Garran put two fingers against the nearest strap. The leather was warm from the lamps and oiled recently enough to leave a shine on his skin.
"No."
The workshop answered with three soft clicks beneath the floor.
Tamsin moved past him and drove her good hand into the brass stop lever. It descended half an inch. The tendons in her wrist stood out; the lever did not move farther.
"I said stop, you seized-up invoice press."
"Proprietor instruction conflicts with accepted commission. Clarification required."
Lark came through the master's door carrying the ledger flat across both palms. She had not closed it. Garran could see Nell's folded-paper seal at the bottom of the page, dark and exact beneath the foundry lamps.
"Do not touch the frame again," Lark said.
"Wasn't planning to court it."
"That instruction was for Tamsin. You may continue being unwise at your established rate."
Tamsin gave the stop lever another wrench. Her burned hand had begun bleeding through the cloth at the base of the thumb.
Lark set the ledger on a clear bench, caught Tamsin by the wrist and turned the hand toward the light. She did it without asking, but not without warning; her fingers paused a breath before contact. Tamsin hissed through her teeth.
"Release me."
"When you stop reopening this."
"It's my hand."
"Then maintain it."
Lark took a narrow roll of clean linen from inside her coat. She wrapped the palm without wasting a turn, laid the knot where it would not rub against a wrench handle, and gave Tamsin back her wrist.
Garran watched the knot. Harbor surgeons tied above the wrist, where a man could see blood soaking through. Lark had put hers beside the smallest finger, out of the grip. She had thought about the next tool Tamsin would pick up.
He looked away first.
"The commission predates the proprietor," Lark said. "Does the foundry distinguish inherited administration from inherited performance?"
A slate panel lifted from the floor. Chalk moved across it without a visible hand.
COMMISSION ACCEPTED.
MATERIAL PREPARED.
INSTALLATION INTERRUPTED.
ACCEPTANCE OUTSTANDING.
"That's four statements pretending to answer one question," Tamsin said. "Who taught it contracts?"
"Craftsmen," Garran said.
"Exactly."
Lark turned one page backward, then another. She kept her fingertips to the edges, preserving soot, oil and any pressure marks beneath the writing. "What occurs if installation is refused?"
"Commission remains open. Allocated resources remain secured."
A chain tightened somewhere under Practical Mercy's berth. The sound traveled through the stone as a slow iron complaint.
Garran counted the intervals. Two chains aft, one at the bow, perhaps four beneath the keel cradle. The boat had lost her governor, her port tool chest and most of the spare copper. If the foundry secured the hull itself, getting free would require cutting stone around the anchors. Three days with proper drills. Nine without. They had food for two if Harlan had packed it, which meant one and a half.
Tamsin heard the same arithmetic. Her eyes moved toward the basin wall.
"Allocated resources means the boat," she said.
"And the proprietor," the workshop replied.
Garran stepped between her and the leather frame.
"Define acceptance."
Lark's head came around. "Do not negotiate with machinery that has already classified your body as stock."
"It hasn't called me stock."
"You noticed the distinction. Good. Keep noticing it from over here."
She pointed to the patch of floor beside her. Clean, clipped, as if assigning a spear line.
Garran stayed where he was.
Tamsin pulled at the new bandage with her teeth. "Acceptance inspection confirms the work meets tolerance. Standard foundry rule. Measure it, strike it, pressure-test it if the maker was feeling spiteful. Then the customer signs."
"The customer is Nell," Garran said.
Nobody moved for a moment.
The workshop lamps burned with a thin whale-oil flame. In their light the writing beneath Nell's seal looked fresh enough to stain a thumb.
Lark folded neither page nor expression. "The commissioning authority and the recipient are not necessarily the same party. Garran, did you authorize work on your foundation?"
The war came near enough that he could smell wet canvas and the lime used in casualty trenches.
He measured the frame instead. Six feet eight from head brace to heel board. Shoulder straps broad enough for an armored man. Drain channels under the hips. The left buckle had been replaced with naval brass.
"I don't remember this room."
"That was not my question."
"It's the answer available."
Tamsin stopped worrying the bandage. Lark held Garran's gaze for one more breath, then looked down at the ledger.
"Workshop," she said. "State the minimum procedure required to determine whether acceptance can lawfully be completed."
"Recipient identification. Housing count. Seating tolerance. Artisan verification."
"No incision?"
"No incision required unless tolerance fails."
"No transfer, removal, repair, completion or addition of material?"
"Correct."
"Duration?"
