Sera walked the dock at first light and put her hand on every hull.
The three ships sat on the Low Brace pad in a row, in the red light. The Tern first, at the river end, where it always sat. Beside it the guild tender Bellwether, a squat yellow craft built for hauling dock cranes, with a long cargo bay and two engines that Sera had already decided she did not trust. And beyond it the freighter from the river docks, Fallow Hand, the largest, grey and rust-streaked, hired by the guild for its hold and its captain’s willingness to fly anywhere for the right fee.
She went along each one. Slowly. She took off her right glove for it, though the cold bit, because she wanted to feel the plates and not the leather. She ran her bare palm along the hull at shoulder height, plate by plate, feeling for seams that had opened, rivets that stood proud, heat-warp, cold-crack.
On the Bellwether’s flank, halfway along, she stopped.
A bolt head. On an access panel over the starboard engine’s fuel line. It sat a hair higher than the others, and when she pressed her thumb against it she felt it give, very slightly.
