The salt quay was on the wrong side of every useful rope.
Joss had unloaded barges there often enough to know the order: mooring line first, bow spring second, cargo crane last.
If the tide turned before the spring was changed, a barge’s stern drifted away from the stones.
The guards knew it too.
One stood by the bow, watching the ropewalk approach.
The other waited beside the crane’s release lever.
They had left the river clear because a sensible thief would rather fight a man than swim beneath a loaded hull.
Joss parked the cart behind a stack of salt bricks and lowered Tan’s foot brace onto the quay.
He touched the frame strap, letting its pressure settle against stone.
Sixty-nine.
One binding.
“You stay with that,” he told Tan.
She pointed at the rail bundle on the barge.
“And you stay where I can get a rope to you.”
He took Dema’s two borrowed planks down a set of service steps.
They were barely longer than the gap between the stones and the barge’s stern.
The first plank reached the hull.
The second he laid beside it, spreading his weight across both.
The boards bowed.
White chalk letters stared up at him.
He would owe Dema more than an explanation if he broke them.
Joss crossed low, one good hand on the stern rail.
Under the open hatch, water slapped the hold.
A deckhand sat beside it, stitching a glove.
“You’re late,” the deckhand said.
“Story of my career.
Where’s the rail docket?”
The deckhand pointed with his needle.
Joss wore Krail’s old courier badge.
Asking for paper fit the badge better than crawling over the stern had.
He picked the docket off a crate beside the rail bundle.
REED ROUTE RECEIVER: TRANSFER TO CHARTERED TOLL HOLDING.
Krail had signed beneath the disposal recommendation.
Tovin’s three-stitch seal occupied the countersignature box.
The old supports were to be dismantled after the district’s crossing failed inspection.
Joss folded the paper inside his shirt.
“That one’s for the captain,” the deckhand said.
“I’ll return a copy.”
The man stopped stitching.
On the quay, the crane guard turned toward the stern.
He had seen Tan move behind the salt stack, or noticed the boards, or simply counted a courier who hadn’t come by the road.
There went the quiet part.
Joss cut the rail bundle’s first rope with the knife he’d taken from Tovin.
The deckhand stood, reaching for a belaying pin.
“It’s Reed Bridge’s receiver,” Joss said.
“They’ve taken the span out while people are crossing it.”
The man’s face changed, but his hand stayed on the pin.
“I don’t unload without the captain.”
“Then get him.
Quickly.”
He ran toward the cabin instead of hitting Joss.
That was all the help available.
The crane guard pulled the release lever.
Its hanging hook swung across the deck toward Joss’s head.
Joss ducked behind the rail bundle.
Iron struck iron.
The rail shuddered against its wooden rests.
He wrapped his rope through one coupling eye and threw the end toward Tan.
She caught it, ran it around a quay post, and pulled.
One rail half slid three inches along the deck.
The bow guard came aboard.
He carried a pole with a short hooked blade, useful for dragging a thief away from something valuable.
Joss kicked a wooden cargo rest under the guard’s advancing foot.
The man stepped over it rather than falling.
Joss gave him credit and moved to the other side of the bundle.
“We’re taking the receiver back,” he said.
“You’re stealing authority freight.”
“You can read the owner on the metal.”
The hook caught Joss’s coat.
He pulled out of it, leaving a sleeve pinned against the rail.
His papers stayed inside his shirt.
Cold wind hit his sweat-soaked back.
The barge bell rang.
The captain had seen the tide changing.
A deckhand released the stern mooring to keep the hull from grinding against the quay.
The gap began widening beneath Dema’s planks.
Joss pushed the cargo rest under the nearer rail half.
With its end raised, Tan’s rope could turn the rail onto its side rather than drag its whole length flat.
“Pull once,” he called.
“On the bell.”
The guard advanced again.
Joss had nowhere to retreat except the widening gap.
On the quay, the crane guard had reached the salt stack.
Tan couldn’t hold both the rope and the parcel.
She dropped her end around the post and took up her hammer.
Latch climbed out of the cradle’s middle while the bridge frame remained strapped to the cart.
Its four feet stretched to the edge of the quay, and its lid closed over the rope knot.
The knot held.
The crane guard aimed his hooked pole at the cart strap.
Tan hit its shaft against the stone post.
Wood split.
She kept the hammer low, protecting the fitting rather than chasing the man.
Joss saw the bow guard glance toward her.
He used the glance.
He kicked the raised rail half off its rest, then jumped onto the farther plank.
The rail rolled toward the stern.
The rope pulled tight.
Latch dug its feet into the quay seam.
The barge bell rang a second time.
Tan hauled.
The rail half slid over the stern lip and dropped onto the service steps with a crash that sent water over Joss’s boots.
One borrowed plank split lengthwise.
The other held long enough for him to scramble up beside Tan.
The bow guard jabbed after him.
His hook caught the parcel’s outer strap and tore a fist-sized flap from its dressing.
The brass needle leaped to seventy-eight.
Tan shoved the broken pole away.
Latch let go of the rope and planted itself against the leaking corner.
Joss used the seal flask without measuring the dose.
Amber spread across the wound.
The needle sank to seventy-four and stopped there.
The first flask was empty.
The second stayed closed in Tan’s bag.
“One half,” she said.
Joss looked at the barge drifting away.
The captain had men on the remaining rail and guards between them and the stern.
Another attempt would cost more than borrowed timber.
The captain leaned over his rail.
“You break a quay for that, I lose the berth!”
Joss showed him the original owner’s stamp on the rescued receiver.
“They broke the crossing first.
I’ve taken the docket.
Give your crew names when the inspector asks who ordered the transfer.”
The captain’s expression closed at the word inspector.
He turned toward the deckhand with the unfinished glove.
“Nobody throws the other rail over,” he said.
“Keep the papers that are left.”
Joss checked the darkening dressing.
“One half buys time,” he told Tan.
“Let’s spend it uphill.”
They levered the rescued rail onto a quay handbarrow.
Joss left his courier badge beside the crane lever with a note naming the property he’d removed.
Let Krail call it theft; he wanted the owner recorded before someone scratched the old mark away.
Tan secured the barrow behind his cart with a loose towing loop.
The rail traveled as ordinary iron, supported by its own wheels.
It was too long to turn in the ropewalk lane without someone steering the rear.
Tan took that job.
Joss kept the bridge frame level.
They reached the bottom of the river ledge just as two more guards stepped into its upper exit.
Behind them, a salt worker shut the quay gate.
Joss stopped.
The strip of stone between the river and warehouse wall was barely wider than his cart.
Its old bolts would take a rope.
Its low steps might take the rail.
He checked the needle.
Seventy-six now.
The dressing was already darkening.
Tan saw where he was looking.
“The axle won’t hold a second load.”
“Then we need it to go somewhere else.”