Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 18 of 28

By the third day the docks rang with hammers. Emily Deepwood's crew tore out the rotten planks and laid new ones. The red banner hung from the cabin porch above the water. Anne walked the harbor and should have felt proud. Instead one question stuck in her. Someone built all this once. Someone left it. She still did not know why. Chris Redfield found her on the dock at dusk. He knelt by an old mooring post and pointed at the base. "Look." Anne crouched beside him. Deep gouges scored the wood, low to the water. Not tool marks. Not rot. Something had dragged against the post again and again. "Rope?" Anne asked. "No." Chris ran a thumb along the grooves. "Chain. Heavy chain. All along the row." Anne stood and looked down the line of posts. Every one bore the same scars, worn smooth and gray. She went up the slope to the cabin. The door hung on one hinge. Inside, dust covered a broken table and a cold hearth. She found a tin box under a floorboard and pried it open. Emily came in behind her while she read. The papers were a harbor ledger, water-stained but plain. Ship names. Dates. A last entry in a shaking hand. Anne read it twice, then handed it to Emily. Emily scanned it and looked up. "Crown chain boom," she said. "They call it a customs line. I call it a net. They strung chain across the mouth and trapped every hull inside." She tapped the page. "This crew didn't leave. They were caught here." "And burned," Anne said. The last line said it. Fire on the water. No ships out. Chris spoke from the doorway. "So the Crown found this place once." "Years ago," Emily said. "Before the Shelf silted the old channel. No deep hull crosses that now. Their charts are dead paper." She folded the ledger. "That's why it's empty. Not a curse. A gate they can't reach anymore." Anne let out a slow breath. No ghost lingered here. No plague, no reef that swallowed ships. The harbor died for one plain reason, and that reason could not follow her fleet through the Shelf. She was not building on a grave that would open under her. She was building on a fort the Crown had already forgotten. But the ledger showed her one more thing. She carried it out to the dock and called Kate and the captains close. "The Crown took this harbor with a chain across the mouth," she said. "One line. It caught everyone inside." She looked at the narrow water where the cut met the sea. "We hold the only door. So we build our own line. If they ever find the channel, they hang on it, not us." Kate grinned for the first time in days. Emily was already pacing off the width of the mouth. The harbor was safe to keep. Now Anne had to arm its throat before the Crown came knocking.