Tamsin set the witness wheel down with enough care to make Garran more wary than if she had thrown it.
The man outside struck the door again.
“Workshop claim,” he called. “Witnessed in brass. Carried dry. Answer due.”
Garran looked at the door. Two oak leaves, iron-banded, thirty-six years old, and currently webbed from hinge to lintel in the green lines of the awakened seal. The first blow had shifted dust from the upper brace. The second had not. Whoever stood outside understood how hard he could knock without making the shop itself answer.
Lark crouched beside the dismantled engine. She had already arranged the bolts by thread and wear on a square of sailcloth. While the voice spoke, she picked up the smallest bent one, laid it across the flat of Garran’s vice, and straightened it with three measured taps.
“Name the claimant,” she said.
A pause followed. Not uncertainty. Offense being selected and put away.
“Bram Reed. Registered journey-master of Reed Anchorage. Tamsin Reed knows my standing.”
Tamsin turned the wheel so its rough-cut message faced the bench.
Garran knew that movement. Soldiers turned casualty tags face down when the name was one they intended to carry farther than orders required.
He went to the door but stopped outside the green boundary drawn across the floorboards. The seal had allowed him into his own shop only after Tamsin named him welcome. It had not relaxed since. Every shelf and tool chest remained outlined in dim green, each accepted object counted under a law Garran had not known was inside him until it began issuing terms.
“What failed?” he asked.
Bram Reed gave a short laugh through the timber. “You own a repair shop and ask a question before opening the case?”
“I own a repair shop because I ask before opening the case.” Garran examined the lower hinge. Fresh rust dust. No deformation. “State the failure.”
“Return gear split under load. Governor jammed. Crankcase broke across both mounting feet.”
Tamsin’s eyes moved to the pieces on the bench in that order.
Garran looked too. The return gear had lost four teeth. The governor cage was folded inward. The crankcase lay in two heavy halves, its fracture bright where Lark had cleaned away old grease.
“That sequence is wrong,” he said.
“It is the sequence entered by the registered shop.”
“That was not my question.”
“No,” Bram said. “It rarely is, Garran Vale.”
The use of his full name put the man nearer in Garran’s mind. Not visible, but placed: old enough to remember military notices, informed enough to have read the Keelworks sign, patient enough to make either fact sound like prior acquaintance.
Tamsin reached for the crankcase.
“Cloth,” Garran said.
“I know what oil is.”
“You also know what blood poisoning is, but I’ve seen your gloves.”
She glared at him. Lark slid a clean rag beneath Tamsin’s hand without looking up.
That was the trouble with Lark Fen. She made provision feel less like being watched. The rag was folded to keep the torn edge away from Tamsin’s palm, and she had put the straightened bolt back in its exact place among the others. Garran found himself looking at her hands when he ought to have been estimating whether Bram Reed had brought enough men to remove a door.
Tamsin lifted one half of the casing. “Gear breaks first, governor overspeeds. Cage goes outward.”
“Unless the shaft seizes,” Lark said.
“It didn’t. Look at the bearing.” Tamsin pointed with the rag. “Polished, no heat blue. This ran clean until the teeth went.”
Garran crouched opposite her. “And then?”
“The governor should have dumped pressure. Even if it jammed, the case would crack here.” She touched the rib beneath the shaft housing. “Not both feet. Those break if you drop the unit or pry it off the bed while the bolts are in.”
Outside, Bram knocked once with a smaller object. Metal on wood.
“Tamsin Reed,” he said. “You were asked a lawful question.”
Her shoulders drew up. Garran had seen her crawl elbow-deep into a boiler with steam still whispering in the feed pipe. He had seen her argue dock tariffs with three armed collectors while carrying stolen copper under her coat. The voice beyond the door made her stand like a child waiting to have her fingers inspected.
He put his hand flat on the bench between her and the witness wheel.
“The shop has accepted the engine in trust,” he called. “You’ll address the keeper of the harbor.”
Lark’s head came up.
Bram was quiet for two breaths. “You claim mastery over Reed work?”
“No.” Garran measured the split in the case by eye. Eleven inches, perhaps twelve along the hidden face. “Custody. Different invoice.”
“The registered maker is required to return.”
“She is a one-fifth owner of Vale Keelworks.”
Tamsin stared at him.
It was not useful information. The contract had already awakened a seal, locked four people in a repair shop, and turned ownership into a jurisdictional argument. Saying it aloud to a Reed journey-master was the commercial equivalent of testing lamp oil with a match.
Still, her shoulders came down half an inch.
Bram tapped the door again. “A foreign share does not discharge a birth registration.”
“Then you acknowledge the share.” Lark rose, wiping metal grit from her fingertips. “Good. State whether Reed Anchorage claims the labor of a foreign owner, the return of an apprentice, or remedy for defective goods. You may choose one basis before I open the door.”
“Who are you?”
“Lark Fen, debt examiner of Tideglass Hall.”
This silence was longer.
