14 #2

A guard yanked the chain. Meri fell to her knees.

Isolde caught the man’s wrist. She twisted until he released the iron. Kaoran closed the fence behind them.

“Mara,” he said.

The borrowed name reminded her that the port did not know Isolde.

“Need: open a way out,” she replied.

The fight began.

The first guard attacked with a club. Isolde deflected it and struck his elbow. The second carried a blue stone. Kaoran threw a rope around his hand and pulled from the winch. The man lost his balance.

The chained workers moved together. Ilan used the iron between his wrists to block a spear. Pell took Meri’s chain and led her toward the fence.

The supervisor rang a bell.

The pier gates closed.

“The crane!” Isolde shouted.

Ilan understood. The carpenters had repaired the mechanism. He ran to the winch with Ulan. They released the brake.

The suspended load descended between the Guard and the workers. Four barrels struck the planks and rolled. They held salt. It spilled over the pier, made the ground slippery, and created a white barrier.

Kaoran picked the chains’ lock with a piece of metal.

A guard reached Meri before she was free. Isolde ducked under the spear, struck his stomach, and used the shaft to bring him down. Her left hand kept hold of the knife. Her right moved the woman aside.

“Toward the water,” she said.

“I can’t swim.”

“Toward the boats. No one jumps.”

Bells answered from the other piers. Reinforcements were coming from the north. The Arvek ship was still moored. Its captain shouted orders to cast off.

If it left, it would carry the blue-stone cages and any worker the Guard managed to put aboard.

Isolde checked the tide. The water was falling. A side current pulled the vessels toward the reefs. The pilots held every departure until a signal.

A tall man in a coat made from old sails stood on the signal post. His white hair was tied in a braid, and he had a wooden leg.

Thalos.

He looked at Isolde. Then he replaced the green flag with a black one.

Port closed.

The Arvek captain ignored the signal. He ordered the lines cut.

Thalos opened a sluice beneath the pier. The current struck the ship’s side and drove it against the pilings. The deck tilted. The cages shifted.

A canvas cover fell.

Beneath it were chains, blue plates, and a curved piece the size of a door. The metal vibrated with Ydrael’s voice.

The crowd saw it.

“That isn’t salt!” someone shouted.

The dockworkers stopped working.

The supervisor raised the seal.

“Strategic Crown cargo. Anyone obstructing it will be charged with treason.”

“The tide makes worse charges,” Thalos called from the post. “That ship leaves and splits its hull before the second reef.”

“You have orders to allow it.”

“I’ve spent forty years keeping captains with orders from drowning.”

The Guard tried to take the signal winch. Three pilots blocked their way.

Isolde reached the first cage. The blue stone drew heat from the air. Its fastening bore two seals: Varek’s and a private company’s. If she used fire, the cargo might respond as the stone at the pass had.

“Ilan,” she said. “Can you open it without heat?”

The carpenter examined the hinges.

“The wood supports the frame. If we loosen these bolts, the plate drops.”

“Do it.”

The workers picked up tools. The Guard charged from the fence. Isolde and Kaoran defended the space. Salt made their footing uncertain. She shortened every movement, used the barrels as obstacles, and kept from calling up fire.

Meri coughed beside the boats. Pell had freed six people. The two who agreed to travel lingered near the ship, undecided.

“The choice is still open,” Isolde told them. “You can board when you know what’s in the hold.”

One looked at the blue chains and stayed beside the gangway, his token clenched in his hand. The other ran toward the ship.

“My family is in Arvek,” he said.

Isolde let him pass.

The first bolt fell. Then the second.

The blue plate tilted. Ilan held it with a rope. Inside the cage was a piece of black rock surrounded by rings. Claw marks scored its surface.

Rheskan.

Isolde held her hand over it without touching the metal. The bond came with pain, salt, and fury. Her dragon had been inside a cage like this. He had clawed that stone or a piece torn from somewhere he had sheltered.

“Where was it loaded?” she asked the supervisor.

He stepped back.

“Cendral.”

“The marks are recent.”

“I follow manifests.”

“Where?”

Fire appeared beneath the glove. The blue plate began pulling at it.

Isolde closed her hand.

Three breaths.

The supervisor looked around. Dockworkers, pilots, and laborers waited for the answer.

“Arvek cove,” he said. “There’s a cavern to the west. The beast attacked two convoys.”

Rheskan was alive. He was close and defending a route against the cages.

“Did they capture him?”

“No.”

The word loosened a knot inside Isolde’s chest.

Reinforcements entered through the north warehouse. There were more than thirty. Thalos sounded the storm siren.

