Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 17 of 28

The route was safe in two heads now, but Anne watched her captains at the cut and saw a different problem. They tied up, drank, and stared out at the Shelf. They spoke of this place as a hole to hide in until the Crown gave up. A hiding place empties fast. Within weeks they would drift back to their old waters and her red banner would mean nothing. She needed to give them a reason to stay. She took a small boat inland along the cut and found what she was looking for. A deserted harbor sat in still water. Weathered docks leaned over their mooring posts. Crates and barrels stood rotting where some old crew had left them. A rusted anchor lay on the planks, its rope coiled and gray. Whoever built this place had gone long ago. But the docks still held, and the water ran deep enough for her whole fleet. Kate Blackwater rowed out behind her, uninvited. Anne had promised to recover Kate's stolen ship, and she had done it. Kate had signed the code last and pulled the other captains in with her. That made her the one voice Anne needed now. Kate stepped onto the dock and kicked a barrel over. "A dead harbor," she said. "You dragged me out for driftwood." "I dragged you out because they listen to you," Anne said. "They think this cut is a hole. I want a home." Kate walked the planks. She tested a mooring post with her boot. It held. She looked up the slope to a run-down cabin above the docks, its roof sagging, its boards split and scarred. "That thing's falling down." "So we fix it," Anne said. "A place to meet. To count shares. To store what we take. Emily can rebuild the docks in a month. A crew that builds something doesn't sail off from it." Kate stood quiet a long moment. She did not soften what she said next. "You give them walls, they'll fight over rooms." Then she picked up the coiled rope and threw it over a post. She hitched it tight, the way you tie a ship you mean to keep. "But a berth beats a hole." That was all the agreement Anne would get, and it was enough. Kate carried it back to the others that night. By morning three crews had rowed inland with saws and tar. Emily walked the docks and marked the rotten boards. Someone hauled the old anchor upright and hung the red banner from the cabin porch. The cut was no longer a place to hide. It was a base now, claimed and building. But a base draws eyes. The old harbor had been abandoned for a reason, and Anne did not yet know it. And a home you can defend is also a home the Crown will one day come to burn.