Pried Iron and Old Port

The iron sounding-lead gave a dull scrape against the street bars overhead, dripping foul canal water down into the blackness of the culvert. Jory huddled against the slimy masonry of the sill, both arms wrapped like vices around the damp ox-hide ledger and the cloth-wrapped shape of the glass jar. A green pinpoint gleamed through a thin patch of grease on his wool sleeve, and he tucked his chin lower, grimacing as his spectacles slid down the slick bridge of his nose. Thirty years of squinting over hems had ruined his eyesight, but down here in the sewer gloom, blindness was almost an asset.

Beside him, Captain Bramblefoot was frozen mid-crouch, his boots submerged to the ankle in tidal mud. He raised a single finger toward the vaulted ceiling, warning Pip and Barnaby back along the ledge. The street above was so quiet they could hear the sergeant's leather scabbard knock against the iron grating with every step of his patrol. Corin was muttering about low tide and silt banks, preparing to lower the leaden ball a second time.

Then the vault itself gave way.

A square brass drainage grate, eaten hollow by decades of salt fog and gutter scum, lost its purchase in the crumbling mortar six feet above Bramblefoot’s shoulder. It tore loose with a harsh, tearing rasp of wet lime and struck the sloped brickwork below with a ferocious bronze clang. The heavy metal bounced, cartwheeled through the silt, and slammed into the stone bench barely two inches from Jory’s left thigh, spraying muck across the stiff hide of the stolen ledger.

The noise had barely begun to echo through the drainage arches before the roost went mad. Tucked deep into a recessed flue directly behind the broken grate, two dozen Oakhaven harbor pigeons erupted into the shaft. Trapped between the falling metal and the dark channel below, the birds panicked, thrashing upward toward the daylight in a roaring storm of gray wings, cooing squalls, and flying down.

The iron lead-weight dangling through the street grate caught the brunt of the swarm. Three birds battered themselves against the suspension line, sending the heavy plummet swinging like an erratic pendulum against the underside of the cobbles. Overhead, Sergeant Corin shouted in alarm, his boots staggering back on the street paving as pigeon dung and loose feathers sprayed up through the grating into the guards' faces. A second watchman cursed loudly, drawing a cudgel and swinging it blindly at the flurry escaping into the autumn air.

"Now," Bramblefoot hissed, his hand clamping onto Jory's shoulder and shoving the aging apprentice forward into the low recess of the sub-cellar threshold. "Before the idiot looks past his own nose!"

Jory lurched ahead, his knees grinding in protest against the slick stones. He dropped to his shins before the low oak door of the municipal sub-cellar. The wicker crate that had washed against their ledge lay half-submerged in the wash; Jory plunged a hand into the murky wickerwork and dragged out the salt-crusted claw-hammer he had spotted earlier. The tool was heavy, pitted with orange rust, and slick with cold tallow.