The rhythmic, low thunder of waves crashing relentlessly against the thick hulls of the docked ships echoed across the basin, throwing up a fine, freezing mist that mingled with the lingering stench of salt and rotting kelp.

There was very little that was memorable or distinct about the three men waiting on the stone. Perhaps it was merely the suffocating darkness of the dawn or the simple fact that Harlon’s eyesight had never been his sharpest asset, but the trio looked like the exact sort of generic, rough-hewn freemen one would find drowning their coin in any low tavern across the supply-depot islands. Those tedious rock-piles made up the entire, grinding logistical framework of the Confederation, and they bred a distinct breed of misery.

Only the nastiest of home could after all produce the best of sailors across the Broken Sea.

The men sported long, matted beards that hung unkempt over their chests, likely crawling with lice from months spent traveling the salt-roads without a single drop of fresh water to wash the grime away. Beneath the heavy, salt-crusted cloaks wrapped tight around their bodies, Harlon’s keen eyes caught the frayed edges of simple linen tunics. They were entirely sleeveless, a common design meant to ease the skin during the blistering, labor-filled days of hauling ropes and lifting cargo under a baking sun, though now in the cold of winter it was a curious choice.

In this part of the world, the vast majority of clothing for non-successful ship captains and their crews was spun from plain linen. True wool was a luxury; the barren islands of the Confederation simply didn’t possess the pastures to produce it, making woolen cloth an incredibly costly commodity. The only way a common sailor usually laid his hands on a warm woolen cloak was to raid a mainland coastal village and steal it off a dead man’s back. Attempting to bring herds of live sheep along on their sea voyages to establish pastures in their rocky homelands was a fool’s errand; the sheer volume of precious fresh water required to keep the beasts alive during the transit made the entire venture as difficult as it was violently unprofitable.

Now, of course, a lucky pirate might find a fine woolen tunic tucked away in his wardrobe after a successful campaign, but the everyday fishermen and the rare, stubborn souls who actually farmed the small isles usually went their entire lives without so much as gazing at the material.

Harlon was remarkably well aware of this reality. His own family, House Auscii, was one of the very few elite lineages that actually managed to maintain a variety of meat-and-milk livestock, alongside a few precious flocks of sheep. Yet, even with their wealth, the sheer, unyielding harshness of their home isle and the strictly pre-counted number of viable pastures meant their family herds were always limited in size.

Still, the funny thing about these island freemen was that while their larders may not have been as bountiful as those of their mainland counterparts, the lack of fat land only made them harsher, leaner, and infinitely more willing to spray fresh blood alongside the salt water onto their faces. If you were looking for luxury among them, you would find nothing but disappointment; but if you looked above the head of any common-born’s cot, you were practically guaranteed to find a well-honed axe t, ready o carve away at the fat of other’s men for their own leasure.

And right now, those exact, brutally simple axes were raised directly at their chests.

"Who goes there?" one of the men croaked from atop the crates, his voice coming out rough, dry, and scraping like gravel in the dark.

Harlon’s gaze instantly flickered down to the protagonist of their little play. His heart began to thunder a heavy rhythm against his ribs as the agonizing seconds stretched out, and the hooded bastard didn’t seem particularly eager to make his identity known. Harlon looked down at the spy’s limping, mangled leg. It was shivering violently against the damp flagstones.

Is the rat going to play us false? One shout is all needed for his friends to split our skulls.

Harlon’s fingers twitched, his knuckles turning white as he prepared to lay the cold edge of his shortsword straight across the nape of the man’s neck.But just before the iron cleared the leather, the spy finally played his part.

"A friend," the rat called out into the gloom, his voice raspy but steady enough to carry over the surf. "A friend in search."

The man at the head of the group slowly lowered his axe, the heavy iron head dipping toward the stone. The two men behind him quickly followed suit, though their posture remained tight.

"In search of what?" the leader asked, his suspicious eyes instantly darting past the spy to lock onto the hulking silhouettes of Harlon and Karlin.

"The beauty behind the moon, you could say," the spy answered smoothly, leaning heavily onto his wooden cane. "I’ve traveled here and there across the channels, but I still haven’t found a lick of it."

The second riddle seemed to completely dispel the last of the leader’s doubt. He took a heavy step forward off the crates, waving his flickering torch closer to the spy’s face to cut through the gray shadows. "Is that truly you, Hafgan?"

"Aye," the spy grunted, spitting a mouthful of dark phlegm onto the pier. "And you took your own sweet, fucking time getting here, Clok."

