Garran kept his eyes on Mara's cup.
The cup had a crack running from the rim to the thumb notch. He had repaired it twice. The first repair had held for three years. The second had held for six months, which meant the foundry's tremor had reached the table, or Mara had been using the cup to measure something it had never been built to contain.
"What did you report?" he asked.
Mara folded the nearest page into quarters. Her hands were steady now. That was worse than the shaking. "Condition. Location. Employment. Injuries."
"Anything else?"
"Whether you were cultivating. Whether anyone had approached you about the seals. Whether you remembered the war."
Tamsin made a noise through her teeth. She had been standing beside the dead gauge with one hand inside the pocket of her oil-stained coat. Her fingers worked at something small and metallic.
Garran looked at Hollis. "You had her spy on my head."
"I had her observe a protected veteran." Hollis's voice remained level. "The distinction is material."
"To whom?"
"To the person writing the warrant."
Hollis removed a narrow packet from inside his coat. The paper was grey, sealed at both ends with black wax. He set it on the table beside Mara's cup, not quite touching either.
Lark reached for it.
Hollis's hand came down first.
"The report is addressed to Garran Vale," he said. "The delivery is mine."
Lark looked at his hand, then at his face. "You have delivered it. Remove your hand."
He did.
She took the packet and inspected the seals. Garran knew that expression. She was reading the paper's condition before its contents, weighing the creases, the wax, the angle of the cord. Lark never trusted a thing that arrived without having been damaged in transit.
"This is a collection notice," she said.
Tamsin's hand stopped moving.
Garran did not feel the words enter him. He felt the old habits arrange themselves around them. Count the doors. Count the people. Put the heavy object nearest the hinge. Keep the injured behind cover. Determine which part of the building could be abandoned without killing anyone.
There were three doors in the foundry chamber. One led to the inspection dock. One led to the furnace gallery. The third had been welded shut by Mara fourteen years ago.
"For what?" he asked.
Lark broke the first seal. "Preservation debt."
Mara closed her eyes.
Garran turned to her. "You said he agreed not to collect me."
"He did."
"That isn't the same as owing him nothing."
"No."
Hollis pulled a chair away from the table and sat with his back straight, his sword between his knees. "The agreement suspended physical collection while the subject remained unclaimed, stable, and under observation. It did not extinguish the authority. It deferred the cost."
"Fourteen years of cost."
"Fourteen annual assessments, transport readiness, archive maintenance, and the preservation of the original warrant. The sum is not punitive."
"Then you have been keeping poor accounts."
"The sum is not small."
Lark read the notice twice. Her mouth tightened at one corner. She laid it flat and ran one finger down the columns.
"The debt is not owed by Garran Vale," she said. "It is assigned to the Preservation Office."
"The office has no treasury," Hollis replied. "It has claims."
"Against what?"
"Against the preserved subject's estate, labor, or custodial value."
Tamsin pulled the object from her pocket. A brass pin, bent nearly double. She set it on the table with care. "He doesn't have an estate. He has a boat with a cracked keel and a shop that Tideglass is already trying to sell out from under him."
"The shop is an operating asset," Hollis said.
"The shop is a leaking roof with four employees under it."
"That is why the notice allows seven days before seizure."
The brass pin rolled toward the edge. Garran caught it before it fell. It was a fuel-line retaining clip, worn thin at the bend. Tamsin watched his hand close around it.
"Seven days for what?" he asked.
"Payment, assignment, or transport."
"Transport where?"
"The Archive of Names."
The room lost a measure of air.
Garran had seen the Archive once, from the water. It sat on a black island beyond the old military roads, a low fortress built around a rootstone that had never accepted a charter. The walls were pale with salt and crowded with memorial plates. Soldiers were taken there when their foundations failed, when their names disputed their bodies, when a government needed a dead man catalogued before it needed him buried.
"You said protection," Garran said.
"It was protection."
"You mean confinement."
"I mean preservation."
"Those are different words."
"They are different procedures."
Lark turned a page. "The notice states that transport will be conducted under battlefield authority. It also states that the subject's necessary personnel may be retained for continuity of care."
Tamsin's face changed by a fraction. The color went out of it, leaving the freckles sharp.
Garran set the retaining clip down. "No."
Hollis looked at him. "The personnel provision is ordinary."
"You don't take my crew."
"I did not say crew. I said necessary personnel."
"You wrote the words."
"Miss Reed's certification makes her eligible for temporary retention."
"Her certification keeps my shop moving. It does not make her yours."
Tamsin shoved the brass pin back into her pocket. "Don't make that face, Vale. I can object to being retained without you trying to pay for it with your spine."
"I am not making a face."
"Your left eyebrow is at inspection height."
"It is not."
"It is."
Lark placed the notice beneath her palm. "Hollis Mere, this claim cannot be enforced against Vale Keelworks while its liquidation is stayed under a valid disciple contract."
"The contract is not a charter."
"No. It is a superior active obligation concerning Garran's body and labor. Tideglass Hall may not own the subject. Neither may your office."
Hollis's gaze shifted to Garran. "You accepted the contract to preserve the shop."
"I accepted it to preserve the people in the shop."
"The distinction is material only to the person writing the warrant."
Lark's fingers moved off the notice. "You cannot seize the shop."
"I can seize the subject's labor."
"Not while the contract requires his labor to remain at Vale Keelworks."
"Then the contract will be tested."
Garran looked at Lark. She had a smear of black wax across the side of her thumb. She did not seem to notice it. Her other hand had begun sorting the loose nails beside the forge into three lengths. Bent nails on the left. Usable nails in the middle. The few that could be straightened on the anvil to the right.
