The water in the Deep Anchor Basin was as black as raw lamp oil, thick with coal slurry, floating embers of pine pitch, and the yellow froth of the incoming tide.
A four-oared ship’s gig, built of stout larch clinker and belonging to the Riggers’ Friendly Society, pulled away from the boat ramp doorstep. Dunley sat at the stroke oar, his thick wrists working the heavy ash sweeps with the smooth, untroubled rhythm of a man who had rowed tidal races since his fourteenth year. Across from him sat Sile Rook, his scarred neck rigid above his wool collar, his hooked pruning blade laid flat beneath the stern thwart.
In the stern sheets sat Hester Quill. She was wrapped in three layers of coarse gray wool, a circular tin dispatch case held upright between her knees like an infant. Her steel glasses were spotted with salt spray, but she didn’t take them off.
Tomas Reed stood in the bow. His right hand gripped the oak stem-post, his boots braced against the bottom floor-boards.
The morning air was bitter, soaked with the rotten-egg exhaust of the lower city hearths. Beneath his calfskin brace, the scarred flexor tendon of his left forearm gave off a steady, throbbing heat. The four hundred yards of towing thick ship rope from the midnight launch had taxed the gristle severely. The tendon sheath felt thick and hard, as if a strip of dry harness leather had been stitched beneath the skin.
