By ten bells of the night, the Lowbank workshop was quieter than it had been since the evening Pella Rook first pried up the cellar flat stone slabs and bolted her father’s brass arch into the lime mortar.
Outside, the river ward was finally asleep. Through the high riverward high window row grates came the deep, steady, unbroken hush of the Gray Rush sliding past the open weir gates at fourteen feet of head. A low, soothing white noise that smelled of cold mountain gravel, wet willow bark, and clean October frost. Every half hour, the distant, measured crunch of hobnailed boots sounded on the quay cobbles outside as Rafe and the paid night-watch crew walked their rounds between the Sight-Glass and the Old Intake Gate, their lantern light sweeping briefly across the frosted glass of the upper windows before moving on.
Inside the workshop, only a single animal fat dip burned in its iron saucer on the corner of the heavy pine workbench, alongside the low red embers of the coke fire bowl.
Pella moved around the room with the slow, careful economy of a tradeswoman closing down a shop after a seventy-two-hour emergency shift. Her wool apprentice tunic was stiff at the cuffs with dried gray river silt and white burning lime powder from the afternoon’s cellar inspections. The muscles between her shoulder blades pulled with a deep, heavy ache every time she lifted her arms. Yet she didn’t hurry. Hal Rook had taught her. Just then, she…
