The morning stank of wet limestone, boiled ink, and cheap soap, the kind that left grit in the creases of your hands and dried your skin like sun-rotted sailcloth.
Rin stood ankle-deep in the slop basin, rinsing old ink rags beneath a bent iron spout that dribbled sluggishly from the roof's catch-gutter. The water was the usual reddish brown, runoff from the rusted eaves, and cold enough to numb her fingers within moments. She didn't mind the temperature. What she hated was the film. Each rag leaked old ink and dust-thick grime that clung to her wrists in stubborn ropes.
The tub's rim had a split seam in the stone, just deep enough to snag a fingertip if you wrung too close to the edge. She'd sliced herself there three times this month alone. Someone had tucked a wedge of sea-glass into the crack once, trying to mark it. That marker was long gone.
Across from her, another girl, Emberblood, younger, with peeling burn scars down her right arm, worked twice as fast and never looked up. Her rag was already halfway bleached. Rin glanced at her pace, said nothing, and redoubled her own.
No one talked this early.
Ink rags were the kind of job given when they thought you too tired to argue. The sound was all slosh and the weak gurgle of water choking through leaf-slick pipes.
Above, the ledgerhouse stairwell creaked.
Rin's head tilted slightly, seventh step. That squeak always betrayed weight. The steps only groaned when someone heavier than Sarrha passed. This one was too light for Callun, too soft-footed for the reed guard, too. No, not a threat.
She kept working.
Her knuckles stung from the lye. One rag wouldn't twist all the way, it sagged in her hand, half-hardened with ink and maybe something else. She dunked it again and watched the black cloud curl through the runoff like memory dissolving.
She let herself wonder, just for a breath, if any of this ink had once been words. Names. Songs.
Breakfast sat like an afterthought outside the counting hall.
A plank of stone, maybe once the lid of a grain barrel, now held a cracked slate platter piled with flatbread rounds, edges browned and curled like old paper. The bread was dry, stiffer than it looked, and still wrapped in the same kind of parchment the Crown used to copy their cargo laws.
Next to it: a single chipped bowl of ash-soaked eggs, gray-stippled and gritty, the yolks already coagulated.
Rin took one of each, flicked the ash bits off her bread with two fingers, and sat on the lowest stair.
She ate slowly.
The bread tore with a scritch, like parchment cracking under too much ink. The eggs clung to the spoon like wax, tasted of smoke and salt and days-old water. Her jaw ached on the third chew. She kept going.
Sarrha dropped beside her wordlessly.
She didn't sit so much as fold into place, knees drawn up, shoulder grazing Rin's.
From her sleeve she pulled a small twist of pickled root, red-berried vine, cured in brine and wrapped in dried nettle leaf. A personal stash. Too valuable to share, unless you meant something by it.
She didn't hand it over.
She tossed it into Rin's lap, eyes forward, no acknowledgment. As if the exchange had never happened.
Rin unwrapped it with care.
The sour hit first, sharp enough to bite her tongue. Then came the salt, then a faint aftertaste of vinegar and firebloom. It puckered her mouth and made her blink.
Better than eggs.
"Last one," Sarrha muttered. "You pass your inkcloth to me after third bell."
"Done," Rin murmured.
Wind rattled the gutter chain nearby. A gull called from somewhere across the yard, its cry hoarse like it had forgotten how to be wild.
The courtyard had filled, quietly.
Others passed, one boy with patchy stubble and too many corrections on his last scroll muttered as he walked:
"None of us remember what we ate before we served."
Rin didn't smile.
But the corner of her mouth almost twitched.
Almost.
The inkroom breathed heat like a sealed bottle left in the marsh sun too long.
Parchment warped at the corners on every desk. The stone windows, cracked open with iron pegs, let in a ribbon of brine-sour breeze that only stirred the moisture around. Lamps hissed faintly in the corners, half-wicked and oil-fed, but even their light felt swollen and tired. A wasp circled above, thumping the high pane again and again, its buzz brittle with frustration.
