The heavy oak door of the shrine scriptorium was barred from the inside with an iron-shod cedar beam that dropped snugly into the stone sockets of the doorframe.
Sister Oda stood before her sloped cedar desk beneath the concentrated illumination of three brass oil lamps. The wicks were trimmed short, burning with clear, smokeless flames that smelled of sweet olive oil and bitter camphor, casting a fierce, shadowless glare across the black velvet assay cloth spread between her inkwells.
In the center of the velvet lay the brass key to Room 4.
Jon Hale had permitted her to carry the key across the marketplace after the noon tolling, asking only that she return it before the second bell of the night watch. For six hours, as the afternoon faded into the freezing dusk and the river mists began their silent climb through the alleyways, she had subjected the metal to every analytical procedure known to the Archivists of Saint Jude.
Beside the velvet square lay four open scrolls: the Catalogue of Imperial Mint Standards, the Register of Provincial Guesthouse Charters, a metallurgical treatise on the Crystalline Degradation of Copper-Zinc Alloys, and the ancient cathedral roll detailing the canonical consecration of the parish bell.
