The grey belt did not look like a place. It looked like a habit.
Water the color of old pewter. Hulls with no matching paint. Markets that existed for a night on lashed barges and were gone by morning, leaving only rope scars and the smell of fried oil. Isolde kept the living ship low and nameless. No bone-white. No Phoenix. No Salt Court green. Just a courier that had learned to slouch.
Caelis's mark found us after midnight.
Not a flare. A scrap of shell hung on a drift-pole, scratched with a heading and a time that would be useless in an hour. Sael pulled it in with a hook and read it by hooded lamp.
"Three belts west of the iron wreck. Dark lamp on the aft mast. Clerk still aboard. Two Phoenix lights holding south, not closing."
Elizabeth's mouth flattened.
"They are letting the market do the first bite."
"Or they lost her in this mess," Vale said. "I would not worship their competence."