Rin sat third from the wall, elbow-to-elbow with scribes too weary to speak and too wary to forget they were watched.
Across from her, Issa moved her stylus with clean, economical motions.
The Emberblood girl wrote one-handed, her left was tucked beneath the lip of the desk, invisible but not hidden. Her right did the work of two hands, gripping a stylus wrapped in waxcloth to keep it from slipping in the heat. Her touch was precise, never hurried, and Rin noticed the faintest curl of steam rising when her fingers grazed the damp slate too long.
Emberbloods always ran warm.
It wasn't fire, not really, but an echo of heat lived under their skin, buried in marrow, closer to legacy than blood. They were ashborn from the volcanic reaches of Flametongue Cradle, where the land cracked and whispered and the rain hissed on stone. Most of their kind had been drawn into Crownwork mining or bonded labor in the flint refineries.
Issa didn't wear chains.
None of them did in the ledgerhouse. But Rin could see the tension in her spine, the kind built over years, not months.
Their task was ink dull: copying old manifests from slate to fresh parchment. Each entry written thrice. Every number, weight, seal, and name repeated until your hand forgot it was a body part and became only a tool. This morning's haul included seven crates of eelmeat, nine jars of ghost-fruit jam, and three bundles of "dead rope", fibers too weatherworn to tie sail, but too valuable to discard.
Dead rope.
She looked at her fingers and wondered.
After an hour of silence, Rin exhaled slow.
"You ever think about stealing a skiff?" she whispered, barely above breath.
Issa didn't look up. Her stylus paused for just a moment, like a breath caught mid-step.
"You'd last three hours," she murmured back.
"Four, if it's raining."
"Two, if it's fogged."
The smallest smirk teased the edge of Issa's mouth, not a smile, but a permission slip for levity.
Rin leaned closer, careful not to let her stool creak.
"You ever actually been on a ship?"
This time, Issa's stylus stopped.
Her gaze flicked sideways, toward the open pane and the fog curling off the marshline. She didn't blink.
"Not the kind that leaves."
For a beat, neither spoke.
Around them, the scratching of styluses filled the air like mice nesting in old fabric. A boy across the room coughed, not out of sickness, but warning. Even whispers had ears.
But Rin didn't move.
She reached forward and tapped the ledger paper once, lightly.
"When the tide turns," she said softly.
Issa's reply was immediate, sure as breath:
"We'll already be gone."
Their eyes met, and for the first time all morning, Rin didn't feel quite alone.
The day's last light didn't fade, it thickened. It sank into the walls of the scrollroom like water into paper, turning everything soft-edged and sluggish. Oil-lamps hissed faintly overhead, the wicks fat with old soot. Their glow wobbled against the parchment racks, casting restless shadows shaped like bars.
Rin sat cross-legged on the scuffed plank floor, knees sore from hours crouched. Her fingers ached in a low, pulsing way, the kind that whispered of repetition too long endured.
The bone hook in her hand scraped against wax.
The scrolls were relics from decades back, tide vault manifests, shipping deeds, old levy scripts sealed with hardened wax plugs that had gone slick with age. Some were stamped with glyphs from ports she'd only read about: Glimmereef, Stonebyreach, Mournhull. Others bore melted seals so distorted they resembled sea-slugs.
Every plug had to be cleaned.
Every scroll unspooled, wax scraped, residue powdered off, case rerolled, label rewritten.
Beside her, Issa worked the same way. A matched rhythm. Scrape, flick, dust. Reset.
The air smelled of salt-soaked paper, old tallow, and something sharp beneath, like charred varnish, or bone glue just starting to sour.
Rin wiped a curl of wax from her lap and stretched her back until it cracked. Her shirt stuck to her spine.
She started to hum, low, just beneath breath. Three notes. No words. Just a loop.
Issa didn't look over.
But after the second loop, she exhaled in time with it, soft and steady. By the fourth, her scraper matched the beat. Rhythm in labor was common. What made this rare was how deliberate it became. Not just matching pace, answering.
