Lark hit the hull once, hard enough for Garran to feel it through his ribs.
The rope around her waist ran beneath Practical Mercy at an angle no rope had any business taking. It sawed across the lower strake, throwing up wet curls of old paint. Garran had her wrist in both hands, his boots hooked under the rail brace, and three hundredweight of landing post wanted her more than he did.
"Cut it," Tamsin shouted.
"Not at her waist."
"I know where waists are."
Practical Mercy heeled as the current caught her broadside. The broken bow chain thrashed alongside, each link striking the hull with a noise like a hammer checking rivets. Garran pulled. His right shoulder gave him four useful inches and then sent a white line down his arm.
Lark's face rose beside the gunwale. Blood ran from her temple into one eye. She did not waste breath on his name.
"Two turns around the bitt," she said.
"The bitt's split."
"One turn, then."
Tamsin came across the deck on hands and knees, knife between her teeth. She seized Garran's belt, threaded a loose mooring line through it, and took the free end around the after cleat.
"That cleat's got six sound screws," she said around the blade. "Possibly seven. I was saving the seventh."
The boat swung bow-first. Garran's chest struck the rail. Lark disappeared to the elbow.
He let go with his left hand, found the line Tamsin had rigged, and wrapped it once around Lark's forearm. The line tightened against his palm. Skin opened.
"Now," he said.
Tamsin cut the rope below Lark's waist.
The severed end did not fly free. It stiffened in the water, black with Reed script, still pulling toward the vanished post. For one breath it stretched thin as drawn wire. Then the mark crawled up the wet fibers toward Lark.
She caught it in her fist.
Her spear rang against the hull from where it hung by its sling. A clean glass note passed through the deck. The advancing script stopped at her knuckles.
"Disputed," Lark said through her teeth. "Not refused. Record the difference."
The rope charred. The end dropped away.
Garran hauled her over the rail. They landed badly, Lark across his knees and Tamsin under his left boot. Tamsin swore at both of them, shoved him off, and went straight for the engine hatch.
Lark rolled onto one hip. Her first movement was to check Garran's fingers. She turned his cut palm toward the light, counted the working joints, then took Tamsin's bloodied hand when the girl passed her.
"Engine first," Tamsin said.
"You have eight fingers suitable for engines. This one is leaking on my coat."
She pulled a narrow bandage roll from inside that coat. It was dry despite her immersion. She bound Tamsin's hand before touching the blood at her own temple.
Garran watched her make the final knot flat, where it would not catch inside a tool glove. There were forty-three urgent things aboard, including the reef line advancing off the starboard bow, but he kept looking at that knot.
Then Practical Mercy's tiller slammed over by itself.
"Forty-two," he said, and got up.
The harbor mouth rushed past. Ossa Pell stood at the end of the inspection landing, one hand raised, her gray coat snapping behind her. Two Reed inspectors were trying to recover the post. It dragged them knee-deep before they abandoned it.
Pell shouted something.
Wind and chain took the words.
"She says not to resist the return," Lark said.
"Useful distance for advice."
"She also says the eastern channel is closed."
Garran looked east. The return current had already chosen west.
Black reef teeth broke the surface ahead, each capped in white. The western cut had been dredged for fishing skiffs, not a courier carrying a full shop rack, a spare crankshaft, and Master Vetch's unexplained crate of ceremonial cups. Practical Mercy drew six feet when laden. The chart allowed five at low water.
They had less than three minutes before the difference became carpentry.
Garran took the tiller. It fought him with a steady pressure, not the living buck of tide. Reed law had hold of the keel governor below, and through it the rudder answered a workshop claim older than any command he gave.
"Tamsin. Engine revolutions."
She dropped through the hatch. "One hundred twelve and climbing without fuel permission. Governor teeth are locked into the mark. If I break them, we lose speed control."
"Can you give me reverse?"
"Can you make the sea apologize?"
"Put it on the estimate."
Lark braced beside the mast and wiped blood from her eye with the back of her wrist. "What does the western channel cost?"
"At present, the keel. Later, nine hundred crowns and an argument with three insurers."
"You have no insurers."
"That reduces the argument."
A green can-buoy passed to port, leaning against the unnatural current. Garran counted the wave intervals. Seven breaths. Six. Eight. The reef opened only when a larger set lifted enough water over its inner shelf. On the military launches they had crossed worse cuts while men threw heated iron from the cliffs, but Practical Mercy was not a launch. Her frames had been repaired by six owners using four woods and at least one table leg.
