Four iron harpoon guns watched the lagoon from the Jin Clan wharf. The quay was built of granite ballast from mainland galleons. Beside it lay the Sea-Serpent, a broad two-masted schooner with a double wooden hull and copper plates along the waterline. A heavy iron dredge hung from her oak boom.
Thirty hired fighters crowded outside the compound with chipped tridents and damp talismans. They shouted over one another at a clerk behind a rail. Pei Jing waited under the awning of an oil press until someone came out to address them.
Steward Jin Shan wore a brass-studded coat and the iron crest of the Jin Clan Maritime Escort. His silver beard was cut short to clear the clasps. The steady weight of an early Foundation aura went ahead of him.
“Quiet, clam pickers. We sail for the Seven-Star Trench. Deep water and razor shallows, all claimed by the Blood Sail Fleet. Anyone counting on paper charms will be shark dung by the second watch. If you haven’t killed a Grade One beast with your bare hands in the surf, clear my dock.”
Half the men left. The others went quiet. Four expeditions had gone down in the trench the last monsoon.