Garran heard a faint scrape outside, then the creak of weight settling on the loading step. Bram had sat down. A man intending immediate violence did not usually make himself comfortable first, but clan advocates, siege officers, and tax clerks often did.
“At Tideglass,” Bram said at last, “do examiners obstruct lawful returns?”
“We charge for identifying what they are.”
Garran looked at her. Lark had already drawn out her narrow ledger. She held the pencil poised, face composed, as if they were not trapped by his impossible foundation with a family claimant at the door and Practical Mercy tied three streets downhill under compulsory departure orders.
“Your rate?” Bram asked.
“Six silver an hour for disputed jurisdiction. Eight if anyone damages the premises while I am writing.”
The loading step creaked again.
Garran could not stop the corner of his mouth moving. He covered it by bending over the engine.
Tamsin noticed. She always noticed defects.
“You two done flirting by tariff?” she muttered.
Lark’s pencil snapped.
Only the graphite. Not the wood. She turned it around and continued writing with the other end.
Garran inspected the crankcase because it was safer than looking anywhere else. The fracture surfaces did not match the story. One edge bore a shallow crescent where a tool had bitten before the metal broke. He shifted the lamp closer.
“Give me the narrow glass.”
Tamsin did not move.
“It’s in your left sleeve,” he said.
“That is an accusation without evidence.”
“Your cuff is six ounces heavier than the other.”
She produced the inspection lens and slapped it into his palm.
He held it above the crescent. Parallel scratches lay inside the mark, bright beneath the grease. Not impact. Not fatigue. File teeth.
Tamsin leaned close enough that a loose strand of hair touched the lamp chimney. Lark caught it on two fingers and moved it aside before it singed. Tamsin flinched, then stayed where she was.
“There,” Garran said.
“I see it.”
“Say what it is.”
“I see it.”
The rough message on the wheel faced down against the wood.
Garran waited. He had learned waiting from damaged hulls. Push too early and a split plank became two; leave it entirely and the sea made the decision.
Outside, Bram said, “Your answer is overdue.”
Tamsin took the witness wheel and pressed its rim into the grease on her palm. Her thumb covered the first rough-cut word. Then she turned it over.
The letters were ugly, crowded, and made with a three-corner punch held at the wrong angle. Garran could read formal claim-script. This was workshop shorthand, older in places, Reed marks replacing half the verbs.
Tamsin read it aloud.
“Gear sound. Break made. Bram coming. Stay gone. Ma.”
No one moved.
The shop clock ticked above the parts shelves, losing four seconds to the minute because Garran had promised to clean its escapement in winter and had not specified which winter.
Lark put down her ledger. “Your mother sent the warning?”
Tamsin rubbed her thumb across the final mark. “Her punch drifts right. Always has.”
“Could someone imitate it?”
“They could imitate the drift.” Tamsin’s voice had gone thin and technical. “Not the depth. She lost grip in two fingers when the east flywheel took them. Uses her shoulder on the strike. Goes deep, shallow, deep.”
Garran lifted the broken case again. The file marks were deliberate. So were the pry scars at both feet. Someone had dismantled a working engine badly, then entered its ruin as failure under Tamsin’s childhood registration.
Bram Reed had carried the evidence to her door.
Perhaps he did not know about the message. Perhaps he knew and expected fear to outweigh it. Garran disliked both estimates.
Lark stepped to the green line before the door. She selected a bent securing nail from the tray on the wall and straightened it between the jaws of Garran’s hand vice, turning the screw until the iron complained.
“Bram Reed,” she said. “Do you certify that the damage described in your claim arose during lawful operation?”
The man outside did not answer.
Lark loosened the vice, rotated the nail, and tightened it again. “That is a precisely priced question. Silence will be entered as refusal.”
“Tamsin Reed is not qualified to dispute the registry that formed her.”
“She is not disputing the registry.” Garran set the case down. “I am disputing the repair.”
“You have no standing in Reed Anchorage.”
“I’m not there.”
“You will be.”
The certainty of it passed through the door more cleanly than a threat.
Tamsin closed her fist around the wheel. Its teeth pressed white marks into her skin.
Garran reached for it, then stopped. Taking sharp things from frightened soldiers without warning was a good way to acquire an extra opening in the hand.
“May I?” he asked.
She looked at his open palm for a long time.
Then she gave him the wheel.
The green lines in the shop brightened. Not much. Enough to show every item still waiting under the harbor’s account: engine, wheel, crate, girl.
No. Garran corrected the estimate before the thought could settle. Tamsin was not an item accepted in trust.
The seal along his wrist tightened anyway.
Outside, Bram rose. The loading step gave a relieved creak.
“I will mark the refusal,” he said.
A hammer struck the door, once, driving metal into timber.
The green boundary flared around the new nail. Its head was broad and square, stamped with the hooked-river mark of Reed Anchorage. From it hung a narrow strip of brass that trembled against the door.
Tamsin read the stamped line through the timber as if she could see it.
“Seven days,” she said.
Garran watched the Reed mark darken where it touched the green seal.
On the bench behind them, one tooth of the broken return gear began to turn.