She stayed on the rock and extended the connection toward it, keeping the touch light, not wanting to be felt in return. The presence moved along the river road and then stopped near the dock turn and stayed there for a while, and she sat with her feet in cold water listening to the dark and tried to determine whether the wrongness she felt was pointed at her or at something else. At someone else.
She pulled back from the connection and sat with that for a moment, then went inside and latched the door. She stood at the kitchen window looking out at the dark water until the presence on the river road moved on and the night went quiet again.
7
RAFE
Rafe was on his knees in the hold with a headlamp and a pry tool at half past seven in the morning, running his fingers along the split partition where the hull had separated from the floor mount, and he did not like what he found. The crack ran eight inches further than what the initial walk-through had caught. He pressed the wood, felt the give in it, and sat back on his heels.
"How bad?" Dex's voice came from the top of the hold ladder.
"Come down here."
Dex descended with his headlamp already on, crouched beside him, and looked. "That's going to need a full plank replacement, not a patch."
"I know."
"Rowan said?—"
"Rowan looked at it in the dark and in the rain." Rafe stood and moved forward to check the secondary frame brace. "I'm not blaming him. But I'm not trusting an estimate made in those conditions on a repair that determines whether this hold is watertight for the next six months."
Dex pulled at the damaged wood, testing the way Rafe had. "You want to pull Rowan off it entirely?"
"No." He crouched again at the forward end of the partition. "He knows this dock, he knows the materials suppliers, and he's the only person in this town who's worked the timbers on a vessel this size. I need him." He said it the way he said anything he found inconvenient. Flatly, without drama. "I just need to be here when the decisions get made."
Dex pressed his mouth together forcing himself to not say his opinion.
"Say it," Rafe said.
"You delegated three contracts and a full crew rotation to me for the Caldermere run last season without a second glance."
"The Caldermere run was straightforward."
"And this isn't, so you'd rather do everything yourself."
"I'd rather know everything is done correctly."
"That's the same thing."
Rafe looked at him. Dex looked back with the untroubled expression. They had been having this argument for seven years and Dex had made peace with never winning it.
"Get Pell to start pulling the damaged cargo inventory," Rafe said. "Everything that got wet goes on a separate list. I want to know what's salvageable before I contact the Vanewright account."
"And the forge appointment?"
"This afternoon, if the smith can take me." He climbed the hold ladder. The morning air hit him after the damp below, cool and resinous, pine from the tree line and river mud from the bank. "You talked to anyone in town about the him?"
"A bit." Dex followed him up, squinting into the light. "Bear shifter named Silas, been here awhile. Runs the forge on the square's north end. Word is he's steady, good work, fair onprice." He paused. "Also married to a fire witch who had some trouble with her magic when she first came to town."
Rafe narrowed his eyes.
"I'm just noting it," Dex said. "Given the general theme."
Rafe walked to the bow to assess the rail in daylight. It was worse in the morning light too, the iron bracket beneath it having torqued when the wood bent, which meant Silas would need to recast it rather than reshape it. He put his hand on the rail, felt the instability in it, and made a note in the small book he kept in his jacket pocket.
Rowan arrived at the dock at eight with two men and a materials list. He was already in work clothes, tool belt on, moving with the no-nonsense efficiency of someone who had built half the structures in this town with his own hands. He looked at the bow rail the same way Rafe had, pressed it in the same place, and his jaw did the same thing.
"The bracket's going to need Silas," he said.
