"If you bring that measuring tape down another inch on my doorframe, clerk, I’m going to use it to measure the circumference of your neck," Seraphina said, leaning against the counter with a heavy iron bolster in her hand. Her dark eyes bored straight into the neatly pressed, impossibly clean waistcoat of the young man standing on their threshold.The junior clerk, a thin-wristed fellow who looked as though he had been hatched from a stack of unfiled tax forms named Pendergast, didn't even flinch. He merely adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles with a delicate finger and tapped a brass-tipped nib against a clipboard that smelled aggressively of fresh ink and institutional boredom."Section twelve, subsection four of the municipal commercial code," Pendergast droned, his voice carrying the high, reedy pitch of someone who practiced his lectures in an empty corridor. "All premises undergoing structural modification, change of trade classification, or resumption of inactive commercial righ

"If you take that cold chisel to the latch one more time with that amateurish angle, Kaizen, you’re going to sheer the iron pin right off and we’ll have to saw the damn thing in half," Seraphina said, not looking up from where she was scrubbing salt-crust off a bundle of salvaged hemp lines in a galvanized tub by the door. "You’re hitting it like you’re driving a tent peg into frozen mud. Ease the wrist, let the steel bite."Kaizen didn't drop the heavy iron hammer, though his shoulder muscles throbbed with a dull, persistent ache that had become his constant companion since they had taken over the wharf shop. He adjusted his grip on the cold chisel, squinting against the dim afternoon light filtering through the salt-filmed windowpane."I am perfectly aware of how to apply kinetic force to a stubborn artifact, Seraphina," Kaizen retorted, his breath puffing into a brief gray cloud in the chilly air of the back room. "Unlike the municipal tax codes or your former smuggling associates,

"If you count those four silver shillings one more time, Kaizen, the friction is going to melt them into a useless puddle of slag," Seraphina said, tossing a dried crust of bread across the cluttered workbench. It bounced off his shoulder with a dull thump. "They aren't going to multiply just because you stare at them like a starving stray eyeing a butcher's cart."Kaizen caught the bread mid-bounce, his thumb instinctively sweeping over the notched edges of the coins lined up in a neat row across the ledger. He didn't smile, but the tight, drawn knot of tension between his shoulder blades finally loosened just a fraction."I am not staring at them to make them multiply, Seraphina. I am verifying that the municipal tax clerk didn't somehow skim a half-groat through the wood grain while we weren't looking," Kaizen retorted, biting off a hard corner of the bread. "After Inspector Korr's visit last week, I wouldn't put phantom arithmetic past the city council.""Korr is too lazy to do ph

"If you drop that wooden crate of rendered fat into this knee-deep pit of grey harbor slush, mister high-and-mighty, I am going to feed your immaculate wool trousers to the stray mastiffs behind the tallow works," a gravelly, weather-beaten voice barked across the churning expanse of the municipal rendering yard.Kaizen flinched, the sharp, stomach-turning stench of boiling animal fat snapping him out of the hazy, freezing misery of the walk from the wharf. He caught his footing just in time on the slick, greasy duckboards. Across the bubbling, open-air copper vats stood the yard foreman—a mountain of a man named Barnaby the Elder, whose leather apron was stiff with decades of dried tallow and whose thick, gray beard looked like it had never met a comb. In his massive, calloused palm, he gripped an iron stirring paddle like a quarterstaff."I have no intention of dropping it," Kaizen said evenly, his fingers tightening around the damp, freezing pine handles of the crate. "And my trous

"If you press the nib of that pen down with another ounce of pressure, Kaizen, you’re going to punch clean through the parchment and carve your signature directly into the cedar top of Vane’s sacred, unblemished desk," Seraphina said, leaning her hip against the side of the newly whitewashed counter as she whetted a narrow skinning knife with a rhythmic, rasping hiss. "You look like you’re signing a death warrant rather than updating our weekly tallies for the tallow and flour trades."Kaizen did not lift the iron-nibbed pen, though his knuckles had turned stark white under the strain of his grip. He stared down at the heavy, leather-bound volume resting flat between them, its cover deeply embossed with salt-stains and water-rings from decades of dockside abuse."I am simply maintaining legible penmanship, Seraphina, which requires a steady hand when dealing with figures that dictate whether we eat salted mutton or stale crusts for the next week," Kaizen retorted, his voice sharp and