North Market Lane was a narrow, cobblestone thoroughfare that wound up the western ridge from the canal wharves to the Upper Market square. It was a street of working craftsmen. Cobblers who sat in open shop-windows with bundles of leather scraps, tinsmiths hammering copper kettles on small anvils, and weavers whose shuttle-clatter spilled from upper windows into the alley like the chatter of birds in a hedge.
At number fourteen, set between a flour factor’s storehouse and an apothecary’s drying yard, stood a two-story building of heavy oak timbers and white lime-washed plaster, topped with a steep roof of gray river slate.
Above the heavy oak street door hung a simple, plain wooden sign, painted with black letters on a field of pale cedar:
OFFICE OF UNFINISHED CLAIMS · ESTABLISHED UNDER THE COMMON Promise
There was no guild coat of arms on the door. No gold-trimmed crest. No iron spikes upon the window sills. The front window—a wide bay of small, diamond-shaped leaded panes—stood clean and clear, polished with vinegar and water until the autumn sunshine poured directly into the front consultation room.
Tomas and Nessa stopped on the opposite side of the cobbled lane. She stood in the shadow of the cooper’s awning, looking through the leaded glass.
