The answering lamp gave three short bars, two long, then held steady.
Tamsin climbed until her boots were level with Garran's shoulder. The ladder trembled under both their weight. Black foundry dust had settled in the seams of her face.
"Read it," Lark said.
"I am reading it. It has a bent shutter on the fourth channel."
The lamp beyond the sea gates blinked again.
Tamsin stopped breathing through her mouth.
Garran counted the interval. Six seconds. Old military lamps used five. Merchant lamps used eight because merchants assumed every message improved if delayed.
"Reed service challenge," Tamsin said. "Master's access."
Lark had the seal case open now. Its brass leaves showed three lines of red script where there had been one. She read without moving her lips, shut the case, and put it under her coat.
"Can they enter?"
"Sea gate's shut. Outer chain is up. Sill teeth haven't been greased in fourteen years, and the west capstan has a cracked reduction collar." Tamsin looked at the workshop ceiling as another sequence flashed across it. "So yes. Foundry likes them."
The chain track below Garran's feet engaged with a concussion that shook rust from the ladder. Far down the basin, under water black as quenched iron, something vast began to turn.
"Practical Mercy," Garran said.
"Still clamped," Tamsin answered. "Both berth dogs engaged. Governor's in allocation custody. Bilge pump is pretending not to hear me."
"That was not a question. Get aboard."
She gave him a look sharpened for use on stripped bolts. "I'm proprietor."
"You are seventeen and standing on a machine that has begun obeying a stranger. Get aboard."
"Seventeen is adequate for every liability and insufficient for every decision. Convenient age."
She descended past him anyway.
Lark caught Tamsin by the back of her work belt as the chain lurched again. She did not make a ceremony of it. She simply took the girl's weight, lowered her over the last missing rung, and set her boots on the deck plating. Then she bent, retrieved the wrench Tamsin had dropped, wiped its teeth on her sleeve, and returned it handle first.
Garran watched the sequence longer than required. Lark noticed missing rungs. She noticed which hand a person needed free. In a harbor full of laws trying to decide who owned his bones, that competence was an indecent thing to look at.
"Vale," she said.
"West capstan," he replied.
The foundry voice issued from pipes along the wall. "Reserved master access has been presented. Proprietor response required."
Tamsin's wrench struck the deck once. "Denied."
"State defect."
"Fourteen years late."
The pipes clicked.
"Defect not recognized."
Beyond the gates, the lamp went dark. An engine note crossed the water instead, low and even. Garran knew expensive alignment when he heard it. No knock in the shaft, no hunting at idle, no propeller slap from an overloaded stern. Whoever waited outside maintained machinery with the kind of money that made maintenance invisible.
He crossed to the west capstan. Its housing had split along two bolt holes, and orange rust pulsed from the crack each time the submerged gearing took strain. Tamsin crouched beside him before he could order her elsewhere.
"Reduction collar will shear at twelve turns," she said.
"Nine."
"Eleven if the old steel was decent."
"It wasn't. Reed saved good steel for tools."
"That is slander against a woman you've never met."
Garran put his palm against the housing. Vibration climbed his radius and found the foreign marks nested in the bone. Several answered. One wanted service acknowledged. One wanted debt measured. A third, warm and foully eager, wanted the capstan conquered and renamed.
He took his hand away.
"Manual brake?" Lark asked.
Tamsin pointed across the basin. "Other side. Because dead engineers enjoy exercise."
Lark was already moving.
The chain advanced one tooth.
Garran wedged Tamsin's wrench through the housing brace and leaned on it. The brace bowed. The wrench did not. Tamsin made a small approving noise she would have denied under oath.
"When it parts," he said, "the loose end clears this platform by half a yard."
"Quarter yard."
"You may measure the pieces afterward."
"Proprietor response required," the foundry repeated.
"Denied," Tamsin said.
"Reserved access predates trust conveyance. State defect."
Tamsin's face emptied. She looked toward the sea gate, where a pale line had appeared between the iron leaves.
"Forgery," she said.
The foundry answered at once. "Credential is original."
The line widened. Water came through first, a white blade under pressure. Then the gate leaves dragged inward, scraping stone. The capstan gave its ninth turn.
Its collar sheared.
Garran heard the break inside the housing, a neat metallic cough. He caught Tamsin around the ribs and threw both of them flat as the chain whipped free. Iron crossed the space where her neck had been and struck the wall hard enough to bury a link in brick.
The wrench tore from his hand. Skin went with it.
