"Captain Hollis Mere," said the workshop. "Registered battlefield surety for recipient Garran Vale. Copies to commissioning purchaser Nell Vale and master artificer Mara Reed."
The gear train above the basin advanced one tooth.
Garran counted six seconds between teeth. The signal cradle had twenty-three left before release.
Tamsin looked down from the open drawer. Iron dust made a black crescent under her thumb. "Mere signed this?"
"Registered battlefield surety," the workshop repeated.
"That isn't what I asked, you overbuilt invoice press."
Cold brass pressed harder above Garran's heart. A click traveled through the leather frame beneath him, followed by the faint settling creak of old oak taking load. His right wrist strap had been cut for him. Not merely adjusted. The holes sat at the exact spacing he used on his old vambrace.
He looked at the ceiling instead.
Hollis had witnessed his conviction. Hollis had stood in dress gray while the tribunal assigned restitution against wages Garran had not yet earned. Afterward, in the rain, he had offered Garran his coat with the formal courtesy used for handing a condemned man his last cup.
He had never mentioned a workshop.
"Garran." Lark's pen waited above the square of protest. "Did you appoint him?"
"No."
"Could you have appointed him while wounded?"
The gears took another tooth.
"I could have confessed to sinking the eastern chain while wounded. Wouldn't make it accurate."
"That was not the question."
"No."
Lark set the pen down. She reached across the frame, put two fingers under the buckle at his left wrist, and pulled a twist from the leather before it could grind against the joint. She did it without pausing to ask whether he hurt. Asking would have required an answer; fixing it required three seconds and attention.
Her thumbnail was split from sharpening Tamsin's smallest awl that morning. Garran had noticed then. He noticed again now, which was less useful.
"Workshop," she said. "Suspend signal pending disputed authority."
"Acceptance notice is a mandatory work product. Suspension requires an address of equal standing."
"Nell Vale is the purchaser. Send it to her."
"Purchaser address is secondary. Battlefield surety holds recipient authority during incapacity, death, unlawful alteration, or contested ownership."
Tamsin made a short noise. "You've got him in four categories before breakfast. Efficient."
Above them, the folded notice moved toward the signal cradle. It rode in a brass carrier no larger than a tobacco tin, guided along a chain track toward the basin wall. Beyond that wall rose the mast, its shutters built to flash Reed work marks across open water. In clear weather, Anchorage would read them. In less clear weather, anything with a relay lens would.
Hollis kept relay lenses.
Garran tested the straps. The frame answered by tightening across his ribs.
"Do not struggle during acceptance inspection," said the workshop.
"Release me and I'll struggle elsewhere."
"Inspection incomplete."
Tamsin slammed the drawer shut. "I can stop the carrier."
"Without breaking it?" Garran asked.
"You employing me or insulting me?"
"Measuring the repair."
Her eyes traveled up the wall. The old hoist rails crossed the signal chain twelve feet over the floor. Two rails were orange with corrosion. One had pulled half an inch from its stone bedding. Tamsin measured it too. Her jaw shifted.
"Seven minutes," she said. "A ladder, two wedges, and the narrow-jaw cutters."
"One hundred and twenty-six seconds remain before signal release," said the workshop.
"Then I need a taller ladder."
She went for the wall hooks.
"Proprietor," said the workshop. "Interference with mandatory notice constitutes concealment of accepted work. Foundry charter penalties apply."
Tamsin stopped with one hand on the ladder.
Lark asked, "Specify."
"Revocation of proprietary discretion. Automatic administration by the senior creditor commission."
The basin gave a deep mechanical thump. Somewhere behind the sealed workshop doors, hundreds of waiting orders shifted in their racks.
Tamsin's hand stayed on the ladder. She had owned the foundry for less than a day. In that time it had taken her governor, opened her mother's workshop, put blood through her bandage, and called nine hundred sixty-three strangers senior to her. She still stood as if the ladder belonged wherever she chose to put it.
Garran said, "Leave it."
"No."
"That's a work instruction."
"You don't have a one-fifth share to order me with. I paid that into this hole."
"Exactly."
She turned on him. "Don't do that old-soldier voice from a chair with your wrists tied down. It makes you look ridiculous."
"Useful information. Leave the carrier."
"So Hollis Mere can arrive with a casualty ledger and a carving knife?"
Garran looked back at the ceiling. "He favors a short naval blade. Nine inches. Better indoors."
Silence held for one gear tooth.
Tamsin released the ladder.
Lark gathered the protest and folded it once, not neatly. "Workshop. State the requirements for an address of equal standing. Full terms. No summary."
A brass plate opened beside her elbow. Fine type rolled across it in lines bright as fresh scratches.
Lark read quickly. Garran knew the habit from watching her examine debt schedules: left finger marking obligations, right finger tracing exceptions, lips still. The signal carrier moved twice while she read. On the third movement she reached into her coat and took out the narrow black case that held her examiner's seal.
Garran said, "No."
She did not look at him. "You have not read the terms."
"I know what that case costs."
"Its manufacture was thirty-two crowns. Replacement is forty-one, because Tideglass Hall has annoyed the licensed engraver."
"Not the case."
Her fingers paused on the clasp.
Tamsin left the ladder and came closer. "What are you buying?"
"Time," Lark said.
"Price?"
"My examiner's bond can receive disputed notice if pledged as personal surety. The foundry will route the original into sealed escrow and transmit only the existence of a dispute. No names, technical description, or acceptance result."