The two men stepped into the light, clasping their forearms together in a hard, professional sailor’s grip. Clok’s eyes instantly traveled down the spy’s frame, his brow furrowing as he noticed the heavy splints and the blood-soaked bandages peeking through the cloak.

"I notice there’s something new about your stride, brother," Clok muttered, nudging his chin toward the ruined limb. "Something interesting happen up in the high town?Some whore you did not pay?"

Hafgan turned his head slightly, casting a brief, unreadable glance back toward the two noble lords standing in the shadows.

Harlon exchanged a sharp, meaningful look with Karlin in the dark. Subtly, without making a sound, Harlon’s palm drifted back down to rest against the pommel of his shortsword, his muscles tensing for a slaughter if the next words went awry.

"Aye," Hafgan said, a leering, ugly smile spreading across his face that Clok’s men couldn’t quite discern in the dim light. "I was fucked, though not the nice way, shagged on the high road by a roving group of thieving, back-alley bastards. Luckily for my skin, I had some boys with me to haul my carcass to a local backroom healer before I bled out in the gutters. The old butcher wasn’t kind with his irons, I tell you. I think the bastard’s needles did a damn sight more damage to my meat than the thieves’ blades."

Hafgan paused to spit at the stone below, his performance flawlessly deceptive. "The old thief tried to rip me off, too. Took half my remaining silver for a botched piece of work."

"Want me and the boys to go give his shop a proper visit?" Clok offered, his hand tightening around the handle of his wood-axe, a nasty glint in his eye. "We can teach him a proper lesson about overpricing his skills to our people."

"Nay," Hafgan chuckled, a low, rasping sound. "The medical service wasn’t worth a single runny shit , but his eldest was enough to match the bridge."

Clok barked a loud, coarse laugh that echoed off the cargo ship’s hull. "Since when do harbor healers whore out their own daughters to patients?"

"They don’t," Hafgan smirked, leaning heavily on his cane. "But they start doing it remarkably quick when you threaten to take their fingers off for overcharging a man. Speaking of overpriced robbery... do you happen to have any of that shitty wine of yours left in the hold? My throat tastes like dry ash."

"It’s not wine, you uncultured dog, it’s southern cider,it’s all the flame in the south and Romelia" Clok corrected with a grin, reaching to his hip to unhook a heavy, battered tin canteen. He tossed it through the air, and Hafgan caught it deftly with his free hand. "And it didn’t cost me a single bronzii, either. Found three whole casks of it tucked away in the belly of a fat merchant’s cargo ship we boarded off the western reef last fortnight. The captain didn’t have much use for it after we cracked his teeth and took his silver."

Hafgan unstoppered the canteen with his teeth and took a long, greedy swig, the foul-smelling liquid dripping down his matted beard. He let out a satisfied grunt, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve before handing it back.

"Tastes like horse piss and vinegar," Hafgan remarked dryly, handing the canteen back. "Which means it’s exactly the quality I expected from you. Though I suppose those southerners down in Yarzat must like the taste of piss, given how much of it they drink." He leaned heavily on his makeshift cane, his eyes darting toward the dark hull of the vessel. "Now, clear the rail. Is the cargo safely on board, or are we going to stand here freezing our balls off until the harbor watchman makes his rounds?"

Clok didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his narrow eyes drifted past Hafgan’s shoulder, locking onto Harlon and Karlin, who stood wrapped in their plain, salt-stained cloaks.

"Those newbies?" Clok asked, nudging his chin toward the two hidden lordlings. "They look a bit too stiff for dock work."

"Aye," Hafgan grunted, not missing a beat. "Stiff, mute, and stupid.Not much for conversation I tell you that. But they’ve got strong backs, and they know how to follow a coin."

"Can see it. Can believe it," Clok muttered, turning his full, aggressive attention toward Harlon and Karlin. "What!" he suddenly snapped, his rough voice cracking in the cold morning air. "Are you two awaiting a royal invitation? Get your lazy asses up onto the ship and give a hand to my boys! There’s a whole shit-heap of boxes left to bring down into the hold, and the tide won’t wait for your health!"

In any other venue under the five gods, Harlon would have had the peasant’s tongue violently seized with red-hot irons and burnt to a cinder before the man could even blink. But he was far from his own seat of power; he was a wolf playing the part of a sheep in a harbor full of foxes.

