The first brick came out whole.
It crossed the basin with a flat, turning grace and struck the quay six feet from Garran. Mortar burst white across his boots. Behind the gap, a brass hammer withdrew into darkness, cocked itself, and struck again.
Every bricked window had one.
"Down," Garran said.
Tamsin was already below the ledger stand, dragging Lark by the sleeve. Garran caught the lamp glass before it tipped. Its letters had changed.
COMMISSIONS RESUMED.
WORKSHOP ASSETS SUBJECT TO ALLOCATION.
Across the basin, nine hundred and sixty-three hammers began collecting fourteen years of patience.
The sound was not loud at first. It was orderly. That made it worse. Brick after brick dropped from the workshop fronts while belts stirred under the paving and old cranes rolled awake on rails furry with rust. Practical Mercy lifted against her lines as an iron arm reached over the stern. Its fingers opened above the engine hatch.
Tamsin saw it. "Touch my governor and I will feed your bearings to the tide."
The arm descended.
Garran ran. Twenty-eight feet of wet quay, one mooring cleat, a drainage trench and no useful weapon except the lamp glass. He cleared the trench, caught Mercy's rail and landed badly enough to charge his left knee interest.
The iron fingers closed around the hatch.
He put his shoulder under one and shoved. It weighed half a ton and did not respect seniority.
"Allocation dispute," Lark called from the ledger stand. "The proprietor contests seizure of an essential carrier component. Record the dispute."
The fingers paused.
Tamsin scrambled aboard and drove a spanner through the arm's nearest joint. "Essential is underselling it. That's the inspection cover. The governor's eighteen inches forward, under the red brace, and if this rubbish heap learns that I will deny everything."
The arm rotated, taking the spanner with it. Tamsin hung on. Garran caught her belt and hauled her down before the joint could fold her wrist into its gearing.
Letters burned blue on the nearest furnace door.
DISPUTE RECORDED. SUBSTITUTE ASSET REQUIRED.
A second crane woke over the forward deck.
"It is bargaining," Lark said. She came aboard without looking at the water between quay and rail. In one hand she carried the foundry ledger. In the other she had Garran's long steel rule, which she must have picked out of the wreckage on the landing. She had wiped the grit from its etched edge. He noticed that while a crane was preparing to eat his boat, and disliked the order of his own attention.
"Foundry law doesn't bargain," Tamsin said. "It prices resistance."
"A distinction maintained mainly by foundry owners." Lark opened the ledger on the engine casing. "What command stops production?"
"Mother never gave me one."
That landed quieter than the bricks. Tamsin bent over the ledger, wet hair hanging beside her face. She did not touch the page.
Garran braced the steel rule across the first crane joint and leaned until the metal complained. "Try closing."
"Foundries don't close with work outstanding."
"Then try fire."
"Blue channels mean the root pressure is feeding it. You want to put out the island? Find a larger bucket."
The second crane plucked the spare mast from its deck chocks. Wood snapped. Garran watched forty-two crowns of seasoned pine rise into the rain.
"Substitute asset accepted," Lark read.
The crane carried the mast toward the open workshops. Within seconds, saws began screaming behind the falling brickwork.
"Forty-two crowns," Garran said.
"Thirty-six," Tamsin said. "You bought it cracked."
"It was no longer cracked."
"Then you wasted six crowns repairing a spare."
A row of docket drawers shot out from the ledger stand. Brass cards spilled across the quay and skated into the blue channels, where each caught fire without being consumed. The lamp glass filled too quickly to read.
Lark turned pages. "The commissions are waking by priority. We need the controlling order."
"Oldest first," Tamsin said.
"Not according to this. Widow pumps, fish presses, chain winches, three hundred and eleven agricultural blades. Their dates vary, but all defer to an earlier docket."
A bell struck below their feet.
Practical Mercy's deck tilted toward the quay. Water in the bilge rushed portside. Garran looked over the rail. Clamps had risen around the hull, not gripping it, measuring. Brass teeth traced the planks from keel to waterline. Where they passed, figures appeared in blue fire. Timber volume. Fastener count. Recoverable iron.
The foundry was estimating them.
"Controlling order," Garran said. "Where?"
Tamsin stared toward the central workshop. Its windows had not been bricked. They had been sealed with iron plates, each stamped with a reed laid across a closed eye. Above the doors, a narrow docket slot shone blue.
