At mid-day the tide ebbed to its lowest mark. It pulled the gray estuary water back five hundred yards from the granite sea-walls. Then it left the Deep Anchor Anchorage an expanse of putrid mud. The harbor smelled of rotting eel-grass, sulfuric marsh gas, coal clinker, and bitter copperas runoff from naval smithies.
Tomas Reed and Nessa Vale walked out along the narrow gravel spit cutting through the flats toward the dredging punts. At every third step, Tomas’s boots sank past the ankle into sucking lead-colored silt. To keep his balance, he drove the iron metal ring of his ash-wood sounding staff deep into the marl. Each jolt sent a shaking shudder into his right forearm. Beneath the calfskin brace, the scarred gristle over the forearm bone pulled tight. It burned with the ache of cold river salt. He adjusted the three brass buckles with his left hand. He tightened the leather until the support took the strain off the torn tendon.
Beside him, Nessa carried her brass transit rod, her skirt pinned above the mud line with iron bodkins. Her velvet-lined silver sound horn was tucked into her shoulder harness as her gray eyes read the drainage patterns where shipyard water gates discharged waste.
