone down with a sharp, hollow rap against the bench. He reached across the table, took the pen from Pella’s hand. Then he set it firmly in its brass stand. ‘Look at me, Pella.’
The girl met his eyes. Eren’s face was lined with forty years of shipyard carpentry. The scars of snapped cables, dropped beams, and the deep, permanent grooves cut by salt spray and sawdust. ‘Charity is what Sister Merrow does with leftover soup cabbage. She feeds the hungry because human decency needs it, and nobody asks for a certificate. But what you’re doing in that cellar is not soup.’
He gestured toward the open trapdoor leading down into the washroom crawlway. ‘You’re calling an experienced tradeswoman from across an unmapped boundary. Ada Morland has to leave her real job in Harrowby, park her work van on an English street, and step into ninety-degree sulfuric steam that could strip the skin off her hands. If she breaks an ankle on Orv’s rotten stairs, who pays for her crutches? Sister Merrow? The High Council? Master Orv?’
Pella swallowed hard. ‘No. They wouldn’t pay a penny.’
‘Of course they wouldn’t,’ Eren said, his voice dropping into a hard, steady pace. ‘They would call her an otherworldly phantom and forget she ever breathed. You’re responsible for her safety, Pella. And safety costs money. If you don’t charge Orv for the risk, you’re subsidizing his profit with Ada’s blood.’
He picked up a piece of dry pine shingle and a black grease pencil. ‘Here is how an honest workshop calculates a price. Item one: Check-up Check. Two silver coins. That covers Ada’s twenty-minute transit, her instrument wear, and the risk of entering an unmapped confined space. Half of that goes straight to her Harrowby locked deposit account. The other half stays in our tool fund.’
Eren drew a clean line beneath the two silver coins. ‘Item two: Materials and Heavy Shoring. Four silver coins. We need two twelve-foot oak balks to prop Orv’s central floor beam before it collapses under the steam load. Oak doesn’t grow in gutters. I paid cold coin for those balks at the timber wharf. We need thirty pounds of lead wool to caulk the bypass pipe rim, four forged iron wedges, and ten yards of boiled reed wrapping from Dima’s shop.’
Pella watched the numbers gather. ‘That’s six silver coins.’
‘And item three,’ Eren said. He pressed the pencil down hard enough to dent the wood, ‘is the Emergency Injury Reserve. One silver coin. Untouchable. Stored in a locked clay crock in Merrow’s pantry. If nobody gets burned, it rolls over to the next contract. If someone takes a blast of scalding salt water, we have silver ready to buy clean bandages, sweet oil, and milk without begging the parish.’
He tapped the slate-covered bench where the moisture gathered. ‘A workshop without an emergency reserve is just a slow-motion disaster waiting for a bad valve. Hal Rook knew that. The old ferry company had an injury pool funded by half a penny on every barrel moved across the boat ramp. When the College took over the locks, the first thing they abolished was the relief ledger.’
He pointed to a set of brass apothecary balance scales sitting on the upper shelf. ‘And we test every coin Orv hands us. Landlords in Fish Street love clipping the rims off old silver or paying with lead-plated guild counters. A silver coin must weigh exactly sixty-two grains of approved river silver, or it doesn’t get logged on the slate. We give honest labor, and we accept only honest metal.’
‘Seven silver coins total,’ Pella whispered, reading the final figure. ‘It’s more money than my father earned in a month of ferry upkeep.’
‘Your father worked for a town council that stole his pension and sealed his bypass,’ Eren said quietly. ‘He died penniless with wet lungs because he was too proud to present an itemized bill. Don’t inherit his martyrdom, girl. Inherit his trade.’
Before Pella could answer, the wicket gate in the yard banged open. Heavy, dragging footsteps sloshed through the gravel. Master Orv appeared in the doorway, supported on either side by his two burly rent-collectors. The landlord’s wool coats were soaked with brown cellar slurry up to his knees. His breath rattled like dry gravel in a tin bucket.
The air entering the shed behind the landlord was vile, bearing the sharp silt stench of boiling river muck, wet stonework, and copper green rust. Orv’s face was slick with sweat, his jaw trembling wildly.
‘Tal!’ Orv wheezed, collapsing against a wagon wheel. ‘The coal bunker... The floor has given way. Ten tons of Welsh hard coal just sank six inches into the slurry. The boiler chimney pipe is cracking. If that chimney pipe shears, the whole south wing will catch fire from the backdraft!’
Eren didn’t move an inch. He picked up his adze, checked the polished edge with his thumb, and nodded toward Pella’s desk. ‘Contract is ready, Orv. Seven silver coins. Four down now before we lift a hammer. Three upon completion and sign-off of a dry floor.’
Orv’s face twisted in agonized outrage. ‘Seven silver coins? Seven? You’re highwaymen! I could hire three journeymen masons from the High Terrace for that sum!’
‘Then hire them,’ Eren said mildly, pointing his adze toward the rain-swept street. ‘The stairs are up there. The climb is three hundred paces. Of course, by the time they finish their tea and find their boots, your ten tons of coal will be at the bottom of the river, and your tenants will be sleeping on the wharf.’
Another rumble shook the ground—a sickening, hollow crunch from down the lane. It was followed by a chorus of shouts from Fish Street. Orv flinched as if struck with an iron rod. His fat hands trembled wildly as he fumbled inside his heavy coat. He pulled out a greasy leather purse tied with catgut string.
He emptied the purse onto the bench. Silver coins spilled across the pine shavings. It was old, heavy guild silver coins stamped with the three-tower crest of Lathmere. Orv counted out four heavy silver discs. His fingers shook so badly that one coin rolled into the sawdust. Tavi darted forward, scooped it up, wiped the grit on his trousers. Then he set it squarely in the center of Pella’s parchment.
Eren took one coin, dropped it onto his brass balance scale. Then he dropped a standard brass balance weight onto the other pan. The scale leveled dead true with a satisfying metal ping. ‘Full weight,’ Eren grunted.
‘Sign the bottom,’ Pella said, dipping the steel pen and offering it to the landlord. ‘Write your name across the seal. We guarantee physical clearance of the blockage. We don’t guarantee the load-bearing sanity of your grandfather’s stonework.’
Orv took the pen like a man signing his own death warrant, scribbled his ragged, illegible mark across the bottom margin. Then he slumped against the bench. ‘Just stop the water,’ he groaned. ‘Stop the water before the building falls down.’
Pella picked up the four silver coins, felt their heavy, honest coldness against her palm. Then they slipped them into her pocket. She looked at Eren, who gave her a single, firm nod of test.
‘Tavi, run to the washroom,’ Pella ordered. Her voice took on the sharp, crisp power of a master on site. ‘Tell Sister Merrow to clear the floor. Ring the brass chime two times: full commercial deployment. We have twenty minutes on the clock, and Ada Morland is coming through.’