The final day of the long survey dawned without sun or stars, marked only by the gentle brightening of the emerald jade lanterns across the underground lake.
At the Seventh Gate pier, the Brass Sovereign rested upon the calm water, her dark oak hull settled into the granite fender like an ancient giant beast that had finally found its permanent resting place.
Her war-beak had been removed. Her masts had been unstepped and laid along her bulwarks to serve as roof-beams for the apprentice school. Over her copper-sheathed deck, wild river-moss had begun to take root in the seams, fed by the cool water drops and the gentle spray of the basin springs. She was no longer a warship of the Iron Bureau. She had become the floating foundation of the Scroll hall’s lower harbor.
The transformation of the four-hundred-foot warship was complete. Her forward rope winch, once used to haul heavy anchor-chains through blood-slicked mud, was now entwined with flowering water-vines that climbed up the stays. Her main gun-deck had been fitted with twenty long reading tables of mountain pear-wood, where young scribes sat copying charts by the cool green light of jade lamps. The dark oak hull, which had once split through the waves with destructive fury, now served as an artificial reef beneath the water, providing shelter for thousands of silver cave-trout that swarmed around her copper-sheathed keel.