He did not think about the launches.
"Lark, loose the forward cargo lashings."
She looked once at the approaching reef, then at the deck's slope. "You want the weight aft."
"I want it movable. When I call, pull everything to port."
"That includes the cups?"
"Especially the cups."
She drew her belt knife and went to work. No debate, no demand that he explain a maneuver with thirty seconds left. She cut only the secondary lashings and left the storm lines intact, exactly as he would have done if his right arm still obeyed without negotiation.
That joined the flat knot in his thoughts. He set both aside where they could become dangerous later.
Tamsin's head appeared from the hatch. Grease striped one cheek. "The governor isn't steering for the channel markers."
"It has poor eyesight."
"It has better records than you. Look at the compass."
The compass card shivered under its glass. Practical Mercy's bow pointed west by northwest. Reed Anchorage lay northwest beyond the outer islands, a day's hard run if the weather held.
The marked needle beneath the card pointed southwest.
Garran checked the sun, the harbor tower, and the pale scar of distant Rusk Head. Instruments lied in recognizable ways. This one was telling the truth in two directions.
"Examiner," he said.
Lark wedged Vetch's crate loose with the butt of her spear. "I see it."
"Can a lawful return choose a private route?"
"Only if the registered work includes a return berth."
Below them, the engine changed note. Tamsin went still.
Not frightened. Garran knew all her varieties of frightened. She grew louder for ordinary danger, rude for serious danger, and exquisitely polite when she expected to be taken away. This was different. Her hands rested open on the hatch rim as if the metal had become hot.
"Tamsin," he said.
"I filed the governor registration when I was twelve."
"We established your career in forgery began early."
"Registration wasn't forged. Mostly. A maker's share needed a proving route. You take the work from its first fitting to the maker's registered berth, and the rootstone recognizes it as independent craft."
The first reef marker raced toward them. Garran pushed the tiller. The rudder resisted, then shifted half a degree. Not enough.
"What berth?"
Tamsin looked southwest.
Lark had stopped moving the crate. "Answer precisely."
"Reed Anchorage rejected my application. Bram said no family berth could recognize work made with stolen tools. So I used Mother's old workshop registration."
The wave beneath them withdrew. Dark stone showed through the channel, close enough for Garran to count barnacle ridges.
"Where?" he asked.
Tamsin climbed out of the hatch and snatched the boathook from its clips. "Port cargo now."
Lark pulled. Garran kicked the spare crankshaft loose and rolled it after the crate. Practical Mercy listed to port just as the seventh wave lifted her starboard quarter.
"Where, Tamsin?"
The girl drove the boathook down against the reef. The shaft bowed. For a breath the boat hung between the Reed pull and one teenager's shoulders.
"Three points southwest," she said. "Keep her on the broken tower."
"There is no charted passage there."
"There was when the salt foundries were running."
The boathook snapped.
Practical Mercy rose on the larger wave. Garran threw his weight against the tiller, felt the rudder jump in the loosened water, and stole two degrees from the law. The keel struck once. A deep, intimate blow. Cups shattered in Vetch's crate.
Then they were through.
The harbor fell behind them. Open water spread ahead, gray and shouldered with wind. The western channel markers receded to starboard while the marked compass needle held southwest.
Garran listened below the engine note. No pouring water. A slow knock from the forward bilge, likely a sprung floor timber, repairable if it did not worsen. The bow chain had stopped thrashing. It streamed straight ahead under the surface, though nothing physical remained attached to it.
Lark sat against the mast and bound her own temple with what remained of the bandage. Her fingers shook once when she tried the knot. Garran crouched and held the cloth in place without comment. She tied it flat.
"Distance to the registered berth?" she asked.
Tamsin retrieved the broken half of the boathook. She tested the splintered end with her thumb, though it was plainly beyond saving.
"Twenty-six miles."
"Name of the berth."
"Reed Foundry Nine."
Lark's hand paused on the bandage. "The armistice registers list eight foundries."
"The ninth wasn't in the armistice registers."
Garran looked southwest. Rain erased the low islands one by one, but for an instant a darker line stood beneath the weather: two sea walls converging on a narrow gate, and above them the broken tower Tamsin had named.
Across the water, iron doors began to open.