By the first bell of the afternoon, the front consultation room of number fourteen North Market Lane was filled with the leadership of the Seven River Communities.
They didn’t arrive in gold-trimmed coaches with liveried outriders. They came on foot, in work boots, carrying the tools and badges of their trades.
Cel Bren, the delegate from Brook End, wore his flax-spinner’s apron. Then he carried a notched depth-rod. Master Orrin Hale of White Steps wore his heavy split-leather quarry coat, white with limestone dust. Elder Lani Moss of Lantern Bend brought her wagon-wheel gauge and river scrip ledger. Mara Flint of Old Flint, her forearms corded with muscle from forty years at the heavy forge, smelled of charcoal and hardened steel. Eren Moss, the boatman representative from Reed Bank, wore his tarred boat-cloak. Then he carried an unpolished cedar oar-peg. And Nurse Venn from Willow Stair brought her herbal medicine room book tied with green ribbon.
Tomas Reed stood by the small iron stove, his hands resting naturally at his sides. He had unbuckled his pack-frame and set it in the corner. But he still wore his coarse linen shirt and patched leather vest, his scarred left arm resting in the familiar crook of his wrist brace.
