“Don’t touch the latches,” Tamsin said.
Garran had not moved toward them. He lowered his hand anyway.
The crate stood waist-high on the receiving bench, ironbound at every corner, its cedar boards clean enough to have avoided three docks and suspicious enough to have crossed all of them. The scraped shipping plate held pale gouges where the customer mark had been. No pry damage. No wet. No declaration wax.
One click came from within.
Lark set her spear against the ledger shelf. “Tamsin Reed. What is in the crate?”
“If I knew, I’d have logged it.”
“You knew enough not to.”
Tamsin’s thumb worried the black half-moon beneath her shortest nail. “That’s not the same operation.”
The green lines along the walls drew tighter. A hook dropped from its peg and struck the floor point-first. Garran felt the answer in his teeth: property accepted, property concealed, harbor denied release.
He counted the crate’s fastenings. Four side straps. Two lid hinges. Three front latches, though only the center one had a keyway. Narrow ventilation cuts hid beneath the upper banding.
Not ventilation. Sound holes.
“Everyone behind the engine block,” he said.
Tamsin gave him a look sharp enough to dress timber. “You don’t order me behind my own engine.”
“One fifth of it.”
“Twenty percent behind the engine block, then.”
Lark crossed the shop, caught Tamsin by the shoulder of her coat, and moved her bodily two paces left. She did it without flourish and without taking her eyes off the crate. Then she picked up Garran’s face shield from beneath the grinder, inspected its cracked strap, and exchanged it for her own.
“Yours fails under lateral impact,” she said.
“It’s managed eight years.”
“That is not a performance standard.”
She fitted the shield over his face, tightened the rear buckle, and tucked the loose strap flat so it would not catch his collar. Her knuckles passed once beneath his ear. Garran found himself attending to that while a hostile box clicked six feet away, which was poor allocation of attention by any military measure.
He cleared his throat. “Distance.”
Lark stepped back. “Better.”
Tamsin had watched the exchange. Mercifully, she said nothing. Less mercifully, both eyebrows had risen.
Garran took a long-handled rivet fork from the wall. “Did the courier give a name?”
“No.”
“Uniform?”
“Oilskin. Gray cuffs. Bad left boot bearing.”
“Boat?”
“Didn’t see it.”
“You see every engine that comes within half a mile.”
“I was busy.”
The lie had too much room around it.
Lark opened the delivery ledger to the blank line below yesterday’s bilge-pump repair. “Exact words.”
Tamsin folded her arms. “He asked whether this was Vale Keelworks. I said it depended who owed money. He said he had a crate for Tamsin Reed. I told him she was dead. He said then it passed to her harbor. I said leave it outside. He said outside wasn’t safe keeping.”
“And then?” Lark asked.
“I told him we kept things safe.”
The lines in the floor brightened beneath Tamsin’s boots.
Garran studied the latches. “He made you say it.”
“He made me say four words. People do that all day without turning architecture against us.”
“Most people don’t bring architecture paperwork.”
“Not paperwork.” Tamsin glanced at the crate. “Reed doesn’t trust paper near engines.”
Another click. This one was followed by a slow winding rasp.
Lark’s hand went to her spear. “What does Reed trust?”
“Gears. Witnesses. Grudges with serial numbers.”
Garran slid the rivet fork under the center latch. The green line running up the receiving bench flowed around his wrist, cool as deep water. It did not stop him. That was worse than being warned away.
“Tamsin,” he said. “Permission to open property held by your share of the harbor.”
“No.”
The word struck the walls. Every green line went rigid.
Garran eased the fork out.
Lark did not argue. She returned to the ledger, laid a bent nail beside the page, and straightened it against the iron edge with three precise taps from a setting hammer. Waiting, for her, had tools.
Tamsin stared at Garran through the clear face shield. “That’s it?”
“You withheld permission.”
“You usually treat that as the beginning of negotiations.”
“I’m improving.”
“Disgusting habit.”
The mechanism inside the crate wound on. Seven turns by the sound of it, with a chipped tooth every third revolution. Garran placed the fault near the lower right corner.
Tamsin heard it too. Her gaze tracked down.
“What happens when it finishes?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Your left hand says it removes a finger.”
Her left hand had closed around her right index finger.
She released it. “Reed Anchorage uses return gears. You ship a disputed mechanism home, sealed under its maker’s plate. The gear counts while the harbor decides whether to accept examination. If they refuse, it locks and records refusal.”
“Records how?”
“Brass pins. Witness wheel.”
“And if they accept?” Lark asked.
“The harbor opens the crate.”
“That does not explain your finger.”
Tamsin’s mouth flattened.
Garran looked at the three latches again. The center for the harbor. The two outer latches sat at uneven heights, built for different hands.
“Maker and claimant,” he said.
Tamsin kicked the base of the engine block. Not hard enough to damage it. Hard enough that her boot would hurt later.
Lark set down the hammer. “Which are you?”
No answer.
The chipped gear caught, slipped, and resumed. The green seal inside Garran’s bones pulled toward the crate. Not toward Tamsin. Not toward Reed Anchorage. Toward the thing they had promised to keep.
He had known men who could stand through bombardment and break when asked for their home address. Pressing the question rarely improved the repair.
He removed the face shield Lark had given him and hung it on the rivet fork. “We have perhaps four minutes before that gear completes its travel.”
“Three and a half,” Tamsin said automatically.
“Good. You’ll spend the first minute telling us how to make it safe. You may spend the remaining two and a half insulting our technique.”
“I need all three and a half for that.”
“Work faster.”
Her mouth twitched once, then stopped. She approached the bench.
