There is a Harbour between worlds.
Not a harbour belonging to one kingdom, one empire, one species or even one reality.
It sits where routes that should never meet somehow do.
Ships come to it from worlds of sail and steam, from worlds of engines and spellcraft, from places where vessels cross distance by folding it, cutting through it, bargaining with it, ignoring it entirely or persuading something else to carry them.
Some ships are made of timber.
Some are grown.
Some think.
Some insist they are not ships at all.
The Harbour has learned not to argue with them until after docking.
Once, twelve worlds discovered this place and decided that whoever controlled it would control everything that passed through.
They fought for the crossings.
They fought for the berths.
They fought for the routes beyond them.
They fought over who could enter, who could trade, who could leave and who had the right to tell anyone else no.
For a time, every victory simply created another reason to keep fighting.
Then the cost became greater than the prize.
Routes collapsed.
Ships vanished.
Trade stopped.
Stolen novel; please report.
People who had never cared who owned the Harbour began starving because somebody else did.
Eventually, the twelve worlds did something considerably more difficult than winning.
They agreed to stop.
The truce that followed became the beginning of the Harbour as it exists today.
No world would own it.
No world would command it.
Those who wished to use it would accept its jurisdiction while they were within it.
And everyone would abide by the Rules.
That was a long time ago.
The twelve became dozens.
Dozens became hundreds.
Now more than a thousand worlds use the Harbour.
On an ordinary day, its docks might hold merchant vessels carrying grain beside diplomatic ships carrying ambassadors; refugee craft beside pleasure yachts; fishing boats beside warships under seal; pilgrim vessels beside creatures large enough to be legally classified as vessels themselves.
Cargo arrives in crates, cages, barrels, tanks, vaults, containment circles, pockets of slowed time and, occasionally, under its own power.
Customs deals with goods that are valuable in one world and illegal in another.
Quarantine deals with organisms harmless at home and catastrophic everywhere else.
Pilots guide ships through approaches that do not always agree on which direction they are travelling.
Dockworkers load cargo that may be heavier before lunch than it was when it arrived.
Merchants argue over ownership.
Diplomats argue over jurisdiction.
Captains argue because captains always argue.
And when all of that goes wrong, the Harbour Master has the Rule Book.
This morning, something had gone wrong.
Nothing had gone wrong yet. That is the other thing nobody warns you about.
There was a freighter at the Heavy Berths, a long grey bulk hauler that had come in on the minute and docked itself without a single hand on deck, and every porthole down her flank was white with frost on the inside.
There was a coil of rope cut to order, still smelling of the reel, a stack of fourteen signed order slips weighted down with a shackle, and a loudhailer on the gangway making offers to anyone in earshot. It had offered the chandlers a better price. It had offered the cranes a better price. Nobody had yet found a way to tell it no that it was prepared to accept as final.
And there was a chandler’s daughter at the foot of the gangway, counting the same delivery for the third time, pencil moving and lips moving, because each time she reached the end of the count the loudhailer thanked her warmly and announced a cheaper offer for it from somebody else.
None of it was an emergency. All of it was going to be.
The apprentice came through the courtyard at the wrong speed, as usual, to be handed the smallest job the Harbour has: go and tell a ship the price of rope.
The Harbour Master did not look up from the fourteenth order slip.
“You’re late.”
The apprentice opened his mouth.
The Harbour Master opened the Rule Book.