The fog off the Great Estuary didn’t lift with the noon tide. It thickened into a cold grease that smelled of river marl, drowned reeds, and sulfur smoke from the naval foundry chimneys. By the third hour past noon, the spars of the frigates in the Deep Anchor Anchorage were blotted out. That left only the dull clank of their riding bells echoing through the murk.
Inside the net-loft above Pier Four, the smell of vinegar and crushed marsh-mallow root hung heavy in the damp air.
Tomas Reed sat with his left arm extended across the hatch-cover table. Meanwhile, Nessa Vale bound two thin cedar splints along his forearm. Beneath the linen bandage, the skin around the old scar was purple and swollen, throbbing in time with the pulse in his temples. The heavy club blow had not shattered the bone. But it had crushed the muscle tissue and reopened the twenty-month-old tear in the tendon sheath.
“When you grip with the thumb,” Nessa said without looking up, her brass sound horn resting against her collarbone, “the tendon catches on the callus ridge. Strain it again today and the gristle will rupture fully. Then you’ll have ten percent grip, not thirty-five.”