Garran pulled once against the right strap. The leather held. "And you become an interested party."
"Yes."
"You cannot examine an obligation you're surety for."
"Correct."
"The suspension on Keelworks rests on your examination."
"For seventy-two hours after my disqualification. Tideglass must appoint another examiner or continue the suspension by order of the hall master."
Master Harlan Vetch could make a ceremonial proclamation out of boiling an egg, but put three unpaid invoices in front of him and strategy became another word for throwing dice down a drain.
"No," Garran said again.
The gear train advanced.
Lark opened the case. Her seal lay in gray felt beside a stick of red wax, a folding knife, and two bent nails she had straightened while waiting for the sea gate to cycle. One nail had been hammered flat enough to use as a tiny shim. Garran had spent twenty years around people who carried weapons for what might happen. Lark carried repairs for what already had.
He could not stop looking at the nails.
"Lark."
"Do you intend to appoint Tamsin as interfering proprietor and lose Foundry Nine?"
"No."
"Do you intend to let the notice reach Hollis Mere?"
"No."
"Do you have another address of equal standing?"
He said nothing.
She warmed the wax against the inspection lamp.
"Then your objection is not a plan. It is an appetite for paying every price yourself. I decline to treat it as binding."
"You worked twelve years for that bond."
"Eleven years, eight months. Why do you know that?"
The cold brass over his heart gave a small, interested turn.
Garran went quiet.
Lark watched him for exactly one breath. Then she poured the wax onto the protest square.
Tamsin said, "For accuracy, this is a terrible contract."
"It is a temporary surety."
"That's a terrible contract wearing clean cuffs."
"Noted."
Lark pressed her seal into the wax.
The effect was mechanical before it was lawful. A rod snapped beneath the floor. The carrier stopped with eleven teeth remaining, jolting hard enough to shake dust from the chain track. Inside the black case, a hairline crack appeared across the face of Lark's seal.
She did not touch it.
"Substitute address accepted," said the workshop. "Examiner Lark Fen entered as personal surety for disputed recipient Garran Vale. Professional neutrality terminated. Acceptance notice impounded pending adjudication."
The square she had drawn around Nell's seal darkened as ink pulled inward from every line. A second brass slot opened and swallowed the folded protest.
Lark closed the case over the cracked seal.
Garran had an exact estimate for replacing the signal chain, another for rebuilding Practical Mercy's governor, and a third for feeding four people until Tideglass decided whether his shop continued to exist. He had no useful figure for eleven years and eight months.
"Release the frame," Lark said.
"Acceptance inspection remains incomplete."
"The recipient withdraws consent."
"Withdrawal was not included in the negotiated tolerance."
"It was included in paragraph six."
"Paragraph six permits termination upon invasive procedure. No invasive procedure has commenced."
The brass point above Garran's heart retracted half an inch. Four thinner arms unfolded from behind it, each ending in a blunt measuring shoe.
Tamsin leaned over the plate. "Those go through skin, I break the frame. Proprietor penalties can queue behind everyone else."
"External resonance measurement," said the workshop. "No penetration."
The shoes settled against Garran's sternum, shoulder, and lower ribs. Cold moved through bone in four straight lines. The seals inside him turned, not toward the brass now, but toward one another. Sixty-four claims pressing around a space no larger than a clenched fist.
He breathed out by count. Four. Six. Eight.
Lark placed her hand beside his on the frame, close enough that he could see the ink dried along the side of her finger. She did not tell him to endure. She checked the wrist buckle again and moved the inspection lamp so it would not shine in his eyes.
"Measurement only," she told the workshop. "The instant you exceed the accepted surface tolerance, I enforce termination as surety."
"Surety authority acknowledged."
The frame hummed.
Pain arrived cleanly, a white line from sternum to spine. Garran's left hand closed before he could stop it. The strap buckle lifted against his knuckles. Lark slid the flattened nail beneath its edge, giving the joint a fraction more room.
A ridiculous repair. Precise. Immediate.
He fixed his eyes on her hand until the white line narrowed.
Above the basin, the arrested carrier trembled. Once. Twice.
Then the signal chain began moving backward.
Tamsin looked up. "Is it meant to do that?"
"Notice impounded," said the workshop. "Original returned for sealed retention."
The carrier passed behind the basin wall. Gears changed pitch beyond the stone, descending through the foundry toward whatever vault had kept Work Order Zero for fourteen years.
The measuring shoes lifted from Garran's ribs.
"External acceptance tolerance complete," said the workshop. "Housings remain within commissioned dimensions. Work Order Zero remains unfinished."
The wrist straps released.
Garran sat up too quickly. The room tipped three degrees to port. Lark caught the back of the frame rather than him, bracing the oak so he could use it without being held. He put his boots down and waited for the floor to return.
Tamsin was still watching the chain track.
A small bell rang inside Lark's closed seal case.
Not the foundry bell. A thin official note, the sound an examiner's seal made when its standing changed on a public ledger.
Lark's hand tightened around the case.
From high above came the clatter of shutters opening on the signal mast.
The workshop had stopped the notice. The mast was opening anyway.
Light struck the basin wall in nine hard bars, spelling an old Reed service mark out across the dark water beyond the sea gates.
Tamsin read it first. The black dust on her thumb smeared as she gripped the ladder.
"That's not transmission," she said. "That's receipt."
Far out past the foundry mouth, another lamp answered.