He caught Karlin’s eye, subtly waving him close as they moved forward. Together, they trod up the narrow, creaking wooden bridge, their boots landing with a dull thud against the swaying timber of the ship’s deck. There was very little of interest to see on the main deck, nor could Harlon risk looking around too conspicuously. Most of the heavy cargo boxes were already piled high close to the rail, ready to be hauled down into the dark belly of the merchantman.

"If you’re quite finished gazing at the stars, take a move!" a burly sailor behind them muttered, shoving past them while hoisting a massive wooden crate across his stomach.

With absolutely no interest in drawing any more unwanted attention to themselves, Harlon and Karlin began their own grueling count. It was humiliating, back-breaking labor to be sure, the rough wood of the crates biting into Harlon’s hands, but it served a vital purpose. The stacking layout put them in close proximity to where Clok and Hafgan stood conversing near the mainmast. Whenever the two lords chanced to be near the pair, they made sure to move with an agonizing, deliberate slowness, straining their ears to catch every whispered word over the groaning of the ship’s timbers.

"He’s got money to waste, that’s to be sure," Hafgan was saying, his voice low as he carefully slid a sealed parchment letter from his tunic and extended it into Clok’s possession. "The message is the same thing as always, just more failure to report from the assembly. Our little trick with Barbut completely died on the floor. Does our grand patron have a particular fetish for disappointment?"

"Don’t go asking me about the high court’s tastes," Clok muttered, snatching the letter and quickly tucking it into his heavy leather vest. "I get my pay same as you. Now, I regard you as a true friend, Hafgan, so I’m going to give you a solid piece of advice: don’t go looking for the face behind the pouch. You get your gold? You take it with a wide smile and you say your thanks to the gods. Don’t go digging around in the dark for what you aren’t meant to see.’’ He spat on the stone ’’Now he pays us to do this?Good , do it, and be done with it."

Not being able to linger over the same crate any longer without raising immediate suspicion from the rest of the crew, Harlon was forced to let go of the cargo. He walked back down the deck, his teeth grinding in sheer frustration. They were close, so damn close, but the names were still being kept away from his ears. He just needed one name. Only one to make any work.

Yet, the dice had been thrown, and the face that turned up was a lucky one.

As Harlon carried a secondary, lighter crate back toward the main hatch, passing within a hair’s breadth of the two men who were still casually drinking from the tin canteen, a sudden snatch of conversation drifted through the salty air. It was a single, mocking exchange that made the entire grueling, humiliating ordeal worth every ounce of spilled sweat.

"He still insists on signing the ledgers himself, he’s no free man, I tell you that much," Clok chuckled softly, shaking his head as his narrow eyes tracked a pair of deckhands hoisting a heavy barrel. "Thinks it makes him sound like a god of the sea. I’ve had quite enough of that royal fool myself. Soon as this winter run is done, I’m cutting my lines. The bastard’s going to get me killed one of these days."

Harlon even found himself silently cheering the wounded spy on, praying the rat would keep digging the hole deeper.

"Aye," Hafgan sneered, a wet, rattling laugh coughing out of his chest before he winced, his hand clutching his bandaged thigh. "Given how many of his secret shipments we’ve watched sink to the bottom of the channel this winter, the bloody fool... he’d have a much truer title if he just called himself the Reef-splitter."

"Didn’t you hear the latest, though?" Clok replied, a wicked, missing-toothed smile breaking through his matted beard.

"Heard what?"

"Some say the grand bastard actually bought his own nickname," Clok muttered, taking another long, greedy swig from the tin canteen. "Sent his coin-reivers into the low taverns and paid the local drunkards to shout it whenever he passed by, or whenever courtly conversation rolled around his name. There were plenty of eager takers, of course. No sane islander ever spurns good old silver. The bitch has a remarkably weak heart and a brittle pride, I tell you that."

"No shit?" Hafgan rasped, genuinely amused.

"Aye," Clok spluttered with a coarse, mocking laughter that echoed off the damp timber of the deck. "Where else did you think a creature like him got it?He no warrior. The motherfucker’s never even broken the still water in his own bathtub, let alone commanded a fleet in any proper fight.WaveCleaver?" Clok spat over the railing, his voice dripping with utter disdain. "Ah. The only thing that blond cunt ever broke were brothel’s yearly revenue pawing off his own arse."

Harlon didn’t falter in his steady stride as the next words rolled effortlessly out of Clok’s mouth. He kept his head down, his broad shoulders braced under the weight of a cargo box, but beneath the heavy, salt-crusted wool of his cloak,a victorious smile slowly bloomed across his face.

He had his thread at last.