The ship came in at dawn, but the harbour bells didn't ring.
Lysander was already on the tower when he saw it—a trader, low in the water, its sail slack in the windless morning. It moved through the barrier pilings with the slow, drifting motion of a vessel that had no one at the tiller. No crew on deck. No voices calling out to the dock workers. Just the hull scraping against the stone pier, and the silence that followed.
He had been standing on the tower since before first light, counting fishing boats. The twelfth boat had been late again—or perhaps it was the eleventh, he had lost track—and he had stayed to watch the harbour wake. The winter sea was grey and flat, the sky the colour of old iron, and the cold had worked its way through his cloak and into his bones. He was about to go down to the supply office when he saw the trader drifting toward the pier with no one at the helm.
He went down at a run, his boots slipping on the frost-slick stones.