They didn't speak. Didn't have to.
The wax came off in thin curls, like drying kelp. Rin tapped one from her knee. She flicked it into the corner, where half a dozen other scraps had gathered like a discarded shoal.
The cadence continued.
Rin adjusted it once, slowed the second beat, extended the pause before the third. Issa followed without hesitation.
Their tools clicked in concert.
It sounded, absurdly, like rowing. Like oarlocks knocking together. Like tide pulsing against a hull.
"Issa," Rin whispered, low as a tide chant.
The other girl tilted her head a hair, not quite a look, but enough.
"We could take a boat," Rin said. "Cut through Cray's Hook. Fog would cover us by nightfall."
Issa's wax hook kept moving. "Hook's netted. Twice nightly. You'd tangle the mast inside twenty lengths."
Rin smirked. "So you've planned it."
"Planned dying there? Not yet."
They shared the ghost of a grin.
The scrolls uncoiled like memories. Some still smelled faintly of marshmint or tar pitch, scents sealed in when they were new. Rin brushed one label aside to reveal a shipping stamp in the shape of a kelp-wrapped dagger, one she recognized from a sea tale about reef smugglers who salted their cargo with teeth.
Their hands worked without pause.
The wax sometimes cracked in loud snaps, drawing a glance from the doorway. A supervisor lingered once, tapping his tally stick idly against the doorframe.
Issa's fingers froze mid-motion.
Rin dropped her gaze, kept humming, but lowered the pitch, slowed the pace. Issa adjusted instantly.
The man lingered two seconds longer than needed.
Then he walked on.
A breath passed between the girls. Not relief. Just confirmation that nothing had happened, yet.
When the wax curled again, Issa changed the beat, slightly sharper, doubling the downbeat. Rin picked it up. Their arms moved in mirrored rhythm, scrape and flick and dust, like oars carving forward.
The lamplight glinted off Issa's knuckles, steam rising faintly where her hand pressed the scroll tube too long. Her other hand, always tucked under the desk, shifted slightly, resting out of habit. Like it remembered shackles Rin couldn't see.
They said nothing more for a while.
Just moved.
Rin could feel the hush in the room grow thicker. This was watchfulness. The other scribes around them said little, heads bent, fingers twitching faster than need demanded. No one wanted attention. Not near shift's end.
One girl across the room fumbled her ink pot. It cracked but didn't spill. Still, she flinched as if it had.
Rin reached for another scroll. This one bore a weather-stained crest: a thistle crowned with antlers. She traced the wax seal with a thumb and felt her thoughts spiral somewhere unwise.
She whispered, "What if we rode south?"
Issa didn't stop scraping. "To where?"
"Anywhere they don't check crates twice."
Issa exhaled, almost a laugh. "You think they only check twice?"
Rin shrugged.
"Some seas are cursed," Issa murmured.
"All seas are cursed," Rin said. "Some just hide it better."
That got the smallest smile. A flare at the corner of her mouth, there and gone.
Rin leaned back on her elbows, letting her tools rest.
She didn't speak, just let the thought drift like a tide not yet come.
Issa didn't speak.
But she hummed, not the rhythm they'd shared, but a new one, low and strange. A four-note cadence with a lilt at the end, like a lockbox key turned sideways.
And Rin, hearing it, felt something stir. Like the keel of a ship finding the right current.
They didn't talk after that.
The wax scraping resumed. The rhythm held.
And in that rhythm, in the pattern of their shared breath and movement and wordless defiance, Rin realized something simple:
They weren't waiting for the tide.
They were making it.
The attic was not silent. It breathed in woodgroan, in muffled snores, in the whisper of damp fog pressing through warped boards. It smelled like wet wool, ink dregs, and straw gone slightly sour, with a hint of soot that never faded.
Three cots sat in the narrow eavespace. No names marked them, but Rin knew each by their scars.