"One hundred twenty breaths."
Garran began unbuttoning his coat.
Tamsin swore at him with the detailed fluency of an engine room flood.
Lark closed the distance and caught the second button between finger and thumb. She did not tug it closed. She only stopped his hand.
"The foundry has not agreed to release either of you after inspection."
"It loses its reason to hold the boat."
"That is your assumption."
"It's a reasonable one."
"You sold a six-day condenser repair for the price of two rivets because the customer had twins. Your reasonable prices are evidence against you."
He could feel the warmth of her knuckle through his shirt. The observation struck more accurately than the accusation. She had read the old books. Not only the foreclosure totals or unpaid fees. She had found the condenser entry, understood what it should have cost and remembered the twins.
"Tamsin can't pay for my refusal with her shop," he said.
"This is not her shop," Tamsin snapped. "It's nine workshops, a murderous berth and nine hundred sixty-three people waiting for hinges."
"Nine hundred sixty-two," said the foundry. "Work Order Zero is included in the active total."
Tamsin stared at the slate. "I hate accurate machinery."
Lark still held the button. "Then we bind the inspection."
She released him and drew the short contract blade from her belt. Not the spear. The blade had a square tip and six ruled notches for cutting identical slips. She set a blank receipt sheet on the ledger stand and wrote in compact lines.
"One hundred twenty breaths," she said. "Observation only. No alteration. No claim transferred by participation. No silence construed as consent. Release of Practical Mercy and the proprietor upon completion, regardless of result."
"The commission requires an artisan of record," said the workshop.
"Name the artisan."
The chalk on the slate hovered.
A gear engaged behind the wall. Then another. Across the master's workshop, shutters peeled back from a cabinet Garran had taken for solid stone. Inside hung an apron, child-sized at first glance only because the woman who had worn it had been narrow. Iron filings glittered in its scorched hem. Beside it rested a set of bone drills in descending order, each handle wrapped in faded green cord.
A name appeared beneath the inspection terms.
MARA REED, MASTER ARTIFICER.
Tamsin's good hand went to the bench. She missed its edge, found it on the second try and leaned enough weight on it to make the tools jump.
Garran had heard the name only twice. Once when she had been twelve and feverish, cursing a fuel pump in her sleep. Once on the employment form where next of kin had been left blank and birth workshop had been written so hard the nib tore the paper.
"My mother made farm governors," Tamsin said.
The workshop did not answer.
"Flood vanes. Mill regulators. She hated medical fittings. Said flesh changed tolerance while you were measuring it."
A brass drawer opened beneath the apron. Sixty-four narrow gauges lay in green felt, each curved for a different bone.
Tamsin crossed the room before Garran could stop her. She lifted one gauge by its cord. The brass arc matched the breadth of his collarbone. Stamped near the hinge was the same maker's mark as the governor taken from Practical Mercy: a reed stem crossed by three precise file strokes.
Her wrapped hand closed around it.
"Verification may be completed by lawful successor," the foundry said. "Proprietor Tamsin Reed has inherited artisan liability."
Lark's contract blade struck the ledger stand point-first.
"No," she said.
It was the first untidy thing Garran had seen her do.
The blade quivered beside Nell's seal.
"She was not alive when this commission was accepted," Lark continued. "You will not manufacture consent backward through a bloodline."
"Reed craft law assigns unfinished masterwork to the registered successor."
"I registered a governor," Tamsin said. Her voice had lost its speed. "Not her."
The green cord cut into her bandage. A bead of blood appeared beside Lark's careful knot.
Garran took the gauge from her. She resisted for half a breath, then let go. He returned it to the felt in the exact hollow it had occupied.
"Put my inspection under protest," he said.
"Garran," Lark said.
"Put Tamsin's verification under coercion. State she disputes succession, liability and every task not involving a keel governor."
"That does not prevent Reed law from attaching."
"No. It gives you something to stab it with later."
He lay down in the frame.
The leather cupped his shoulders with an old familiarity his mind refused to supply. Tamsin stood over the open drawer, one hand bandaged, the other black with old iron dust. Lark wrote the protest around Nell's seal until the lines formed a hard square.
The straps closed at Garran's wrists.
"Recipient identification," said the workshop.
Cold brass touched the bone above his heart.
All sixty-four seals turned toward it.
Not awake. Listening.
The foundry bell gave one measured stroke, and high above the basin, gears began carrying a folded notice toward the signal mast.
"Where," Lark asked, looking up from the contract, "does an unfinished commission send its acceptance?"