She had put bread beside him earlier. He had not seen her do it. It sat now on the edge of the table, cut into four exact pieces, with a strip of smoked fish laid over the top. No plate. No ceremony. A meal arranged to be eaten while reading a warrant.
He could not stop looking at the bread.
Lark lifted her head. "You need to eat."
"We are discussing the seizure of my labor."
"You can do that while eating. Your blood pressure is poor and your hands are cold."
"You measured my hands?"
"You dropped the retaining clip."
Tamsin snorted. "He drops things when his joints lock. He calls it a deliberate release."
Garran picked up one quarter of the bread. The crust was hard enough to serve as a gasket. He ate it anyway.
Mara watched him. "The Archive will not hurt you if the claim remains administrative."
"You went there?"
"No."
"You know what happens there?"
"I know what is written."
"You know what you reported."
Her hand returned to the cup. She touched the crack with one finger, tracing the old repair. "I reported that you were stable."
"Was I?"
"You were alive. You had work. You were not looking for the seals. That was enough."
"For you."
"For Hollis."
The correction was quiet. It landed harder than an apology would have.
Hollis stood. "I will submit a continuance request."
Lark's chair scraped against the floor. "On what basis?"
"The subject is in active dispute between a preservation office and a chartered hall. The subject's foundation is unstable. The subject is carrying sixty-three commissioned housings and one occupied housing belonging to a living foundry master. The subject has demonstrated multi-jurisdictional activation. The subject is presently surrounded by parties with financial and military interests in his continued mobility."
"Those are reasons to prevent collection."
"They are reasons to move him somewhere neutral."
"The Archive is not neutral."
"It has no commercial charter."
"It has a rootstone."
"So does every island that can collect a docking fee."
Tamsin moved between them. She was too young to stand like a barricade and had learned the posture anyway. "What happens to Mara?"
Hollis turned to her. "She remains under foundry restraint until a competent authority determines whether the sixty-fourth housing can be removed without fatality."
"And if Garran goes to the Archive?"
"His case will be assessed."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the answer available under the notice."
Garran felt the room narrow around Mara's chest. The housing was there, hidden behind ribs and scar tissue, holding her heart together by a law that belonged to no one in the room. If he left, the foundry might keep her. If he stayed, Hollis could take the shop's labor and call it preservation.
He picked up the notice.
The paper was heavier than it looked. A column near the bottom listed the assessed value of his labor by year. Harbor repairs. Delivery work. Emergency towage. Night watch. The numbers were clean and pitiless. Hollis had calculated Garran as if he were a damaged crane: useful, depreciating, salvageable.
At the bottom, beneath the black seal, was a line for voluntary assignment.
Garran took Lark's pen.
She caught his wrist.
Not hard. Just enough.
"Read the rest," she said.
"I have."
"You have read the parts you can use to punish yourself. There are clauses below."
He looked down. Her thumb rested against the pulse in his wrist. She had a habit of touching people only when the contact served a stated purpose. Stabilization. Examination. Removal of splinters. This had no label yet.
She released him and pointed to the lower section.
"If you assign labor, the assignment includes necessary personnel and equipment. If you assign the shop, the claim transfers to its charter and Tideglass becomes liable for preservation costs. If you consent to transport, the debt is suspended pending assessment."
"How long?"
"No duration stated."
"Which means until they decide."
"Correct."
"And if I refuse all three?"
"The office petitions for forced collection."
Hollis adjusted the blue peace cord at his sword. "That petition is already prepared."
Tamsin swore at him with the precision of a mechanic naming stripped threads.
Mara picked up the cup. It trembled once. She set it down before the tremor became visible.
Garran folded the notice in half. He folded it again. The creases met exactly.
"You can stop him," Mara said.
He looked at her.
"You can go with him voluntarily," she continued. "The debt will stop growing. The shop will remain outside the claim. Hollis will not need to take Tamsin."
Lark's face went still.
Tamsin turned on Mara. "You don't get to recommend the cage because you decorated it."
Mara did not answer. She had folded her own scraps into quarters. One after another. The movement belonged to the woman in the reports, the woman who had watched Garran from distances and reduced his life to stable condition.
Garran placed the notice on the table.
"What do you want?" he asked Hollis.
"Compliance."
"That is not a term."
"Transport to the Archive before the next low tide."
"That is three days."
"Two. The tide table changed while we were entering the reef."
"You knew."
"I made preparations."
Garran looked toward the inspection dock. Through the open doors, the courier boat rocked against its lines. One of the mooring ropes had been replaced. He had tied the old rope himself that morning. The new one was black, waxed, and marked at regular intervals with small white knots.
Preservation cord.
Lark followed his gaze. She crossed the room, stepped onto the dock, and crouched beside the line. Her knife came out. She cut once.
The rope did not part.
A black mark flared beneath the blade, bright as wet coal. The cord pulled tight against the cleat. The boat lurched, striking the dock hard enough to shake dust from the lintel.
Hollis did not move.
Garran went outside. The tide was drawing away from Foundry Nine, exposing the iron teeth beneath the dock. Beyond them, the harbor mouth had opened toward the storm road.
On the boat's bow, where the paint had peeled in a long white scar, someone had pressed a second seal into the wood.
A name had been stamped beneath it.
Garran could read only the first line before the boat swung broadside and the water hid the rest.
Hollis came to stand beside him.
"Who tied that?" Garran asked.
"The first claimant to answer the notice."
The black cord tightened again.
"Which name?" Lark asked from the dock.
Hollis watched the seal vanish beneath the rising spray. "One of the sixty-three."