"Already on my list."
"I can take you over this afternoon if you want an introduction. He doesn't love cold appointments."
"I'll manage."
Rowan gave him one look and then moved on, which Rafe appreciated. He handed the materials list over and Rafe read it carefully, twice, before handing it back with two additions and one substitution circled. Rowan looked at the substitution and nodded without comment.
They worked through the morning in that way, Rowan's crew doing the labor and Rafe doing the oversight, and when the two overlapped, which they did, regularly, because Rafe could not watch someone else handle his rigging mount without eventually taking the line himself, Rowan adjusted without making a thing of it.
By midday, the port side hull caulking was done and curing, the rigging mount was braced for the replacement hardware that would arrive tomorrow, and Orick had produced a cargo damage inventory that Rafe read standing on the dock with a cup of black coffee going cold in his other hand.
"The Vanewright order," he said.
"Totalled," Orick confirmed. He was a big man, half-orc on one side, with a steady temperament that Rafe valued. "The secondary crates took in water when the hold partition split. Anything wrapped in the lower tier is gone."
"The Mercantile dry goods?"
"Three crates destroyed, two damaged but possibly salvageable if they're dried immediately. Rufus Tansley came down this morning, actually. He said he'd have Edgar go through them this afternoon."
"Edgar's the one who?—"
"The more open one, yes. Rufus just looked at the crates, made a sound I couldn't interpret, and left."
Rafe set the coffee down on a dock post. He'd deal with the Vanewright account by letter this afternoon. A partial refund, a renegotiated delivery timeline, an offer on the next run. It was going to cost him and he knew exactly how much. Putting the number in his head and working out its implications was the kind of problem that kept his wolf from doing other things with its attention.
That evening though, as the light in the sky was fastly fading, a storm outage hit at half past six.
It wasn't one of hers. He knew that the moment it started. This was an ordinary pressure front coming down from the north ridge, the kind that rolled through late-spring valleys, and when the power went out in the three buildings visible from the dock it went out clean, no precursor lightning, no lakedisturbance. He stood at the dock's edge for a moment anyway, instinctively tracking the weather, and felt nothing unusual in it.
Dex appeared at his shoulder. "Silver Fang's already got candles going. Orick and Pell went up twenty minutes ago."
"I have the Vanewright letter to finish."
"The letter will still be wrong tomorrow if you write it tonight."
Rafe raised his eyebrow at him.
"I'm saying," Dex said carefully, "that sometimes a man needs a drink before he writes a difficult letter."
Rafe let out a gruff ‘humph’ to show his argument before letting Dex lead the way.
Half the town appeared to have had the same thought about the outage, the bar doing solid business by candlelight, voices filling the low-ceilinged room in overlapping layers. The Silver Fang has the kind of warmth that lived in the wood and the stone with the smell of old ale and good fire. Someone had a fiddle going in the back corner. Rafe noted the exits, the layout, the faces he recognized from the dock and the square, and found a table against the far wall that had a clear view of the room and the door.
Orick had commandeered a spot at the bar and was deep in conversation with a man who looked like he worked with stone. Pell was at a table with two locals and had already made himself comfortable enough to be laughing.
The woman behind the bar was not what Rafe had expected, though in retrospect he should have. Short, sharp-featured, with a black bob and the kind of expression that assessed everyone who came through the door. She set two drinks in front of waiting customers without looking at them, said something to the man beside her that made him put his cup down slowly, and then her eyes moved to Rafe's table.
He got up and went to the bar. Easier than watching her decide whether to come to him.
"Lupeus," she said. "Maeve Cross. I run this place." She didn't offer her hand but she didn't need to. Her posture said everything about who was in charge of this room. "Heard you came in rough."
"Storm damage. I'm told it's been a recurring theme."
"On and off." She poured without asking and slid it across. "Your crew behave themselves?"
"Always."
"Good." She looked him over with the flat efficiency of someone deciding where he stood.
