By dusk the sea walls had swallowed half the horizon.
Practical Mercy made eight knots because the hooked-river mark required eight, though her patched stern disliked anything above six. Every seventh turn of the propeller sent a knock through the deck. Garran counted the intervals from the engine hatch and found them shortening.
“Governor’s advancing the pitch again,” Tamsin called.
She lay across the steering box with both arms inside it. Rain ran off her elbows. The brass governor wheel turned beneath her hands in small, deliberate bites, dragging the rudder southwest each time she tried to ease it.
“Can you arrest it?” Lark asked.
“I can arrest anything once.” Tamsin hooked a screwdriver under a spinning collar. “Keeping it useful afterward costs extra.”
“Estimate.”
“Three minutes before the stern bearing cooks. Five if Garran stops listening to it like it owes him an apology.”
“It owes me fourteen crowns,” Garran said.
The knock came again. Six turns this time.
He crossed the pitching deck and reduced fuel by one notch. The throttle resisted him. Reed pressure moved through its linkage like a second hand laid over his, stronger where the governor’s brass teeth caught. Under his sleeve, the mark drew cold along his forearm.
The channel wanted delivery completed. Carrier, custodian, liable party.
He had carried wounded men through artillery water with less paperwork attached.
Ahead, Foundry Nine’s gates stood open. There were no lamps on the sea walls, no signal flags and no harbor bell. Water poured between the iron doors in a smooth black tongue. Beyond them, roofs hunched around a basin cut into the island. The broken tower leaned east by perhaps four degrees, held upright by two external braces and an optimism Garran would not have certified.
“No receiving crew,” he said.
“No visible crew,” Lark corrected.
She had tied herself to the port rail with a short line while she worked on his torn hand. The knot was plain harbor issue, dressed properly despite the rain. She removed the soaked bandage, inspected the split across his palm and folded a dry strip from the lining of her own cuff.
“You need that sleeve,” he said.
“You need fingers.”
“I have ten.”
“You have nine and an argument.”
She wrapped each turn so it missed the joints, then put the knot against the back of his wrist where it would not foul a tool handle. Garran watched the placement. Most people bound an injury to stop blood. Lark bound it so the injured person could keep working.
He flexed once. Nothing pulled.
The thought stayed with him longer than the pain did.
A chain rose across the entrance.
It came out of the water ten yards ahead, streaming weed, each link thick as Garran’s wrist. Tamsin swore and hauled the wheel. The governor hauled back. Practical Mercy slewed broadside to the gate current.
“Reverse!” Garran shouted.
Tamsin struck the engine telegraph with her palm. The gearbox answered with a shriek. Garran dropped through the hatch before the needle reached astern.
Heat struck first. The engine room smelled of scorched oil and wet iron. The drive shaft spun above its usual speed, while the reverse clutch trembled half-engaged. Garran braced one knee against the casing, seized the clutch lever in both hands and pulled.
The mark under his skin tightened.
Not here, he told it.
The lever moved an inch. Brass light threaded through the old scars on his wrist. One of the other seals shifted deep in his bones, answering iron with a law he did not know. For one breath he felt the engine as disputed ground: made in one jurisdiction, repaired in another, carried under a third, every bolt an argument about possession.
He let go.
The lever slammed forward. Practical Mercy lunged.
Above, Lark’s spear butt struck the deck three times.
Garran took the emergency hammer from its bracket and drove out the clutch pin. The pin crossed the room and buried itself in a timber. The shaft spun free of the propeller with a rising metallic howl.
Silence followed, except for water on the hull.
Then came the impact.
The chain caught beneath the bow and lifted. Practical Mercy climbed half her own length, rolled to starboard and dropped over it. Crates tore loose in the hold. Garran hit the engine casing shoulder-first. Something expensive shattered overhead.
He climbed back to the deck through steam and rain.
They were inside.
The gates began closing behind them.
Tamsin stood at the useless wheel, staring toward the basin. Workshops lined the quay in three long ranges. Their windows had been bricked from within. Rusted traveling cranes stretched over empty slips. No boats floated at the moorings, but the rails along the quay shone where the rain had washed them.
A single blue lamp burned at the central berth.
Practical Mercy drifted toward it without propulsion.
“Subsurface haul chain,” Garran said. “Caught our keel shoe.”
Tamsin looked down through the rain. “That berth knows the governor.”
“Do you?”
She scraped grease from beneath one thumbnail with the broken screwdriver. “I knew Mam used the place. I knew she kept its mark off every Reed chart she could reach. I did not know it could wake.”
Lark freed herself from the rail and opened her examiner’s case. Several forms inside had turned gray at the edges. She selected the driest, flattened it against the steering box and wrote while the boat moved.