On the far left, Sarrha slept on her side, one arm curled protectively over her stomach, the other missing past the elbow. She muttered now and then in a rough coastal tongue, fragments that sounded like warnings or lullabies. Her blanket had holes patched with waxcloth.
To the right, Issa lay flat on her back, eyes closed but not slack. Her breath came measured, chest rising like a tide. Rin couldn't tell if she was truly asleep or simply elsewhere. Emberbloods didn't show rest the way others did.
Rin's cot lay between them. She stared at the ceiling because her thoughts wouldn't quit.
The planks above bore water stains like inverted constellations. One looked like a hand, another like a sail. She'd counted the beams before, countless times, always the same five cross-struts. Tonight, they felt tighter. Closer.
Her fingers twitched.
She reached under the cot, feeling for the hidden cloth scrap and the stub of charcoal she kept wrapped inside an old tally ribbon. It took a moment in the dark, but the shape was familiar.
Sitting upright slowly, careful not to rustle her blanket, she began to sketch.
The first lines were clumsy, the curve of a hull, a too-steep mast, but soon her hand remembered. A sail billowed. A ship's stern crested a drawn wave. She added ropes, knots, an anchor with curling teeth. Her fingers smudged the lines as she went, blackening the edge of her blanket.
She hesitated.
Then drew herself.
It was rough, more impression than likeness, a girl at the helm, arms braced, eyes forward. She gave the figure broad shoulders, an upright spine. She added a knife to her belt. Imagined callused fingers. A scar above the brow, like a badge.
Then she drew another, someone facing her, stylus gripped like a weapon. Thin-boned. Sharp-eyed.
Issa.
And a third, watching from the mast with her one good arm steady as stone.
Sarrha.
For a moment, she just looked at it, the imaginary crew of a ship that didn't exist.
Not yet, she thought.
She reached beneath the cot and traced the worn carving there, the tiny swirl-sail glyph she'd etched with a slat shard weeks ago. Storm-seeker. A mark she'd seen once inked on a stevedore's neck. The first real symbol she'd ever wanted to steal.
She whispered, "One tide. Just one."
But sleep still didn't come.
Instead, her thoughts turned, unbidden, to the sailor from the docks. That off-key shanty, slurred with drink, but the words had caught something real. She remembered the sound of the water stilling, pausing as if listening.
She hadn't imagined it.
No one else had reacted, true. Callun had rolled his eyes. The guards had barely looked up. But Rin had felt it, like her own ribs had tightened with the sea.
Her breath hitched.
That wasn't just a song.
She looked again at her sketch. The version of herself she'd drawn stood taller. Carried a weight. A blade. A name. Not "Rin of the Inkwell," not a servant with inkstained cuffs and hollowed shoulders.
Someone who moved toward the storm, not away.
She glanced toward the attic window.
The latch was crooked but not locked. She'd checked it before. Once, on a night when the wind whistled so hard she thought it would shake the eaves apart.
If she waited until Callun doused his light, half past second bell, the courtyard would be empty save for the late-post dog and the patrol at the tithes gate. She could slip down the south stair, past the washing barrels, out through the coop fence. If she timed it right, if the fog held..
I could find him.
The thought came fast, then anchored.
The sailor knew something. Maybe he couldn't explain it. Maybe it was just a trick, a ritual, a rhyme. But it had moved something deeper than wind or wave.
She had to see it again. Ask. Listen. Learn.
Her eyes burned.
Below her, Issa shifted. Her breath stayed steady, but her hand curled closer to her chest, as if feeling something unspoken.
Sarrha let out another low murmur, a word Rin didn't understand.
And Rin?
She smiled.
She tucked the drawing into the cot's hem, traced the swirl-sail once more, then lay back and stared upward, not counting beams this time, but imagining masts.
Outside, the fog was thickening. Rain began, light but steady, tapping softly at the slats above.
And Rin listened, eyes on the ceiling, thinking only one thing:
Soon. I'll go.