The tide dropped four deep-water lengths before the tenth bell, exposing the greasy mudbanks beneath Pier Four and filling the air with the stench of rotting bladderwrack, coal melted rock waste, and trapped bilgewater. In the net-loft, the iron stove ticked as its peat fuel burned down to white ash. It cast a thin circle of warmth that barely reached the drafting tables.
Tomas Reed sat near the hearth with his left sleeve rolled to the elbow. The cold estuary damp had locked his forearm into an unrelenting cramp. With his right thumb, he worked wintergreen and mutton-animal fat salve into the puckered seam of his scar. He pressed along the line where the cut tendon sheath pulled against the forearm bone. Each rotation produced a stringy catch that sent sharp pain into his knuckles—a thirty-five percent deficit. He pulled dry linen snug around the forearm. He buckled the calfskin brace until the brass tongues clicked into their eyelets.
At the worktable, two junior clerks were copying sworn affidavits onto thirty sheets of heavy rag paper stamped by the Office of Unfinished Claims. Seventeen-year-old Matty, his knuckles white on his steel-nibbed pen, and twenty-year-old Burl from Low Bellwether, whose thumbs were dyed purple from parish ledgers.
