The buildings left and right were mostly dark, though several of the workshops still glowed at the windows as their occupants worked by candlelight. The streets past the walls of the college, unlike the jumbled labyrinth of Uthlyn, formed a neat hexagonal grid that coalesced on the grand tower, and toward the tower was where Fletcher headed now. The sheer height of the building loomed larger and larger over them the closer they got.
All the buildings nearest the tower were single-storied, and each one had substantial open spaces either before or behind them. Fletcher turned left past the low stone wall of the third building into a paved courtyard that seemed less an open space as it did an engineer's playground. Cannons, some complete and some half built, sat in a neat row across one end, while at the other sat mounds of hay set up with wooden targets, demarcated every ten paces by red paint. The high-roofed workshop resembled a stable and barn, if not for the complicated pulleys crisscrossing several of the doorways. A large unlit furnace and forge sat underneath a low roof on the eastern end.
"Please, don't touch anything," he asked Darjak softly before fumbling in his pocket for a key. The large door swung open after its iron padlock clicked open, revealing the dark interior of Fletcher's workshop, hay strewn about on the ground. There were several large wooden benches, each one littered with tools of all sorts. And on those tables sat wooden stocks, triggers, hollowed barrels, cogs, screws, and everything else imaginable.
He gently lit a candle and carried it over to a small door to the side, reinforced in heavy brass and also chained with a padlock. Opening his vault, he carefully placed the four lockboxes in a corner before picking himself out several more nondescript guns and a coat.
"As you can see," he called over his shoulder while preparing himself, "this is where I work."
