The channel climbed the slipway without regard for drainage, property lines, or common sense. Green light ran beneath the mud in a straight course toward Vale Keelworks, passing under stacked crab pots and through the corner of Master Vetch’s cabbage patch.
Vetch stood over the wounded cabbages in a robe still stiff with harbor salt. “The lawful currents of heaven,” he said, “might occasionally observe a bloody footpath.”
“They’ve missed the gate as well,” Tamsin said.
The light had cut beneath the fence.
Garran followed it uphill. His left shin clicked every fourth step, the old break objecting to the grade. Behind him, Tamsin carried the ledger under one arm and a coil of new fuel line under the other. She had refused to leave either aboard Practical Mercy. Lark came last, stopping twice to pull brass survey pins from her coat and mark the channel’s course.
“We have a tide window in three hours,” Garran said.
“We had a tide window,” Lark replied.
“The outer reef won’t move because my floor has developed an opinion.”
“No. Your boat may.”
He looked back.
She was kneeling in the mud to set another pin, her sleeves folded twice and exactly level. Beside her lay a bent nail she had found near the slip. She had straightened it against the flat of her spearhead while they argued and placed it in her pocket for later use.
Garran faced uphill again. There were people who saw a bent nail and stepped over it. There were people who picked it up to prevent a boot going through. Lark Fen made it useful first.
That was an inconvenient thing to keep noticing.
Vale Keelworks occupied a long tarred shed with a loft, two cramped rooms at the rear, and a signboard whose final S had blown into the eastern channel six winters ago. Garran had priced replacement paint each spring and then spent the money on wages, caulking fiber, or customers who developed sudden widowed aunts when presented with an invoice.
The green channel struck the threshold beneath the signboard and stopped.
Not faded. Stopped.
It ended in a hard luminous edge the width of Garran’s palm.
Tamsin stepped over it.
The light flared around her boots and ran up both doorposts. She sprang backward, swung the fuel line like a club, and nearly struck Vetch in the throat.
“Structural fault,” she said.
“Assassination by hose is beneath the dignity of a senior master,” Vetch told her.
“Stand somewhere less breakable.”
Lark put one hand against the doorpost. Green characters surfaced in the old pitch, too faint for Garran to read from the yard.
“Don’t touch it,” he said.
“I am already touching it.”
“That was the part I objected to.”
Her mouth tightened, not quite a smile. “Tamsin Reed. Cross again.”
Tamsin looked at Garran.
“You own one fifth of whatever eats you,” he said. “For accounting purposes.”
“Comforting.”
She extended one boot over the threshold. The characters brightened.
Lark read them aloud. “A harbor held in shares admits each keeper by right.”
Vetch leaned close. “That sounds favorable.”
“Anything sounds favorable if you owe it money,” Garran said.
He stepped toward the door.
The threshold hit him in the chest.
There was no visible barrier, only pressure: deep water packed into the width of a doorway. His breath left him. The mark in his finger burned, then the others answered through his arms and ribs in a disorderly blaze. He shifted his weight before they could take it for an invitation.
Lark caught his coat at the shoulder and pulled him back. Her grip landed precisely clear of the old saber scar.
“Again,” she said.
“No.”
“You approached as sole proprietor.”
“I approached as a man entering his own shop.”
“That may be the same mistake.”
Tamsin stood inside the doorway, ledger hugged to her chest. Her eyes moved from Lark to Garran, quick and guarded.
Lark turned to her. “The premises recognize your share. They do not recognize his exclusive authority. He transferred part of the harbor and then attempted to enter without leave from the other keeper.”
“I’ve needed leave to enter buildings before,” Garran said. “They generally had sentries.”
“Ask her.”
“No.”
Tamsin’s grip tightened on the ledger. “Excellent. We can sleep in your room and sell the tools through the window.”
Vetch cleared his throat. “A disciple of Tideglass Hall does not beg admission to his rightful seat.”
Lark looked at him. “Your rightful seat is being dismantled by creditors.”
“Masterful precision. Entirely unnecessary.”
Garran studied the threshold. Forty inches wide. Oak sill, replaced eight years ago, worn down an eighth near the left jamb. He had crossed it carrying cracked rudders, broken pumps, drunk customers, one fevered child and half a mast. He had never asked permission.
Tamsin waited inside.
He could order her. Her room came with employment. Her meals came from the shop account when the shop account permitted meals. For four years he had made decisions and called them protection because the word cost less than partnership.
