The tunnel opened up, not onto a street, but into a maze of rotting wooden piers, sagging under their own weight, and slick with a foul-smelling brine. The south dock was Caelis's ugly, forgotten cousin, a squalid nest of smugglers, cutthroats, and desperate men. The air was thick with the stench of fish guts, cheap ale, and despair.
The sea itself was a churning, angry grey, crashing against the barnacle-encrusted supports of the piers, a restless, hungry beast.
"There she is," Caelan said, a note of affection in his voice as he gestured toward a listing, dilapidated ship tethered to the farthest, most decrepit pier. The 'Sea Serpent' was a sorry sight, her hull patched with mismatched planks of wood, her sails patched, her mast leaning at a worrying angle. She looked less like a ship and more like a floating coffin.
She was no shipwright, but she would trust a line of logs loosely tethered with fraying rope slightly more than that ship in a storm.
