Dawn over Crown-Reach brought no sunlight, only a pale, greasy curdling of the fog along the eastern sea-wall.
The tide was rising fast, slapping against the slimy granite stone retaining walls of the Grand Basin with a sucking gurgle. A biting north wind blew across the mudflats. It carried the stink of low-water sewage, rotten river weed, and the bitter sulfur smoke of forge chimneys firing their morning hearths in the foundry district.
Tomas Reed stepped out of the net-loft stairway onto the wet cobbles of Timber Lane.
His left arm hung braced against his chest. Beneath his tarred canvas cart driver’s coat, the three brass buckles of the calfskin brace clamped his wrist into an unbending splint. The raw salt air found the old blade-cut along the flexor tendon, throbbing with a tooth-aching grind that tightened his shoulder muscles. He didn’t favor the arm. He let it carry his balance, keeping his good right hand free.
In his right fist, Tomas carried a four-pound forged-iron shipwright’s spike-hammer, its ash handle darkened by animal fat and sweat. Slung over his back was his pack frame, bearing a tube-shaped tin document canister sealed with red high court resin.
Beside him walked Master Rigger Dunley in his heavy watch-coat of blue frieze cloth, his pockets bulging with marlinspikes, tarred seizing line. The split-bamboo tally slips Olla had secured from the midnight discharge. Behind them came Nessa Vale, her dual-cone brass hearing horn hooked to her shoulder strap and her wooden transit rod…
