"The Court calls it forgery. I call it alteration and do not argue the word." – the Master of the Yard
FIELD REPORT – Ferdinand Lusk REPORT 9 OF 14 SUBJECT: The lifting of stains; the alteration of shadows; a stain that was not collected At the end of the lane behind the Wall there is a walled yard with a roofed workshop along one side, and in it a tall man in a grey smock with soot at the cuffs and white cotton gloves, who is the Master of the Scrapers and the Tailor of shadows, and is called Oduya, and is the most agreeable person in Gnomon and, I think, the most dangerous. The lawful half of his trade is this. When a family in the Hours sells its house and moves, it cannot leave its dead on the walls; the Court issues a writ, and Oduya comes with a knife as fine as a surgeon's and a sheet of wet plaster, and lifts the stain whole off the render onto the plaster, so that the grandfather can be carried down the lane under a cloth and set up in the new house in the position he sat in. I watched him do it. It took four hours and he did not speak, and when the panel came away the wall b...
From the lore of The Ledger of Shadows.