The outer lock began to drain.
Foundry Nine announced the change through its floor. The iron plates shivered under Garran's boots, then settled half a finger lower as pumps took hold beneath them. Along the sealed doors, old pressure gauges woke one by one. Their needles climbed into the black.
Tamsin snatched up the fallen tool wrap.
"Do not," Mara said.
Tamsin had already crossed to the lock controls. She opened the wrap across the console and selected a narrow fork with one tine filed shorter than the other.
"That interlock has three redundant catches," Garran said.
"Four. The fourth is embarrassed about it."
"If you bridge the second relay, the chamber floods."
"Only to knee height."
"Your knee or mine?"
She put the fork between two brass contacts.
Garran caught her wrist. He did not squeeze. He did not need to. The old habit of stopping hands near fuses had survived retirement better than most of his teeth.
Tamsin looked at his fingers, then at him. "He left her here for fourteen years."
"Yes."
"He sent instructions."
"Yes."
"Let go."
"No."
The pressure needle entered the red. A heavy bolt withdrew inside the door with the slow complaint of metal that had expected to die in place.
Behind them, Mara's breath caught twice against the brace around her chest. Lark was already there. She pulled a folded strip of sailcloth from her case, wrapped it around the brace where a broken edge had begun to bite through Mara's shirt, and tied it flat enough that no knot pressed on the ribs. Her hands did not pause while she watched the lock.
Garran kept noticing the economy of those hands. Lark never asked a damaged thing to tolerate more damage for the sake of speed. Not a spear haft, not a bent nail, not a person she intended to invoice afterward.
The outer doors opened.
Black water stood beyond them, held back by the lowered lock gate. A narrow cutter occupied most of the channel, its hull painted the dull gray used by battlefield recovery crews. Three lamps burned black behind smoked glass. Above them, a white flame curled from an iron hook without touching the wick beneath it.
Six figures waited on deck in oilskins. Hollis Mere stood at their center, bareheaded in the foundry rain.
He stepped onto the lock gate before the boarding rail had finished extending.
"Garran Vale," he said. "Master Artificer Mara Reed. Examiner Lark Fen. Tamsin Reed. I regret the conditions of our meeting."
"You arranged most of them," Garran said.
"That does not improve them."
Hollis crossed into the workshop. Water ran from his coat in straight lines. His sword remained secured with a peace cord, though the cord was battlefield blue and could be cut by drawing hard enough.
Two recovery officers followed with a litter and a case of preservation irons. Tamsin shifted between them and Mara.
Hollis stopped.
"I will not remove her without her consent unless the foundry declares terminal forfeiture."
"That's kind," Tamsin said. "Is there a form for it?"
"There are nine. I completed seven on the approach."
"Missed two, did you?"
"One requires your mother's present condition. The other requires a witness who has not destroyed the principal instrument of succession."
Tamsin's filed fork vanished into her fist.
Garran released her wrist. "You knew she was alive."
"Yes."
The clean answer made more room for anger than an excuse would have.
Mara eased herself upright against the inspection frame. The foundry's restraint bands loosened as Hollis's transport authority entered the chamber, but they did not withdraw. Pale lines still crossed her shoulders and waist.
"How long were you waiting outside?" she asked.
"Since the acceptance notice was interrupted."
"Before I entered."
"Yes."
"Prepared as ever."
"Insufficiently, as ever."
Tamsin turned on Mara. "You knew his ship was there."
Mara folded her sleeve over the signal band again. The motion was neat despite the tremor in her hand.
"I knew what the lights meant."
"You knew he'd come."
"I considered it likely."
Tamsin laughed once. It had no amusement in it. "That's a clerk's hinge. Opens either direction and still calls itself shut."
Lark held out her hand to Hollis. "The preservation warrant. Full leaves, not the dock abstract."
He removed a waxed packet from inside his coat and gave it to her.
She checked the seal, broke it, and read. The workshop waited around the small sounds of paper and Mara's breathing. Garran watched Lark's left thumb move down the margin. It stopped three times. Jurisdiction. Scope. Cost.
"Your authority covers named casualties, derivative foundation property, and necessary transport personnel," she said. "It does not supersede Foundry Nine's charter custody."
"No."
"You cannot extract the housings here."
"No."
"You can transport Garran because he accepted your authority. You can transport Mara if she consents. You cannot take Tamsin."
"Correct."
Tamsin's head came up. "Good."
Mara shut her eyes.
Garran saw it. So did Lark.
"She cannot remain," Garran said. "The foundry has no master gauge, no successor, and no obligation to feed her once the inspection closes."
"I can feed myself," Tamsin said.
