The evening tide entered the harbor basin with a slow sigh of shifted weight.
Along the Restored East Quay of Crown-Reach, clean salt water washed over dressed granite coping stones. High above the slips, the autumn sky had cleared into semi-clear gray, streaked with cold amber where the sun had slipped behind the slate ridges of the upper citadel.
Tomas Reed stood on the salt-crusted setts of the quay, hands resting on the top bar of his ash-wood pack frame.
Beneath his buckled calfskin brace, the jagged scar where glass had ripped his right tendon sheath twenty months ago felt warm and supple in the twilight, the morning stiffness gone. He spread his fingers against the seasoned ash rail, then closed them into a solid fist. Seventy percent grip. It would never be the thoughtless muscle of his youth in the Bellwether laundry. But it was honest sinew, hardened by thirty-six lawful closures.
Beside him, moored to three cast-iron bollards, the frigate Sovereign’s Pride rose. Then he fell on the swell.
All trace of her contraband identity had been scrubbed away. Her hull had been planed to sound oak, coated with pine resin and animal fat, and along her broad transom, freshly carved white-lead letters gleamed: Sovereign’s Pride · Crown-Reach Municipal Salvage & Training Ship. On her forward deck, twenty apprentices in canvas smocks coiled manila hawsers under the eye of an old boatswain.