“What are you recording?” Tamsin asked.
“Entry under compulsion. Damage under compulsion. Absence of harbor notice, receiving crew, safe depth marks and lawful opportunity to refuse berth.”
“Will paper stop the chain?”
“No.” Lark sanded the line. “It may decide who pays for what the chain breaks.”
The central berth opened around them. Iron arms unfolded from slots in the quay, shedding rust in red sheets. Garran went to the bow with a line, judged the speed and decided the line would take his arm before it took the boat.
“Stand clear.”
A locking arm struck Practical Mercy beneath the rubbing strake. Timber cracked. A second caught the stern. The boat stopped hard enough to throw Tamsin against the wheel.
The blue lamp brightened.
Letters appeared across its glass, thin strokes burning through years of salt.
REGISTERED WORK RECEIVED.
The governor wheel spun once. A narrow plate rose from the quay beside Tamsin, presenting a square of blackened brass.
She did not approach it.
Lark read the smaller lettering cut around the square. Rain gathered in the grooves.
“‘Reed Foundry Nine recognizes the returning masterwork token and tenders control to the registered proprietor.’”
Garran looked at Tamsin. “Your governor was registered as independent work.”
“One-fifth of the boat,” she said.
“That is what you claimed.”
“That is what I built.”
Lark crouched beside the plate. She wiped it with the edge of her shortened sleeve. More lettering showed beneath the soot, followed by a stamped name.
Tamsin Reed.
No one spoke.
The rain ticked against the lamp housing. Somewhere under the quay, a counterweight descended one tooth at a time.
Tamsin climbed onto the rail and jumped ashore. Garran caught the back of her coat before her boots slipped on the weed-slick stone. She shook him off after she had her balance, which was late enough to count as permission.
“I never registered this place,” she said.
Lark examined the stamp without touching it. “The registration predates the governor.”
“How far?”
“Fourteen years.”
Tamsin’s face gave Garran no useful measurement. She bent over the plate, hair dripping onto the brass.
A line under her name read: PROPRIETORSHIP HELD IN TRUST UNTIL RETURN OF FIRST INDEPENDENT WORK.
Garran read it twice.
Tamsin had been small enough fourteen years ago to sleep in a parts drawer. Her mother had not merely hidden a workshop. She had placed it beyond Reed’s registers, tied its ownership to work only Tamsin could make, then waited for that work to find its way home.
Or had expected someone else to bring it.
Tamsin pressed the screwdriver tip into a corner of the plate. “Can I pry it out?”
“No,” Lark said.
“That wasn’t a legal question.”
“The plate is seated on a rootstone conduit. Damage may count as refusal of title.”
“Good.”
“If you refuse, the foundry claims the returning token in settlement.”
Tamsin glanced toward Practical Mercy. The iron stern arm had closed around the governor housing. Its jaws tightened with a patient ratcheting sound.
Garran stepped between her and the boat. “Let it take the governor.”
Her eyes fixed on his bandaged hand. “Then we have no steering.”
“We can fit a direct quadrant.”
“With what shaft?”
“I’ll make one.”
“Out of your excellent collection of open water?”
“It’s a mechanism. Mechanisms can be replaced.”
Tamsin drove the broken screwdriver into the quay seam. The steel snapped. She looked at the half left in her hand, set it down with care and said, “You don’t get to call my work replaceable because you’re frightened of the bill attached to me.”
Garran’s reply stopped behind his teeth.
Lark rose. “The title can be accepted under protest.”
“What does acceptance cost?” Garran asked.
“The plate does not say.”
“Then it’s not acceptance. It’s a blank contract.”
“Yes.” Lark met Tamsin’s gaze. “And refusal costs the governor immediately.”
The ratchet bit again. Brass groaned aboard Practical Mercy.
Tamsin wiped both hands on her trousers. She reached for the black square.
Garran caught her wrist.
She did not pull away. “You took Tideglass’s contract to keep my room over the shop.”
“That was different.”
“You knew the price?”
“No.”
“Then let go.”
His hand opened.
Tamsin laid her palm on the plate.
The entire foundry took a breath.
Furnace doors banged open along the dark workshop ranges. Blue fire ran through channels in the quay, one after another, outlining slips, cranes and buried pipes. The iron arms released Practical Mercy, but the sea gates behind her met with a boom that shook rain from the roofs.
Words crowded the lamp glass. Lark read the first line, stopped, and read it again.
Tamsin kept her hand on the plate. “What?”
Garran saw the reflected letters spread across her face.
PROPRIETOR ACCEPTED. OUTSTANDING COMMISSIONS: NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE.
Across the basin, bricked windows began knocking from the inside.