"Master's bench," she said.
The route around the basin was a hundred and sixty feet. The direct route was twenty-six feet of black water full of waking machinery. Garran took the route that did not require swimming beside gears.
"Stay with the boat," he told Tamsin.
She was over the rail before he finished. "It's my foundry."
"Which is why you remain where the ledger can recognize you."
"Excellent. Give the building time to eat my share first."
Lark held out Garran's steel rule. The end had bent where he had jammed it into the crane. She had straightened it against the engine casing while reading. Not perfectly. Within half a degree.
"Take Reed," she said. "I will maintain the dispute."
"The clamps are pricing the hull."
"Then move before they reach a figure you cannot afford." She met his eyes. "And Garran. Do not agree to anything written inside your own body."
He went quiet. She did not soften the sentence or apologize for its accuracy. She put the rule into his hand and turned back to the ledger.
Tamsin was six strides ahead.
They crossed under cranes carrying Mercy's mast in pieces. Workshop mouths opened on either side, revealing lathes, presses and benches laid for workers who had not returned. Tools moved without hands. A plane ran itself over the stolen pine. A drill descended, rose trailing bright curls, and shifted exactly three inches.
At the central doors, Tamsin pressed her palm to the proprietor plate.
Nothing happened.
"Open," she said.
The plate warmed from black to red beneath her hand. She kept it there. The smell reached Garran before she pulled away.
He caught her wrist. The palm was white in the center, angry red around it.
"Proprietor access requires operating capital," the door said. Its voice came through bolts and hinges, each word vibrating in a different piece of iron. "Masterwork token held at Berth One. Allocate?"
Tamsin looked back at Practical Mercy. At this distance, the clamps around her hull resembled a second rib cage.
"That's my governor," she said.
"I know."
"No, you know it's the part keeping us off the reef. It's also my fifth. First thing I made that nobody could call practice. First thing with my name in the registry and no guardian above it."
Garran released her wrist. He had taken blame faster for less costly things. The words were ready: his boat, his debt, his choice. None of them would open the door.
Behind them, an iron arm folded over Mercy's engine hatch. Lark drove the butt of her spear between its fingers. Blue light ran along the weapon and threw her to one knee. She held.
"Allocate," Tamsin said.
The governor screamed inside the boat. Not metal failure. A clean cultivation note, thin enough to pass through teeth. Blue fire raced from Berth One beneath the quay and climbed the central doors.
The stamped plates withdrew.
Tamsin swayed once. Garran put a hand under her unburned elbow. She did not shake him off, which was worse than if she had.
Inside, dust lay on everything except the master's bench. One brass docket waited beneath a green glass lamp. The workshop around it was small, built for a single craftswoman: narrow vise, left-handed hammer rack, drawers labelled in a compressed script. Tamsin stopped at the threshold.
Garran went to the bench.
The docket had no commission number. It was older than the numbered stack beneath it and darker at the edges from having been handled. The service line faced down. The back bore three entries.
MATERIAL RECEIVED.
HOUSING PREPARED.
INSTALLATION DEFERRED BY ARMISTICE AUTHORITY.
His bones answered before he turned it over.
All sixty-four seals tightened. There was no light, no grand sound. His knees locked. His jaw closed hard enough to split the skin inside his cheek. Every old break in his ribs became exact again, a map measured from within.
Tamsin caught the bench as drawers flew open around them. Fine hooks unfolded. Bone saws rose in padded clamps. A jointed frame dropped from the ceiling and opened its leather straps.
"Garran."
He could not answer.
The docket turned itself beneath his hand.
WORK ORDER ZERO.
FOUNDATION HOUSING: GARRAN VALE.
Sixty-four narrow boxes had been ruled beneath his name. Every one was ticked in the same dark ink.
At the bottom, under commissioning authority, was a folded-paper seal he had seen on armistice notices, restitution judgments and birthday notes delivered three islands late. Four exact quarters pressed into wax.
NELL VALE, KEEPER-DESIGNATE.
Tamsin read it over his shoulder. Her burned hand closed, opened, then closed again.
Outside, the foundry bell ceased. The cranes stopped in mid-task. Even the saws wound down.
From the ledger stand across the basin, Lark called his name.
The leather frame lowered behind him, straps hanging open, while the workshop asked in its patient iron voice, "Shall installation resume?"