Every pilot in the port answered.

Small boats drew alongside pier five. Rima Sol was in one. She had lit three black candles beneath a glass cover.

“Get down here!” Thalos shouted.

The workers climbed down ladders. Ilan helped Meri. Pell and Ulan carried the contracts. Kes took a bag of tools. The dockworkers pushed barrels to block the approach.

Isolde cut the rope holding the blue plate. It fell onto the pier, away from the ship. The impact broke two planks and left the cargo in full view.

“Now the port has a record of it,” Thalos said.

The Guard would have to explain how to move it and who had authorized its contents.

Kaoran climbed into the last boat. Isolde stayed until all nine who had refused the transfer were out. The supervisor tried to grab her. She blocked his hand and left an ash mark on his seal.

“Keep the names,” she said.

She jumped into the boat.

Rima cut the line. The current carried them beneath the pier and toward a channel between warehouses. Arrows struck the water behind them. No soldier fired toward the other boats, full of workers they knew.

Thalos came down a side ladder. His wooden leg knocked against the deck.

“You’ve closed my port for an expensive hour,” he said.

“The captain was going to sail against the signal,” Isolde replied.

“That’s why he still has a ship. It’s also why the regency will try to replace me tomorrow.”

“Rima said you know the manifests.”

“Rima talks too much when someone breaks cages.”

Thalos took them to an abandoned net warehouse.

The freed workers received clothes and food.

Each explained their choice. Two wanted to return to Caleryon.

Another two would look for family on the Plains.

Ilan and the other four from C-7 agreed to travel along a network route until Aelyn could formally acknowledge that their contracts had ended.

“My father,” Ilan said.

“He’ll receive a signal before the week is out,” Rima replied.

Isolde handed over the carved door Aelyn had sent as proof. Ilan held it for a long time.

“My sister found it,” he said.

“She went with the inspection.”

“Do you know the councilor?”

“I know the code she used.”

Ilan accepted the boundary. He added his testimony to the copies and signed his full name.

Thalos spread six manifests on a table.

All declared salt, machinery, or iron. The weights did not match the ships’ drafts. Loading ports had been altered, crew names repeated, and routes ended at uninhabited coves.

“Blue stone comes in from three points,” he said. “Some arrives from Cendral. Some turns up on northern ships with forged seals. The third lot is collected at Arvek cove after dragon attacks.”

“Who signs?”

“Varek’s companies. Rhyne officers. Two coastal Houses. The originals travel along the salt route.”

Thalos pointed to a line following coves and small warehouses.

“A shipment leaves tomorrow. Medicines on deck, documents below. The crew works for smugglers who feed villages outside the register.”

“These are copies,” Isolde said.

“I made them while the captains argued with the tide.”

“Varek will say you changed the numbers.”

“Varek says plenty of things from somewhere dry.”

Thalos pointed to the customs tower. It rose at the end of pier two, joined to shore by a walkway. Two guards watched the door. Others patrolled the floors at night.

“The originals stay there until the ship confirms arrival,” he said. “Then they burn them and keep a clean version.”

“When does the Arvek ship leave?”

“At high tide. We have an hour before they can move it.”

Kaoran rolled up the documents.

“We’ll go in while the port is still watching pier five.”

Thalos struck his wooden leg against the floor.

“I don’t climb towers.”

“You know the entrance.”

The pilot smiled.

The entrance was underwater.

At low tide, a stone conduit drained moisture from the archives to the harbor wall. It was little wider than Isolde’s shoulders and ended beneath a grate. Thalos kept a key because he had rescued three scribes during a flood.

“Customs changed the lock,” he said, handing them a file. “They kept the grate because nobody important looks underneath.”

Isolde and Kaoran climbed down from the boat. The water reached their chests. The conduit smelled of seaweed, ink, and rats. The tide was beginning to rise and would close the exit in less than an hour.

The new lock had two bolts. Kaoran worked with the file. Isolde listened to boots overhead. The whole port seemed supported by other people’s footsteps.

The first bolt gave.

The second was warped by salt.

Isolde heated the file’s tip for a pulse. Kaoran slid it between the iron and the frame. The metal moved without throwing sparks.

They entered a drying room. Hundreds of sheets hung from cords. Warm air came from pipes connected to a boiler. Too much fire could ruin documents or alert the watchmen.

They climbed to the main archive.

The manifests were sorted by ship. They found Arvek’s inside a box with a blue seal. It declared forty barrels of salt, six pieces of machinery, and twelve volunteer workers. The total weight was below what Thalos had calculated from the draft.