The fleet limped into Cinder’s docks in the dark before dawn on the thirteenth day.
Mara was on the Low Brace pad to meet it. The doctor had said no; Tavin had said no; Mara had put Tavin’s coat on over the sling and walked down the river road anyway, slowly, and Tavin had walked beside her without saying anything more about it.
The Fallow Hand came in first. Low over the river flats, its engines labouring, a great grey shape against the red sky. Behind it, on four tow lines, the patrol cutter, dark, its crumpled drive housing hanging open. The four tugs strung out around it like dogs around a cart. Then the Bellwether, its starboard engine coughing. Then the Tern, last, with Doss at its controls, flying steady and slow at the back of the line, the way it always flew.
They came down one after another on the pad. The cutter last of all, lowered by the tugs onto a cradle the dock crew had dragged out for it.
Mara looked at the first tug as it settled. Its hull was scraped to the primer along one whole side, bare grey metal showing through the paint in long raw streaks where it had ground against the cutter’s flank during the tow. Its pilot climbed out of the hatch and sat down on the pad beside it and did not get up.