"You ate half a cold onion yesterday."
"It was load-bearing."
Hollis looked toward the shattered gauge. "Tamsin Reed is subject to a charter inquiry. Removing her could be construed as interference."
"Leaving her could be construed as convenient," Garran said.
"Garran." Lark's voice was quiet.
She had reached the last leaf of the warrant. At its foot were three empty bond lines.
He knew the shape of the trap before she set down the paper.
"No," he said.
Lark opened her examiner's case.
"You have already pledged your bond against my notice," he said.
"A portion."
"The portion keeping my shop out of liquidation."
"Yes."
"And the remainder?"
"May certify necessary personnel under disputed transport."
Tamsin stared at her. "Don't certify me."
Lark selected a steel stamp. Its edge had been sharpened recently. Garran remembered giving it back to her blunt after using it to lift a corroded pump seal. She had repaired it without mentioning that he had borrowed it without asking.
"Examiner," Hollis said, "your existing pledge has fifty-one hours remaining. Adding a contested person will trigger immediate reassessment."
"At next low tide," Lark said.
"Likely."
Vale Keelworks stood on pilings meant to be inspected twice a year and paid for once every three. Low tide would expose them. It would also expose every lien marker Tideglass Hall had held above water during the suspension.
Garran measured the distance from Foundry Nine to home by favorable current, worn bearings, and the cracked port injector Tamsin had promised could endure one more crossing if nobody insulted it. Thirty-two hours. Less if the east channel remained open. More if Hollis chose the route.
The shop would be posted before they reached it.
"Lark," he said.
She put the stamp into the foundry brazier.
"Which employee should I have left in charter custody?" she asked. "Give me the name and the contractual reason."
He had none.
That was not the same as agreeing. It merely left him standing there while she pressed her thumb to the examiner's line and laid the hot stamp over her print.
The paper hissed.
A line of blue light traveled from the warrant into the floor. Far away, through stone and water and the ledgers of Tideglass Hall, a bell struck once.
Lark's face did not change. She removed the stamp, cooled it in a cup, and wiped the rim before returning the cup to Mara.
"Tamsin Reed is necessary mechanical personnel," she said. "She remains under my supervision."
"Your supervision is becoming crowded," Hollis said.
"Then stand farther away."
Tamsin shoved the filed fork back into her wrap hard enough to pierce the leather.
Mara looked at Lark for a long moment. "You have bought her a berth by selling his roof."
"I have bought neither. I have assigned a price to a decision everyone else was pretending had none."
Garran went quiet. The war lived close to sentences like that.
Hollis gave a small bow. "The transport registry accepts the certification. We depart in twelve minutes."
"Eleven," Tamsin said. She seized the preservation litter, flipped it over, and examined the joints. "This rear pin is cracked. Put my mother on it and the left rail folds when you turn."
One recovery officer crouched beside her. Tamsin slapped his hand away, selected a sound pin from her hoard, and drove it into place with three strokes.
Mara watched without speaking.
Hollis moved to the foundry console. He inserted his warrant key beside the annual instruction ribbon. The machine pulled both inward, compared their marks, and began printing a transport ledger.
The first sheet bore Garran's name. The second bore Mara's.
Then came fourteen narrow pages, one for each countersign date.
Hollis gathered them too quickly.
Lark put two fingers on the last page before he could lift it.
"Annual preservation instructions require annual condition returns," she said.
Hollis did not pull against her. "They do."
Tamsin stopped hammering.
Mara lowered the cup from her mouth.
Lark turned the page around.
The return was written in a compact artificer's hand. It listed the condition of one unrecovered housing, the integrity of its brace, and the continued absence of rejection. Beneath that stood a second assessment, only three lines long.
Subject Vale remains ambulatory. No visible resonance. No indication he is aware of installed commissions.
The signature at the bottom was Mara Reed's.
Tamsin crossed the space between them and took the remaining pages from Hollis. He allowed it. She read the first, then the next, her eyes moving faster each time.
Fourteen reports.
Garran recognized dates among them. The year his left shoulder had failed during a winter launch. The year fever kept him in the upstairs room for nine days. The year Tamsin had arrived at Vale Keelworks with a false apprenticeship letter and three stolen carburetor needles in her boot.
Each page reduced his life to condition, mobility, awareness.
"You weren't only hiding from me," Tamsin said.
Mara's fingers tightened around the cup. "No."
"You were reporting on him."
"Yes."
Garran looked at Hollis. "In exchange for what?"
Hollis's battlefield courtesy did not move, but his hand closed over the blue peace cord at his sword.
Mara answered instead.
"For fourteen years," she said, "he agreed not to come and collect you."