The waystation Pell had named sat at a wide bend where three smaller channels met the main canal. Its keeper was a broad woman named Orla who owed Pell a favor she clearly regretted. She took one look at the spiral scars, the lens, the muddy party, and the former Closed Eye enforcer and muttered, “Of course he sent me the complicated ones.”
She still fed them. She still gave them the loft above the drying racks. She still warned them that stewards’ messengers had passed through the day before asking about travelers with living glass.
The waystation was busy with bargemen, repair crews, and a handful of southern glasswrights who had already begun marking their tool crates with small spirals. Word traveled faster than feet. One of the glasswrights, a cheerful man missing two fingers named
