Turn 2 of 9

Go ashore and track down Captain Ferran before the wardens finish their work

You hand the writ back to Anneke and step past her onto the gangplank. The planks groan under your boots, and the canyon updraft tugs at your coat as you cross. One of the wardens — a heavy man with a waxed moustache — glances up from his slate and watches you pass. He says nothing. Measuring mooring lines is a civil matter, and you are not yet prohibited from leaving the ship.

The Gate of Iron Sails is a city built into a cliff, and at the eighth level everything smells of tar and hot stone. You push through the crowd on the main quay, past chandlers and stevedores and a woman selling fried bread from a cart. Captain Ferran left an hour before the bell. She knew the debt was coming due. She knew, and she left anyway, and the question is whether she left to find the money or to avoid being here when the writ landed.

You find a lead at the Harbourmaster's office, a narrow room cut into the rock at the junction of quays five and six. The duty clerk — a thin man with ink-stained cuffs — tells you Ferran signed out a passenger pigeon at the seventh bell, destination unknown. She also, he mentions, asked after a notary named Brennan who keeps offices on the fourth level. He tells you this because you ask directly, and because the Harbour Court's interest in the *Mourning Light* is now public knowledge.

The fourth level is down. You take the iron stairs cut into the cliff face, two at a time, past the fifth level where the cargo cranes swing and the air smells of coal. On the fourth level the quays are quieter — brokerage houses, notaries, insurance agents. Brennan's office is a door with a brass plate, set into a row of similar doors. The plate reads *Brennan & Slate, Notarial Services, By Appointment*. The door is locked.

A boy sits on a crate across the alley, eating an apple. He watches you try the door with the mild interest of someone who has nothing else to do.

"He's gone to the Court," the boy says. "Left about twenty minutes ago. Something about a property filing." He takes a bite of the apple.

"The lady who came looking for him earlier — she went up toward the sixth level after. Dark coat, carrying a dispatch case." That would be Ferran.