A Snag in the Sluice

The whistle from the drainage arches shrilled twice, high and reedy against the rumble of falling river water. Captain Bramblefoot shoved the flat end of his ash pole into the gravel of the sluiceway, throwing his entire weight forward to urge the skiff past the slime-blackened pilings of the municipal weir. The craft moved three sluggish feet, shuddered, and stopped dead with an iron clang that vibrated straight up through the floorboards into the soles of his boots.

"We're anchored to the bottom of the world," Jory hissed from beneath the canvas flap in the stern, where he was clutching the green-glass jar containing the warm crystal root against his knees. "Shove us off, Captain, before the guard comes down the ramp."

"I am shoving, you miserable deck-sweeper," Bramblefoot grunted, his knuckles white on the pole. The bow-line had caught fast. A heavy iron ringbolt, abandoned years ago by timber raftsmen and crusted over with river mussels, had snagged the slack of their lead hemp. As the sluice water backed up against the upstream gunwale, the skiff began to cant sideways, threatening to roll broadside into the timber sluices and dump crew, root, and ruined tax records directly into the froth.

Barnaby did not wait for an order. Tucking the recovered calfskin leaf into the breast of his oilcloth coat, the broad-shouldered man swung one heavy leg over the side, planting his notched measuring pole into the riverbed to brace himself against the drag of the current. The river took him to the waist in a churning rush of grey foam. His oilcloth billowed, and the cold made him curse through clenched teeth, but he drew his salt-pitted sheath-knife from its scabbard with practiced bluntness. Bracing his hip against the skiff's gunwale, he leaned into the dark water, groping beneath the keel until his fingers found the taut hemp.

He sawed at the rope with savage, hacking strokes. The blade was notched from prying salt-casks, and the wet hemp fibres parted strand by frayed strand under the pressure of the river. With a sharp crack like a snapped bowstring, the final thread tore free. Released from the snag, the skiff sprang forward into the downstream current with a violent jolt. A gray sheet of river spray crested over the bow, slapping Bramblefoot square in the chest and dousing both the captain and the sodden ox-hide ledger in a fresh cascade of icy river wash.

Barnaby caught the transom with one hand and dragged himself inboard like a drowned seal, water pouring from his sleeves onto the planks. Before Bramblefoot could spit the brackish river out of his mouth to swear, a hard beam of yellow light sliced through the river mist from the stone pier fifty paces above. Sergeant Corin stood at the jetty's edge, his brass-hooded lantern held out over the timber booms as he searched the lower channels for the source of the splintering crack.

"Duck down, every mother's son of you," Bramblefoot hissed, dropping flat across the thwart. He pressed the heavy ox-hide ledger beneath his belly to shield the remaining parchment from the light, his whiskers grinding into the grit of the bilge.

The circle of lantern light skimmed the churning wake behind them, lingered on the broken stump of the timber ringbolt, and then swept away toward the town drainage arches where another watchman had sounded a brass horn. The skiff carried them past the jetty's shadow and out into the wider expanse of the Oakhaven Lower Tide Flats, where the roar of the weir died to a greasy lap of black estuary water against the salt grass.

Barnaby sat dripping on the forward bench, holding his notched pole across his knees and fingering the damp seal on the wool tariff page. "We're clear of Corin's boots, at least," he whispered, squinting ahead into the reeds. "Keep her off the bank, Captain. The tide's turning, and this ditch doesn't have two feet of draft once the flats drain."

Bramblefoot pushed himself up on bruised elbows, his trousers clinging like wet parchment to his shins. "I have navigated far worse shoals than a municipal mud-gutter," he began, reaching for the steering oar, only to be cut off by a sudden violent thrashing in the water alongside the gunwale.

A sleek, dark shape—a river-otter hunting along the submerged willow roots—had darted out from beneath a rotten piling directly into their trailing tow-line. Surprised by the floating hemp, the creature twisted and rolled in a frenzy of claws and slick brown fur, tightening the cord into a knot around its hindquarters. The sudden lateral drag jerked the skiff violently to port.

"Hold the cargo!" Pip yelped, tumbling over a spare oar. Jory threw his arms around the green-glass jar just as the gunwale dipped within an inch of the murky surface, while Bramblefoot made a desperate grab for the sliding ox-hide ledger, catching the cracked leather cover with his fingertips as the otter fought the rope in a spray of mud and marsh grass.