The dock hoist had a notice nailed to it: UNSAFE.
NO LOADS ABOVE FORTY.
Joss read it while guiding a crate that seemed determined to weigh ninety.
“That’s reassuring,” Sella said.
“Notice was written for the rope.”
“What was the hoist written for?”
“People who replace the rope.”
He took the cart down the landing ramp into the old fish yard.
The hoist stood over a narrow unloading pool where barges used to dock.
Its thick oak upright still had three sound bolts into the masonry.
The rope hanging from its arm looked like wet hair.
Joss left that rope alone.
He threaded his own through the iron block, hooked the loop under the crate’s carrier cradle, and tied the loose end to the cart.
It wouldn’t lift the parcel.
It would catch it if the damaged cart failed.
Above the yard, boots hammered the bridge approach.
Sella peered between stacked fish racks.
“Gray coats.
Three.”
“Which wrist?”
“The front one’s wrapped.”
Joss pushed the cart beneath the hoist.
The crate scraped its feet on the cradle, refusing to settle flat.
A thin line of black water ran down one corner.
The needle on the brass plate climbed.
He had seen ordinary freight frames before.
Chartered carriers moved stone furnaces and reservoir gates through the city in boxes barely longer than a coffin.
Dock hands weren’t allowed to open them.
The useful instructions consisted of keeping the seals dry and never standing under anything that began remembering its true size.
His parcel had already remembered part of a bridge.
“I need oil,” he said.
Sella pointed at a chandler’s stall across the yard.
Its shutters were closed.
Joss hammered twice.
A slot opened.
An old man inspected the crate through it and immediately began closing it again.
Joss put a mark through the gap.
“Small seal flask.
No questions.”
The man considered the mark.
“Plenty of questions,” he said.
“None worth a mark.”
A flask emerged.
Joss counted eight marks still in his pocket and went back to the cart.
He dripped oil along the leaking seam.
Where it touched the black ribs, a dull amber line returned.
The needle stopped climbing at eighty-eight.
Then the cut strap slipped.
Joss caught it before the buckle could fall, but the severed edge pulled across his left palm.
Warm blood filled the crease beneath his thumb.
He swore, wrapped his sleeve around the strap, and tied it off to the hoist’s stone base.
The crate made two short knocks.
“You could help,” he told it.
One small foot moved onto the new knot.
That was something.
The first gray coat appeared at the yard entrance.
His knife wrist was wrapped tightly enough to leave his fingers pale.
“Step away from municipal freight,” he called.
Joss stood between him and the cart.
“Municipal freight comes with a seal.
Yours came with a knife.”
“You damaged it.”
“I have the strap.
We can compare cuts.”
The other two men split toward opposite sides of the fish racks.
They weren’t rushing him.
They meant to close the exits before he had anywhere to push the cart.
Sella picked up an empty drying frame.
“I can delay one.”
“Don’t fight them.
Find people.”
“People are expensive when they’re scared.”
“Tell them the bridge is in danger.”
She looked at his bleeding hand, then at the black water dripping from the parcel.
“Fine.
But don’t make me explain the feet.”
She left through the chandler’s narrow side passage.
Joss measured his options.
The yard’s downhill exit opened into a lane leading to Reed Dock.
A rack blocked it.
The eastern marshal would reach the rack before his cart did.
The unloading pool gave him another route, if he could swing the hoist far enough.
He pulled the locking pin out of its pivot.
Rust fought him.
The cut in his palm opened wider as he twisted.
From the entrance came another voice.
“Joss!
Put the thing down.”
Ferren Krail wore his good shipping coat, the one with the pearl buttons.
Two of his warehouse laborers trailed behind him.
Their eyes stayed on the crate.
For a moment, Joss felt foolish relief.
His employer knew the frame.
His employer could explain the marshals, pay the chandler, and send someone with hands that weren’t leaking.
Krail pointed at the pool.
“Dump it there.
We can recover it when the authorities arrive.”
Joss looked at the parcel’s miniature river running out of its seam.
“If I drop it, what happens to Reed Bridge?”
“That bridge was already condemned.”
“This morning you sent three carts over it.”
“You want a discussion now?”
The injured marshal had stopped advancing.
He and Krail didn’t look at each other.
Joss noticed how carefully they avoided it.
“Six marks,” Joss said.
Krail frowned.
“What?”
“You owe me six.
Pay those first, then we’ll discuss another job.”
“I’ll pay you twenty if you do as you’re told.”
That settled it more firmly than any confession could have.
Joss pulled the hoist’s pin free.
“Wrong recipient,” he said.
He kicked the cart’s brake loose and rolled it forward.
Its weight took up the rope.
The hoist groaned, swinging toward the pool.
The men shouted.
Krail’s laborers backed away.
The crate rose only a handbreadth.
Its burden went into the hoist, and the hoist’s base took it into stone.
Joss shoved an empty fish barrel under the cart’s free wheel, lifting that side to keep the cradle level.
The marshal saw the intended swing and ran for the pivot.
Joss loosened the cart rope two inches.
The loaded arm swept across the man’s path.
He ducked; the hoist’s blunt iron hook caught the top of his shoulder and threw him against a rack.
Joss hauled the pin halfway back into its socket to stop the swing above the lane.
It held.
He pulled the cart off the barrel.
The crate settled onto its wheels on the other side of the pool, three yards from the lower exit.
He recovered as much rope as he could.
Five yards remained trapped behind the jammed hoist pin.
He cut them away.
“You are finished at my depot,” Krail shouted.
“Put it in writing.”
Joss pushed.
The cart jolted over the lane’s broken stones.
Behind him, the hoist finally cracked at its pivot.
Its arm fell into the unloading pool, sealing the narrow route with oak and iron.
Nobody followed immediately.
The parcel’s needle crept back toward ninety.
Joss used the rest of the flask at the bottom corner, then wrapped his hand with a strip from his shirt.
He could barely close his fingers.
The cart needed both hands on the slope.
Sella returned at the lane’s next bend with four neighbors and a lantern.
“Half the dock saw the hole,” she said.
“Nobody believes the crate.”
One neighbor lifted the cart’s low side.
Another put a shoulder against its rear.
“They can believe it later,” Joss said.
“House seven.”
They turned into Lower Reed.
On Krail’s dispatch maps, this part of the district was colored gray and marked unoccupied.
Joss had never noticed how many lamps burned inside those gray squares.
Children carried bowls across the lane.
A woman patched a roof by lantern light.
Somebody called out the price of hot onions.
At house seven, an older woman stood behind a barred door with a cane in one hand.
Her left trouser leg ended above a wooden prosthesis.
Her other knee was bandaged.
Her gaze went straight to the parcel.
“Who sent that?”
“Nera Venn?” Joss asked.
“Depends who’s checking.”
“The registry says you’re dead.”
“Then be polite and lower your voice.”