In the narrow cellar of Bastion-Nine, Hester Quill and apprentice Olla transformed the bolted pine desk into a careful print shop. Three wooden buckets of cold well water sat upon the stone flags, along with thirty sticks of soft willow charcoal and sixty sheets of heavy mulberry-bark paper shipped from the paper-mills of Port Alden.
Olla took the horsehair brush, dipped it into the water bucket. Then he flicked the excess moisture against the stone wall. With quick, rhythmic sweeps, she moistened the first four-foot sheet of mulberry paper until the fibers relaxed into a limp, semi-clear skin.
Tomas Reed and Sile Rook lifted the damp sheet against the ceiling plate. Tomas pressed the paper against the lead with a felt roller, working the softened fibers down into the three-sided needle-point arrow grooves until every letter stood out in crisp, embossed relief against the wet paper.
“Keep the tension even across the seam,” Hester instructed, adjusting her horn glasses as she approached with the charcoal block. “If the paper stretches by a sixteenth of an inch, a high-born advocate like Morrel will argue that the letters were distorted. We need an exact sight match to the naval lead plate.”
Hester brought the flat side of the willow charcoal across the embossed paper. Her stroke was light, steady, and level, gliding over the raised lead edges without tearing the damp tissue. Where the arrow point had grooved the metal, the white mulberry paper remained clean. Where the lead was smooth, the…