Garran moved aside. Not behind her. Beside her, with enough space for her elbows and no clear route for anyone to pull her away from the crate. She noticed. She always noticed exits.
“The outer latches are live,” she said. “Open them out of order and the witness pins fire through the sound holes. Brass, finger length, spring driven.”
Lark inspected the cuts without leaning into their path. “How many?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Can they kill?”
“If you’ve arranged your organs carelessly.”
“Helpful.”
“I try to meet the customer where they are.”
Tamsin drew a thin screwdriver from inside her sleeve. Garran had bought her a full roll of proper pocket tools last winter. She still carried the filed-down scrap she had arrived with.
She pressed its tip to the left hinge and listened through the handle. “The witness wheel is engaged. Center latch first, but only under harbor authority. Then claimant. Then maker.”
“Which side?” Garran asked.
Her jaw worked.
“Tamsin.”
“Maker’s right.”
She stood on the right.
Lark’s eyes flicked from the latch to Tamsin and back. She asked no question. Garran could have been grateful for that if gratitude did not feel so close to debt.
He put his palm against the center latch. The green mark in his bones turned like a key being considered by an old lock.
“I accepted this crate into Vale Keelworks,” Tamsin said, each word forced clean. “I grant the harbor permission to examine what it holds in trust.”
The latch opened beneath Garran’s hand.
Pressure ran up his arm, crossed his shoulders, and settled behind his sternum. The shop timbers groaned. No pins fired.
“Claimant,” Lark said.
No one moved.
The winding rasp had shortened to quick, tight strokes.
Tamsin kept the screwdriver pressed to the hinge. “The courier must have set that latch before delivery.”
“Then it would already be open,” Garran said.
“It can be remotely witnessed.”
“Can it?”
“No.”
The truth cost her less breath than the lies had.
Garran examined the left latch. Its handle was polished at the edges, recently used. “The claimant packed the crate.”
“Usually.”
“So they opened their latch before sending it.”
Tamsin shut her eyes.
Lark took the setting hammer and drove its claw beneath the left latch. “I can break the assembly.”
“Pins fire.”
“I can contain twenty-four pins.”
“The witness wheel records interference.”
“Let it.”
“It goes into Reed’s rootstone archive. Every registered shop there sees a tampered return claim. Every ferry master. Every parts broker.” Tamsin opened her eyes. “They stop selling to Vale Keelworks.”
Garran considered their inventory. Two serviceable drive belts. Half a drum of bearing oil. Enough copper line for one boiler refit if the customer had a small boiler and forgiving standards.
He put his hand over Lark’s hammer and pressed it down.
She yielded at once. That was what caught him: not obedience, but the absence of performance. She did not make him prove force, rank, or certainty. She simply changed the angle of the tool and waited for the next useful fact.
“Who has a claim that requires your hand?” he asked Tamsin.
The return gear clicked faster.
Tamsin pulled the screwdriver from the hinge. “Permission to answer after we aren’t being aimed at?”
“Granted.”
“Then open left.”
“By whose authority?”
“Mine.”
“You said maker’s right.”
“I also said the crate would shoot us. Keep up.”
The green lines contracted another inch. A jar of rivets burst on the shelf, spilling metal in a bright rattle across the floor.
Lark looked at Tamsin. “A valid claim cannot be opened by the maker.”
“Reed has exceptions.”
“Name one.”
Tamsin’s face went still in the way Garran remembered from the morning she had arrived at his dock, fourteen years old by her account and twelve by her teeth, asking whether he needed an engine mechanic while standing beside an engine she had already repaired.
“Blood manufacture,” she said.
The gear stopped.
In the silence, Garran heard the harbor water striking the outside piles.
Tamsin took the left latch. “Reed registers children to the senior workshop that built their first mechanism. Family shop holds claimant rights until majority or release.”
“You’re past majority,” Garran said.
“Not there.”
She lifted the latch.
Inside the crate, twenty-four springs relaxed with a long metallic sigh.
Garran opened the maker’s latch on the right at Tamsin’s nod. The lid rose half an inch by itself. A smell came through the gap: machine oil, river mud, and hot iron quenched too quickly.
Tamsin stepped back.
Lark took one side of the lid. Garran took the other. It was heavier than cedar and straps could account for. They raised it together and folded it against the rear stops.
Black felt lined the crate. Nested in fitted hollows lay a dismantled engine no longer than Garran’s forearm: six-cylinder tide rotor, narrow-shaft pattern, each component cleaned and tagged with a brass number. The crankcase had split from end to end. Three teeth were missing from the primary gear.
Tamsin made a sound too small to be a word.
Garran leaned closer. Every component bore the same maker’s stamp: a reed crossed by a wrench. The workmanship was exceptional. Compact, stubborn, with the fuel feed routed through a space most mechanics would have declared unusable.
He had seen Tamsin solve problems in exactly that shape.
At the center of the crate lay a brass witness wheel. Its pins spelled a claim in Reed punch-script.
Lark read it first. “Return requested upon failure of masterwork. Maker to repair in person or surrender her hands from the registry.”
Tamsin reached past her and touched the broken crankcase with one fingertip.
Garran looked at the stamped date beneath the claim. “This engine is sixteen years old.”
“Seventeen,” Tamsin said.
“You made it when you were a child.”
She turned the witness wheel over.
On its reverse, cut deeper than the formal claim, was a second line in a rough hand. Not legal punch-script. A workshop message.
Tamsin read it without moving her lips.
Garran did not ask what it said. He could see enough in the way her fingers closed around the wheel.
Outside, something heavy struck the locked shop door.
Once.
Then a man’s voice called through the green-sealed timber.
“Tamsin Reed. Your masterwork has failed. Will you come home and mend it?”