While Captain Branoc’s hired blades stood locked still in the wet bottleneck of Printer’s Alley, a silent, invisible logistics campaign was unfolding across the rooftops of the capital.
Apprentice Olla leaped across the four-foot gap between the slate roof of Number Seven and the timber low roof wall of the Weavers’ Hall, three bundles of damp broadsheets strapped tight to her chest with a hemp heavy cart-sling. Her bare feet found purchase on the cold, wet slates without a sound. Behind her came four apprentice boys from the bookbinders’ lane. Their wool caps pulled was tight over their ears, each carrying fifty copies of the First Coronation Promise.
They didn’t use the streets. For a hundred and fifty years, the crowded apartments of the Lower Wards had been built so close together that a child could walk from Weaver’s Square to the timber wharves without touching the ground. It used the connected attic fire-doors, lead drainage valleys, and timber chimney-bridges built by the tanners to dry their sheepskins.
Olla dropped through a trapdoor into the upper loft of Saint Jude’s Parish Bakery.
The loft smelled of rising sourdough, warm rye flour, and baking fires. Below, three master bakers and eight journeymen stood around the great oak kneading troughs, their arms coated in white flour up to their elbows.
