The vaulted undercroft beneath the Cathedral of Saint Eleanor had served for four ages as the private storage cellar of the Ducal Court of Wards. A windowless, underground maze of dressed granite pillars and damp limestone vaults where feudal records of unredeemed forfeitures, orphaned wards, and taken away peasant holdings were piled to the ceiling in rotting hemp sacks. The air smelled of rotten-egg damp, decomposing thick parchment. The sharp, vinegar tang of old iron dark oak-ink turned to mold.
By the eighth hour of the morning, twenty draymen under the direction of Sile Rook had cleared the central gallery. It swept away forty cartloads of dust, dead bats, and broken wine casks. In their place, forty-eight oak reading desks had been set up in four long parallel rows, lit up by thirty hanging brass lard-oil lanterns whose warm yellow beams reflected off the scrubbed stone floor.
At the northern end of the gallery, upon a raised dais of seasoned ash planks, sat the grand ledger-table of the National Cemetery Master Archive. Upon that table rested a small, tarnished brass iron-puppet shaped like a crested plover: the ticking tin bird of Fen Hollow. Its fine, detailed internal clockwork, crafted forty years ago by the water gate-mechanics of the Low Marches, hummed with a soft, rhythmic clockwork click that measured out the passing seconds with total, unbending care.
