She came in on a white hull with gold ribs and did not wait for a harbor master.
I was on the outer terrace because Elizabeth had told me to be seen and not to sing. The ship cut the shifting water cleaner than any Phoenix probe we had broken. No boarding mouth. No painted array pointed at our glass. Just a woman on the bow in house white, hair pinned with a gold phoenix pin, and six men behind her who looked like they had come to read a law, not to die for one.
The quay went quiet in the wrong way. Dockhands stopped. A preacher who had learned to shut his mouth last week opened it again and then thought better of it.
Elizabeth met her at the gangplank. Silver hair. Silver eyes. No red yet. Vale was two steps back with her hand empty and her weight already forward. Sable did not come down. That was the first mistake of the morning, or the first piece of bait. I could not tell which.
The woman stepped onto bone stone as if the city had invited her.
