From the front workbench tier, Tessa Dene could see the grease rings on the collar of Varn’s coat and the way his heels kept tapping a nervous, stuttering rhythm against the foot of the iron rail.
Her hand rested near the horn grip of her salvage-iron bread knife. The blade had cut scrap lead, severed hemp hawser, and shaved dry tallow candles in the dark, and its rough edge was as familiar to her palm as her own knuckles. Beside her on the pine bench, her father Edren sat with his broad shoulders hunched against the damp chill rising through the floor slabs. His breath came in thin, whistling rasps—the legacy of eighteen years in the Crown’s deep drainage drifts—but his gaze had not left the debt collector since Hesta Quill had brought the man through the rear archway.
Varn was trying to rebuild his hedge.
Tessa had watched enough shiftless subcontractors and corner-cutting timber carters at the Survey House loading docks to recognize the craft. When a man had been caught with bad iron in the roof truss, his first move was always to swear he had bought the bars in good faith from an honest smith down the river.
