The light went out over the transmission hammer. For three breaths, Foundry Nine held the silence of a shop after a dropped tool, every machine waiting to learn whether the noise had broken anything expensive.
Then the custody locks engaged.
Bolts drove through the workshop doors. Brass shutters snapped over the gauge cabinets. A red line kindled around Garran's boots, passed beneath Mara's chair, and continued across the floor to encircle the broken halves of the master gauge.
Tamsin did not look up. She had two fingers pressed beneath Mara's jaw and her other hand spread over the housing's swollen outline.
"Pulse is skipping every seventh," she said. "The brace is hot. Its lower anchor has moved three hairs since the gauge broke."
Mara watched her daughter's hand as if it belonged to a difficult machine. "Four."
"Three. Your shirt seam is crooked."
"The seam was cut crooked."
"Then your tailor owes you a refund."
A bell sounded in the wall.
The foundry voice returned, stripped of its former courtesy. "All commissions and derivative works are now held against alteration, transfer, concealment, or deterioration pending instruction from registered interested parties."
Garran looked at Mara's chest. "Deterioration appears to be under way."
"Condition acknowledged."
"That was not permission."
"Correct."
Lark had already crossed to the custody panel. She pulled the cover plate with the narrow screwdriver from her belt, caught both screws in her palm, and set them in the crease of the open panel where they could not roll away. She always did that. Garran had watched trained artificers spend an hour blaming bad tolerances for what was usually a missing screw beneath a bench. Lark simply made certain the screw did not go missing.
It was an irritating quality in a debt examiner.
He found himself watching her hands anyway.
"Charter custody cannot forbid emergency preservation," she said.
"Preservation is permitted without modification."
"Her preservation requires modification."
"Then it is alteration."
Tamsin's head lifted. "I'll alter your pressure manifold with a hammer."
"Threat to custodial infrastructure recorded."
"Use my full name. I want the invoice delivered properly."
Mara's breath caught halfway in. Tamsin bent close, all the sharpness leaving her face except around the eyes.
Garran crouched beside them. The housing under Mara's skin gave off a thin vibration. He knew it through his knees before he heard it: an unbalanced shaft, six hundred turns a minute, mounting wear at the lower bracket. Except the bracket was likely sunk into bone.
"How long?" he asked.
Tamsin slid two fingers lower. "If she lies flat and does nothing, half a day. If the lower anchor tears, less than it takes you to ask again."
"I can repair it," Mara said.
"With which gauge?"
Mara looked at the two broken pieces inside the red line.
Tamsin's mouth flattened. She removed her hand from the housing long enough to unroll her tool wrap. Half the pockets were empty. The rest held pieces she had denied possessing aboard three inspections and one customs search.
A relay clacked overhead.
Lark went still at the panel. "Answer received."
The transmission mechanism began to write.
Metal fingers struck a narrow ribbon of tin, each impact raising pale characters. Garran heard the spacing before he could read it. Military address. Four groups, pause, two groups, pause. Hollis still dictated messages as if signal crews were taking fire.
The ribbon emerged.
Lark caught it before it curled to the floor. She read without moving anything but her eyes.
"Well?" Garran asked.
"Hollis Mere acknowledges notice as battlefield surety and casualty advocate. He asserts superior preservation interest over Work Order Zero and all surviving components."
"Components," Tamsin repeated.
Mara's face had gone quieter than pain required.
Lark continued. "He directs Foundry Nine to prevent extraction, repair, reassignment, or destructive testing. He requests immediate transfer of Garran Vale, the sixty-three installed housings, the unattached master artificer, and the disputed sixty-fourth housing to his custody."
"Unattached," Tamsin said. "That's a clever word for a person whose ribs have been riveted to the evidence."
"He is using the old casualty code," Garran said.
Lark's eyes shifted to him. "You know the provision?"
"I have been cargo under it."
That ended the question. She folded the tin ribbon once, not neatly, and returned to the panel.
The foundry voice said, "Superior preservation interest recognized. Transfer route available upon surety acknowledgment by the surviving subject."
A slot opened at Garran's waist. A steel plate slid out, warm from the stamping press. His service number stood above six lines of terms.
He did not touch it.
Lark read over his shoulder. "Acknowledgment places your person and all incorporated cultivation works under Mere's transport authority until a competent casualty court separates them."
"Nearest competent court?"
"Greyhook. Eleven days in fair water."
"It has not been fair water this year."
"No."
Mara made a small sound through her teeth.