For several seconds the only sound was water pouring through the opening.
Tamsin lifted her head from his coat. "Quarter yard."
"Revise to none."
She pushed herself up, saw his palm, and reached for it. Then she stopped before touching him and turned the reaching hand into a fist.
Lark returned from the brake gallery at a run. Her spear was in her right hand. In her left she carried a dented red meal tin.
"Why do you have that?" Garran asked.
"It was beside the brake."
"That does not improve the answer."
She put it into Tamsin's hands. "Eat. Your hands are shaking."
"The foundry is being boarded."
"Chew efficiently."
Tamsin stared at her, opened the tin, and bit into a cold barley cake with an expression of concentrated insult.
Lark knelt and took Garran's wrist. She poured spirits over his palm without warning.
He kept still.
"You could price the warning separately," he said.
"You would decline it as an unnecessary expense."
She wrapped the hand with a strip torn from the clean lining of her own cuff. Her knots were square, close, and placed away from his grip. Garran had known field surgeons who could not manage that after six months' training.
The sea gate opened wide enough for a launch.
It entered without lamps.
The hull was narrow, gray, and low in the water, built for reef channels rather than comfort. No name showed on its bow. Brass reeds lay inlaid along the gunwale, each one a measuring mark. Its engine dropped to idle exactly at the gate sill. A single figure stood behind the forward screen.
Tamsin stopped chewing.
The launch crossed the basin. No one hailed it. The foundry extended a docking arm from the stone, caught the bow ring, and drew the vessel against the platform with the care it had not shown Practical Mercy.
The woman aboard stepped onto the iron.
She wore a dark mechanic's coat with the sleeves cut to the elbow. Her hair, once black, had gone white at both temples and was braided tight against her skull. Two fingers on her left hand were articulated brass, darkened by use rather than polished. She carried no luggage. A leather roll of gauges hung at her hip.
Tamsin set down the meal tin.
Garran knew the shape of her eyes. He had spent three years paying wages to those eyes while they accused him of murdering engines by optimism.
The woman looked first at the sheared capstan, then at the chain embedded in the wall. Her mouth tightened by less than the width of a washer.
"Nine turns," she said.
Tamsin swallowed. "It should have made eleven."
"Not with that batch of collar steel."
No one moved.
The foundry spoke through every pipe in the basin.
"Master artificer Mara Reed. Reserved access accepted."
Tamsin's fingers closed on the edge of the tin until the metal bent.
Mara looked at her.
Fourteen years did not cross the space between them. They remained exactly where they were, one on the docking arm and one beside Garran's blood on the deck.
"Your governor timing is three degrees late," Mara said.
Tamsin's voice came out level. "Foundry took it. You can complain to the proprietor."
"I am."
Lark rose, keeping herself between Mara and Garran. "Mara Reed was certified dead in the dissolution of Reed's Ninth Commercial Line."
"Certified missing," Mara said. "Death was cheaper for the creditors to administer."
That was explanation enough to be useless and too precise to attack.
Lark extended her empty hand. "Credential."
Mara took a narrow brass strip from her coat and passed it over. Lark read both sides, tested the edge with her thumbnail, then held it near the open seal case beneath her coat. The case chimed.
Tamsin flinched at that sound. Not at Mara's face. Not at the voice. At the official note agreeing.
"Valid," Lark said.
Mara's gaze shifted to Garran's wrapped hand. Then to his shoulders, his stance, the old scar above his collar. She inspected him as if a customer had returned a device after misusing it for fourteen years.
"Garran Vale," she said.
He did not ask how she knew him.
"Mara Reed. Your west capstan is scrap."
"It was scrap when installed."
One corner of her mouth moved. Tamsin saw it. The meal tin folded further in her hands.
Mara stepped onto the platform. The foundry lights woke ahead of her, one after another, revealing rails that led toward the sealed master's workshop.
Tamsin blocked the first rail junction.
She was shorter than her mother by three inches. Garran measured it because the other measurements available to him were worse.
"You left me nine dead workshops and nine hundred sixty-three commissions," Tamsin said. "You don't get reserved access to me."
Mara stopped.
Her brass fingers tapped once against the gauge roll.
"I did not come for the foundry," she said.
The rails beneath Garran's boots shifted. Deep inside the master's workshop, locks began withdrawing around Work Order Zero.
Mara looked at the bones of his bandaged hand.
"I came because Nell Vale paid for sixty-four housings," she said, "and I only installed sixty-three."