The smell of boiled black tea, parsnip peelings, and damp wool filled Sister Merrow’s back kitchen as the kitchen clock struck two bells after nine. Outside, the night wind whipped cold river spray against the small leaded windowpanes, rattling the iron latches that kept the salt mist from the back kitchen hearth. Inside, the peat fire in the iron grate threw a warm, steady glow across the scarred deal table. It cast the long shadows of four tired people against the whitewashed stone walls.
Spread across the scrubbed boards were six sheets of heavy Dutch rag paper, a heavy clay pot of carbon black ink, four fresh goose quills, and Auditor Varo Nenn’s brass pocket scale. Pella Rook sat at the head of the table, her sleeves rolled past her forearms. She held her father’s brass measuring tongs between her fingers like an anchor. Her green apprentice tunic was frayed at the cuffs. The dark circles under her eyes spoke of twenty-eight days of nonstop crisis. But her hands were steady.
Beside her sat Eren Tal, his massive leather apron still dusted with cedar shavings from the ferry storehouse floor beams. Eren was step by step trimming a cedar drawing stick with a small curved draw-knife. That let the fragrant shavings curl down into his lap. Sister Merrow stood by the hearth, slicing a round of dark soda bread with a broad French knife, her face set in the calm, unmovable concentration of an old triage nurse who had seen…
