The Boat under Searchlight

The searchlight crossed the quay for the fourth time before Celia found the flaw in its sweep. It paused at the mooring posts. Two breaths, no more. The patrol had been watching Brenda’s boat, but Brenda was already below the quay, carrying the repaired brake tooth through the maintenance culvert.

Celia stood beside a stack of empty fish crates with her measuring chain looped inside her coat. She had marked the culvert’s inland opening on a dry impression. From here, Brenda needed only to pass under the quay and come up beside the old pump shed.

The searchlight stopped moving.

A whistle blew below her feet.

Celia shoved the crates aside and ran for the pump shed. Boots struck the stone inside the culvert. A man called for Brenda to put down what she carried. Then came a hard metallic blow, followed by a cry cut short.

The culvert hatch lifted an inch. Brenda’s right hand gripped its edge.

“Don’t stand there measuring it,” she said through her teeth.

Celia caught the hatch and pulled. Brenda came up shoulder first, her coat slick with culvert mud. She held a cloth bundle tight against her chest. Her left arm hung at an odd angle.

Behind her, a patrol lamp swung around the bend.

“Give me the bundle.” Celia reached for it.

“Hand first.” Brenda shoved her right hand up. Celia gripped it and hauled. Brenda’s boot slipped against the iron rung, and she struck the hatch rim with her left arm. Her face went white.

A voice rose from the culvert. “Captain Hale. Remain where you are, please.”

Ash.

Brenda pitched forward onto the stones. Celia shut the hatch and dropped the heavy iron catch into place. It would delay him, not hold him. There was another way out by the quay.

“Can you run?” Celia asked.

“Can you ask a useful question?” Brenda pushed the bundle into Celia’s hands. “Tooth’s in there. Don’t let it hit stone.”

Celia loosened one corner of the cloth. Bronze, newly cast and filed to the drawn pattern, lay beside the smaller fittings. The edges still held the faint roughness of the machinist’s work. She wrapped it again and tucked it under her coat.

Brenda took one step and caught herself against the shed wall. Her left wrist had begun to swell above the cuff. Celia put Brenda’s right arm over her shoulders.

“Pump lane,” Celia said. “It’s forty yards.”

“Then count quietly.”

They made twelve before the searchlight found them. White light struck the shed wall, throwing their shadows across the lane. Celia steered Brenda behind a row of water barrels as boots came up the quay stairs.

“Miss Marrow,” Ash called. His voice carried cleanly over the water. “You may step out without prejudice to your position. Captain Hale is carrying restricted equipment.”

Brenda pressed her mouth to Celia’s ear. “Restricted. I paid good money for that word.”

At the far end of the lane, a coal cart stood with its shafts propped against a wall. Beyond it was an alley to the sail loft. Celia judged the gap between light sweeps. The beam had narrowed its path to cover the culvert and the quay stairs. Ash knew where Brenda had come out.

A patrolman rounded the barrels.

Celia drove her shoulder into the top one. It rolled into his knees, spilling rainwater over his boots. He fell with a sharp curse. She got Brenda moving before the barrel stopped.

“Stop,” Ash called. “You are obstructing a lawful seizure.”

Celia did not turn. Brenda’s weight pulled at her side, and each step sent a jolt through Celia’s bent legs. At the coal cart, Brenda stumbled. Celia caught her around the waist, careful of the left arm, and dragged her into the alley.

They reached the loft’s side door while the patrol was still in the lane. Mira opened it before Celia knocked a second time.

“Her wrist,” Celia said.

Mira took Brenda’s right side without reaching for the injured arm. Together they brought her upstairs. Jonah moved the atlas and its dry sheets off the table while Celia set the wrapped bronze in their place. The tooth had survived. Brenda had carried it through.

Brenda lowered herself into a chair and rested her left forearm across her lap. The swelling had spread into her hand.

“Don’t touch it,” she told Jonah when he reached for her sleeve. “Sable can have the honor.”

“I’ll get him.” Jonah went down the stairs at once.

Celia fetched a folded cloth for Brenda to support the arm. Brenda let her slide it beneath her elbow, then gripped the edge of the table with her right hand while Mira tied the cloth loosely around her neck.

Outside, Ash’s whistle sounded again. Nearer the water this time.

Brenda lifted her head. “The boat.”

Celia looked at her.

“I left her tied at the south quay. Had to. Couldn’t take the tooth and move her under that light.” Brenda swallowed. “They were on the culvert before I got halfway through. I went over a rung when I turned back.”

The boat was the one place they had left the original salt pages. Dry impressions were with the households, and the atlas was here, but neither held what the salt itself still carried.

Celia went to the loft window. The searchlight swept across the south quay and fixed on Brenda’s vessel. Two patrolmen climbed aboard. A third stood on the dock with a chain.

“Are they opening the hold?” Brenda asked.

“Not yet.”

A man on the dock pulled the chain through the bow ring. Celia watched him secure it to the patrol launch. No mistake of distance or angle could improve that fact.

Ash stepped into the beam and raised a hand toward the loft. He did not call out. He had his seizure, and Celia had no order that would make him release it tonight.

“The originals are still hidden,” Brenda said. “They’ll find the ordinary lockers first.”

Mira came to the window but stayed back from the glass. “How long does that give us?”

Brenda watched Celia rather than the quay. “Depends how curious he gets.”

The patrol launch drew the boat from its berth. Its stern swung toward the light, then passed into the dark beyond the quay. Celia set one hand on the wrapped brake tooth to keep it from rolling off the table. With the other, she drew the atlas closer.

The dry lines were safe. The original pages were leaving under guard.