The main dispatch slate of the Courtesy Workshop hung on the white-washed timber wall between the front entrance and the brick hearth. It was a massive piece of dark, hone-finished river slate, five feet wide and three feet high, framed in heavy seasoned ash with notched timber brackets holding sticks of white, yellow, and red grease-chalk.
Pella Rook stood before the board with a damp linen sponge in her left hand and a stick of white chalk in her right. Beside her, Eren Tal was leaning against the edge of the ash dining table, checking a list of town building requests against his pocket-watch.
“Look at the requests from City Hall, Pella,” Eren said. He tapped a thick stack of thick parchment slips on the table. “The Building boss of Waterworks wants Ada to inspect twelve high-pressure water gate valves along the upper canal next week. The Harbor Master wants Jo to design six heavy canvas silt-barriers for the coal slips. And the Committee on Public Health wants Imran to survey forty tenement cellars in the North Ward for sewer beetles.”
Eren looked up, his gray eyes sharpened with the protective instincts of an old master craftsman. “If we put all those jobs on the board, we’ll have someone crossing that arch every single day at noon. We’ll turn Ada into a town builder, we’ll burn Jo out in three weeks. We’ll be running the exact same sweatshop Sorell ran, only with lunch boxes instead of chains.”
