Sister Merrow didn’t carry an apron, but her rough serge habit was bleached pale at the forearms from decades of antiseptic wash and boiling lye water. She walked down the marble aisle with the slow, unrushed pace of a woman who had spent forty years kneeling on dirt floors to clean compound fractures, lance carbuncles, and sew torn flesh by lantern light. Behind her, Auditor Varo Nenn carried two large leather-bound ledgers, their brass corners dulled with handling.
Merrow approached the clerk’s table. Then, she set down a small wicker basket lined with clean linen. Inside the basket lay twelve glass medicine phials, five rolls of raw, unwhitened linen bandages, a horn jar of yellow zinc ointment. A bundle of itemized apothecary receipts tied with green twine.
“Councilor Vesk,” Merrow said, her voice dry and steady as cured oak. “Before the accountants begin arguing about town tax percentages and civic amortizations, let’s place the physical injuries on the scale. The clinic of the Lower Basin treated one hundred and fourteen persons during the twenty-eight days of the high river. Of those, forty-two suffered from scald burns caused by unvented steam rising through domestic drains and public wash-houses.”
She picked up the bundle of receipts, holding it up toward the council bench.
