The salt-crusted cobbles outside the High Court of the King’s Bench were slick with frost and coal soot. Three miles south in the Crown-Reach shipyards, fog lifted from the tidal mudflats. He carried the reek of bilgewater, boiling pitch, and tarred oakum into the wool coats of three hundred people waiting at the iron gates.
Tomas Reed set the corner of the pine evidence chest onto the mounting block. The weight jarred his right forearm, sending a throb through the gristle where the scar bound skin to tendon. He stood still for four breaths, working his thumb across his palm to touch each fingertip in set. The movement was stiff, the tendon dragging like a frayed hemp cord through a narrow block. But the calfskin splint held. Sixty-five percent grip—enough to carry twenty stone of cedar dossiers up the steps if his hip and shoulder took the first lift.
Beside him, Nessa Vale wiped the brass horn of her sound trumpet with her oilskin hem. Her breath rose in white puffs against the gray dawn as her pale eyes flicked over the crowd at the railings.
“The wind is coming off the harbor,” Nessa said, her voice pitched to carry over the carriage wheels. “The tide turned forty minutes ago. Sile took four harbor dredgers and chained the sternpost to the town buoy at midnight. She won’t drift.”
