Dawn broke over Crown-Reach under the lash of a northeast gale. The wind drove freezing sea spray straight off the Deep Anchor Anchorage. It whipped salt foam across the slime-slicked timbers of Pier Four while plumes of black foundry soot beat flat against the upper stone cliffs.
Outside the net-loft, crowded onto the salt-crusted cobbles of the pier apron, stood more than a hundred dockers.
They were caulkers with tar-stained hands, shipwrights in leather aprons, watermen from the locked oyster skiffs, and women in frayed woolen shawls. They had gathered before the fifth hour without trumpet or bell, standing shoulder-to-shoulder across the approaches to Pier Four. When the navy locked the tide, four hundred families went without bread. They had nowhere else to stand.
At the threshold of the net-loft stood Tomas Reed, his braced left forearm strapped tightly against his chest inside his coat, the crushed tendon sheath throbbing with a persistent rhythm. Beside him, Sile Rook had planted his fire-scarred oak tall body-shield deep into the timber seams, his sharpened ash-wood hooked pruning blade resting across its upper rim.
Nessa Vale stood three paces back, her brass sound horn clutched to her ear as she sighted along the High Causeway through her three-draw land-mapper’s glass.