“Miss Reed,” he said.
Her chin rose. “That sounds septic.”
“May I enter Vale Keelworks?”
She made him stand there for two breaths.
“Yes.”
The pressure vanished.
Garran crossed. Green light ran under his boots and spread through the workshop floor in branching lines. It traced bench legs, shelves, the stove, the hoist frame and every iron hook sunk into the rafters. Then it reached the rear wall and climbed.
All three doors slammed shut.
The loft shutters followed.
Tamsin dropped the fuel line. “That is not structural.”
Vetch shoved at the front door. It did not move. “I withdraw my favorable assessment.”
Lark was already working. “Count exits.”
“Front, rear, loft crane hatch, two shutters,” Garran said. “Smoke vent if you’re narrow and fireproof.”
“Below?”
“Drain channel. Nine inches.”
“Tamsin?”
“Eight and a half at the grate. He never subtracts corrosion.”
Lark crossed to the main bench and laid down her spear. The ferrule had taken a knock during the harbor failure; Garran had noticed the slight movement when she planted it outside. She had not.
He picked it up.
Her hand closed around the shaft above his. “Explain.”
“Loose by half a turn.”
“It is evidence.”
“It is a spear.”
“It can be both.”
“It won’t remain either if the head comes off.”
She released it.
Garran braced the shaft against his hip, seated the ferrule, and selected a narrow punch from the rack. Three measured taps tightened the retaining collar without marking it. Lark watched his hands instead of the green lines covering the walls.
When he returned the weapon, she tested its balance once.
“What is the price?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“That answer has caused enough damage today.”
“Two copper.”
She set two copper coins on the bench. Then she moved his neglected bowl of cold barley stew away from the sawdust spilling off the vise, covered it with a clean rag, and put it beside his elbow.
He looked at the rag.
“You forgot it,” she said.
“I was launching a boat.”
“You were watching other people launch a boat while tightening bolts they had already tightened.”
Vetch rattled the loft hatch. “I hesitate to interrupt this merciless audit of character, but the building has incarcerated its sect master.”
A sound passed through the floor.
Not a voice. The groan of hull timbers settling onto blocks, magnified until every tool on the walls trembled.
Green words rose across the rear doors.
Lark read silently first.
Garran set down the punch. “Well?”
“A harbor may not cast away what it has accepted in trust.”
Tamsin glanced at the racks. “That’s everything. We repair things.”
“Most are finished,” Garran said.
“Finished isn’t returned.”
He looked around the shop.
Propeller shafts filled one rack. Three patched boilers sat by the side wall awaiting collection. Bundled canvas occupied the loft. A child’s copper kettle, repaired without invoice, waited near the stove. Each object now bore a thin green outline.
“How many open tickets?” Lark asked.
“Seventeen.”
Tamsin coughed.
“Recorded open tickets,” Garran amended.
“Twenty-three,” she said.
“Why are there six unrecorded?”
“Customers hate paperwork.”
“Customers don’t keep the books.”
“They also hate prices.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“It answers most questions here.”
Lark opened the ledger on the bench. Green light crawled out between its pages and crossed into the old job board above Garran’s desk. Wooden claim tags began to knock against their hooks.
One by one, the outlines vanished from the repaired items.
The boilers darkened. Then the shafts. The canvas, kettle, pumps and bundled oars followed until only a single green line remained.
It ran beneath the main bench.
Garran crouched. The space held offcuts, two empty oil jars and a shallow saltwood crate pushed hard against the wall. He did not recognize it.
Tamsin went still.
There were several varieties of stillness in a workshop. Concentration leaned forward. Injury curled around itself. Guilt checked the nearest exit.
Garran pulled the crate into the light.
It was eighteen inches long, iron-banded, with fresh scoring around the lid where someone had worked at the lock. No job number. No customer mark. A shipping plate had been scraped clean except for three stamped characters at the bottom.
REED ANCHORAGE.
Tamsin put the ledger down very carefully.
“When did this come in?” Garran asked.
“Before breakfast.”
“From whom?”
“A courier.”
“What did you accept it for?”
Her eyes stayed on the crate. “Safe keeping.”
The green lines tightened around the shop like rigging under storm load. From inside the crate came one precise metallic click.
Then another.
Tamsin backed away from it.
Garran had seen her reach bare-handed into a running gear train to save an engine. He had seen her laugh while a fuel fire took her eyebrows.
He had never seen her afraid of a box.