By the time Jon Hale, Joran Finch, Sister Oda, Harlan Pike, and the wharf boy Eban climbed the stone river-stairs from the North Quay into the central market square, the grey afternoon light of Day 3 was thickening toward the fourth bell.
Over two hundred townsfolk were already working across the wet cobblestones between the old market cross and the walnut doors of the River Lantern. At the north end of the square, Master Mason Alden Bram and Master Smith Garrick Holt were supervising a double line of bucket-brigade workers who were filling coarse burlap sacks with sifted river gravel and stacking them onto four flat-bed timber wagons for the north weir. Near the well-head, Captain Dain’s town watchmen and Master Mason Marris Gault’s stone-yard apprentices were sharpening six-foot ash stakes with draw-knives, while Marta and Dunstan Harl carried steaming wooden trays of salted rye-barley loaves out of the bakehouse alley toward the porch of the inn, where Elin, Lady Signe Lorr, and Corve Penner had set up the oak charter table under the eaves.
Harlan Pike did not walk to the wagons. Instead, the broad-shouldered master fisherman mounted the three weathered granite steps of the medieval market cross in the very center of the square, standing with his sea-boots planted wide beside the octagonal stone shaft where royal proclamations and market tolls had been cried for three hundred years.
