The painter rope cut with a wet, stringy snap no louder than a carp breaking the surface grease.
One heartbeat the fourteen-foot sounding skiff was held fast to the rudder chain of the Sea-Gull, riding the oily swell under the ship’s counter. The next, the bow drifted free, caught by the outward suction of the turning tide.
Tomas was seating the lead-lined evidence case between his boots. He pressed the brass hasp until the iron latch bit home, when the sudden roll tilted him sideways. He dropped his balance point instantly. He sank to his knees in the bilgewater and threw his left shoulder against the center thwart.
From the black water on the port side, two figures broke the surface without a splash.
They wore tight hoods of boiled sealskin smeared with sheep fat against the cold salt water, and greased ox-hide jerkins weighted with lead metal bars sewn into the hem. Their faces were blackened with charcoal grease. That left only the pale circles of their eyes visible, and in their right fists they gripped eight-inch serrated naval rigging knives designed to part six-inch hemp cables in a single draw.
They neither shouted nor gave warning. They were naval combat divers. The harbor clearance men used by the High Sea-court to scour the anchorages, cut civilian moorings, and ensure that bodies dropped into the deep mud never rose again.
