Dawn brought only a greasy gray light to the Royal Shipyards of Crown-Reach, filtering through the coal smoke of three hundred chimneys to turn the harbor mist the color of dirty lead.
In the upper loft of the net-shed, Hester Quill didn’t look up when the third harbor bell struck six from the naval citadel. She sat on a three-legged stool with three folios of crown thick parchment spread across the pine workbench. She held down a yellowed sheet of Sea-court casualty returns from Year Twelve with her left hand while drawing a steel flat ruler across an inbound customs manifest with her right.
“Look at the registry numbers, Tomas,” Hester said, her voice dry as horn shavings. “When a Sea-court board declares a vessel burned and sunk by enemy action, her name is struck from the Navy List by order in council. Her stores are written off as dead loss, her ordnance dropped from the ledger. Her construction cost amortized against the Naval Sinking Fund.”
Tomas Reed stood beside her, his right fingers opening and closing inside his buckled calfskin brace. The cold morning air had stiffened the scar tissue along his forearm. He pressed his thumb against the gristle to maintain his sixty-five percent grip. Beside him on the bench, wrapped in waxed linen, lay the four-inch deadwood core sample pulled out from the Sea-Gull’s counter at midnight.