Tamsin reached for the swollen housing. The red custody line flashed white. A spark jumped into her knuckles and threw her arm back.
Garran caught her before her head struck the floor. She twisted out of his grip at once and shook feeling into her fingers.
"Insulation fault," she said.
"Custodial deterrent," the foundry corrected.
"I was being polite."
A second line lit around Mara's chair. Thin braces rose from the floor and closed over its legs.
"Preservation restraint engaged," said the voice.
Mara tested one brace with the heel of her boot. "Nine has become more literal."
"Nine has become charter property," Tamsin said. "Like your work. Like him. Like anything else that makes the correct clerk sweat."
Garran picked up the acknowledgment plate. It weighed less than a hinge strap and considerably more than Practical Mercy's anchor.
Lark put one hand over the signature punch.
"No."
"That was clean and clipped," he said. "I assume there is a longer invoice behind it."
"Mere can confine you, compel examinations, and authorize removal attempts if he calls them necessary preservation. Your disciple contract will not stop him. My bond will not stop him. Tideglass Hall could object, but Master Vetch cannot afford the filing fee without selling a roof."
"Only one roof? His circumstances are improving."
Her hand stayed on the punch. A dark smear crossed the side of her thumb from the custody panel. She had sharpened Garran's screwdriver before using it. He could see the fresh bright line along its edge where it lay beside the carefully trapped screws.
"Do not make this easy for everyone except yourself," she said.
Behind them, Tamsin counted Mara's breaths aloud. She used engine cadence: intake, hold, exhaust. On the sixth count, Mara missed the exhaust.
Garran closed his fingers around the plate.
"The transfer releases her from the restraint?"
Lark did not answer.
"Examiner."
"Yes. Both subjects would be released to the surety's transport instructions."
"Then move your hand."
"Why are you willing to give Hollis Mere authority over your bones for a woman who helped put stolen foundations into them?"
There it was, measured to the exact place a blade went in.
Garran looked past her at Tamsin. The girl had wedged her knee beneath Mara's shoulder to ease the pull on the lower anchor. Mara was trying to guide her fingers and Tamsin was ignoring every instruction while following most of them.
"Because her mechanic asked for half a day," he said.
"She did not ask."
"She never does."
Lark's jaw shifted once. Then she lifted her hand.
Garran set his thumb in the punch.
The machine drove a needle through the old service scar and stamped blood into the plate.
Every seal in his bones answered.
Not with force. With recognition.
Sixty-three pressures leaned toward the blood mark, each interpreting the acknowledgment according to a different harbor law. Service tightened his right shoulder. Debt closed around his left wrist. Inheritance pressed cold teeth along his spine. Somewhere below his breastbone, conquest took the signature as surrender and began deciding what ought to be seized.
Garran locked his knees.
The red lines faded.
The braces released Mara's chair. Tamsin had her moving before they struck the floor, one arm around her waist, tool wrap clenched between her teeth.
"Transfer acknowledged," said Foundry Nine. "Preservation instructions follow."
A longer ribbon began to emerge from the transmission slot.
Lark took Garran's bleeding thumb and wrapped it with a strip torn from the clean inner edge of her cuff. She pulled the knot firm, checked the color at the nail, then picked up the screws from the panel crease and replaced the cover plate.
She had just put her career, his shop, and possibly her freedom behind the signature she had told him not to make, and she still would not leave a machine open to salt air.
He would think about that later, which was an unsafe promise and therefore likely to be kept.
Tamsin guided Mara toward the door. "Practical Mercy has a bunk, a bilge pump, and no custodial opinions. Garran, carry the stern end."
"Your mother is not a boiler."
"She has worse maintenance records."
Mara caught the frame as the door bolts withdrew. Her sleeve pulled back.
Around her wrist lay a faded band of signal ink: three black bars, a break, then the hooked stroke used for a confidential recipient.
Lark was still reading the new ribbon.
She stopped.
Garran knew the look. Not surprise. Verification.
"What?" he asked.
Lark turned the strip so the stamped words faced them.
The instructions were addressed to Master Artificer Mara Reed. Beneath the address stood Hollis Mere's full battlefield courtesy and a countersign date renewed once each year.
Fourteen dates.
Tamsin released the tool wrap from her teeth. It struck the floor without unrolling.
Mara lowered her sleeve over the signal band.
"He knew," Tamsin said.
No one corrected her.
Outside, beyond Foundry Nine's sealed doors, a ship answered the mast with three black lights and one hooked white flame.