At half past five on the morning of the ninth day of Flood Month—one full year to the morning since the first sixth-bell return had snapped Jon Hale’s eyes open on his cellar steps—a small, quiet gathering of townsfolk stood on the damp cobblestones behind the lower fish market.
Where seven narrow timber-and-plaster cottages had stood before the Chancellery’s anchor devoured eighty-four feet of the parish roll between the first loop and the twelfth, a fourteen-pace garden of raked white river gravel and rosemary bushes now bordered the stone seawall. Set into the center of the low granite curb stood a newly cast tablet of unpolished red bronze, poured by Master Smith Garrick Holt from the last melted collars of the subterranean machine.
Former Host scout Bren—who now wore the blue wool waistcoat of the parish wharf-inger—knelt on the gravel with a mason’s hand-drill and a small pot of molten lead, peening the fourth bronze anchor-pin into the granite curb-stone, while notary Corve Penner stood beside him with the open calfskin covers of #15 Bound Town Ledger resting on his forearm.
Two paces back from the curb stood Lady Signe Lorr in her grey wool traveling cloak, pausing at the market cross before climbing into the waiting blue postal coach at the corner of the square.
