The third bell had a bad throat. It rasped through the quay hall and made the paper jump under my fingers.
I stamped names for a living, which meant strangers handed me the smallest piece of themselves and trusted me to keep the shape intact. Paper before people. That was the rule at my desk, and the desk had been built by men who trusted boxes more than mouths.
The salt-brass stamp sat under my left palm. Warm. Good. Warm meant the seal would take, and the seal taking meant no one would ask a second time where my mother had slept, where my aunt had worked, or why my sister carried her own bag when she had hands for other things.
The quay hall had the stink of damp rope, tea leaves gone flat, and wool that had dried too near a stove. Boots dragged through it. The counter glass sweated. People shifted in the line as if they were waiting for the floor to give up and become a door.
Sava came in first, balancing her chipped enamel cup on the heel of her hand, which was as close to grace as she ever came. "If the ferry wants my tea, it can line up," she said. Her mouth never moved much when she spoke. That made the joke land harder. Yara followed her, coat collar up, one hand still on Nera's shoulder long enough to show she was the one choosing the pace, and Nera dragged a canvas bag patched more times than any coat I had owned.
I had filled the escort box on the back copy before they arrived. I did it because waiting for permission made people late, and late people got sorted into separate lines. The back copy was mine until I handed it over, which made the lie practical. Workable.
Sava set the cup down beside the blotter and looked at the line of forms. "This is the station that keeps refusing to write my name correctly," she said.
"It writes your name fine," I said. "It just dislikes your attitude."
"That is fair," she said. "I dislike its grammar."
Nera opened the bag enough to show a bundle of socks, a tin of needles, and a loaf wrapped in paper. "One of us packed for the end of a voyage," she said. "The rest of you packed for a kidnapping."
Yara touched the back of her own collar, straightened it, and let the fingers fall away. She never wasted movement when she could use a pause instead.
The woman from records was still at the far desk, filing away someone else's mistake with the patience of a saint with a knife. I kept my head down, gathered the forms, and slid the family permit under the blotter before anyone could ask who had started first. The bell coughed again. Then boots crossed the tiles behind me, sharp and even, and Talan Rook reached the edge of my desk before I turned.
His right wrist bent a little off true, healed bad from a break that had never apologized, and he held the brass stamp in a cloth square as if it weighed enough to bruise. "Passage papers," he said.
Simple. Straight. No waste.
Good. The clean answer in his voice made the paper feel thinner.