Dawn came to Printer’s Alley through soot-stained glass the color of stale river ice.
In the back room of the Office of Unfinished Things, the air smelled of stale peat smoke, boiled linseed oil, and the sharp bite of dark oak-ink. A kettle muttered on the small iron stove in the corner. Its steam condensed down the damp whitewashed brickwork. Outside on the dark rock cobbles, the morning cart hauling had begun. The rhythmic clatter of iron-rimmed wheels and the hollow thud of draft horses hauling barrels of animal fat and pickled herrings down toward the river quays.
Tomas Reed sat at the long frame stand table, his right sleeve rolled past his elbow.
Before him stood a brown clay pot basin of warm water, cider vinegar, and rendered mutton fat. He dipped a strip of boiled linen into the wash, wrung it out with his left hand. Then he wrapped the steaming cloth around his inner forearm. Beneath the heat, the scarred flesh softened. The jagged seam from the eel-glass ambush in the marshes—thick, purple-red gristle anchored to the bone—unwillingly yielded its morning stiffness.
Step by step, as he had done every day for twenty months, Tomas pressed the heel of his left palm against the tendon sheath, massaging the scar toward the wrist, then began the five-second count: thumb to index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and finally the difficult reach to the little finger. The wrist trembled under the strain, nerve endings firing hot needles into the…
