The river wharf at Brook End smelled of rotting willow roots, wet duckweed, and the pungent, chemical sting of salt water. Unlike the stone manse at Oakhaven, the guild work-yard here was a sprawling complex of weathered timber warehouses built on creosoted wooden support posts over the slow-moving green water of the canal basin. It had been built forty years ago to handle the massive bulk shipments of flood defense materials that the Grand Guild had tightened to deliver during the Great Flooding.
Team Twelve—veteran hauler Joran and Apprentice Scribe Tara—stood in the dim aisle of Warehouse Three. Overhead, through gaps in the cedar shingles, thin shafts of autumn light cut through the dusty gloom, lighting up tiers of water-stained barrels, rotted timber balks, and mountains of discarded iron strapping. Beside them stood the local depot keeper, a stoop-shouldered man named Corren with a frayed woolen muffler wound three times around his throat and a ring of rusted keys dangling from his thumb.
“I told you three times already, mistress,” Corren wheezed. He wiped a watery eye with the back of his cuff. “There’s nothing in this shed that concerns the Court trial. Claim LC-412 was closed out twenty years back. An Act of Providence, signed off by the River Commission. Two hundred casks of coarse sea salt meant for pickling levee timbers. A high spring freshet backed up through the under-road drain, flooded the floor four feet deep. Then it melted the whole delivery into river sludge. You can’t…
