The ebb tide in the Deep Anchor Anchorage moved like cold black grease.
Beneath the stone foundations of the victualling pier, water slapped against slimy wooden support posts with a hollow gasp. A freezing sea fog clung to the harbor, reducing the masthead lanterns of moored ships to dim yellow smears fifty feet above the dark swell. The air smelled of bitter coal soot, rotten kelp, salt water, and bilge water weeping from three hundred commercial hulks.
Master rigger Dunley pulled the oars of the twelve-foot cedar skiff with short, careful strokes. The oarlocks were wrapped in animal fat-soaked sheepskin so the iron pins turned without a squeak. His scarred palms gripped the ash looms with the familiarity of forty years on the water.
In the bow, Nessa Vale knelt with her boots braced against the bottom ribs, her slate-colored oilskin coat buttoned to her throat. Across her knees lay an iron-clamped leather tool roll holding core bits, hand-augers, and grease pots. Her dual-chamber brass hearing horn hung over her chest, its funnels angled upward to monitor the night sounds of the anchorage: the distant clang of a watchman’s bell, the creak of anchor cables, and the cough of a sentry pacing the high poop deck of the guard-ship half a mile out.
