Tamsin Harrow had a way of knowing a machine as other people know a face. She could tell, by the slant of a rivet and the breath of oil through a seam, whether a hull wanted coaxing or coaxing would only wake new complaints. Morning in her shop began with the practical: the lathe humming awake like a placid insect, the grease tin clinking, and Piston the cat claiming the single clean patch of bench as if it were a throne.
She moved with the choreography of a person who had spent more hours in cramped bilges than in candlelit parlors. Her hands were knuckled with small scars and an ink-stain that refused to scrub free; she rotated a ratchet, pried a stubborn cam out with a prybar, and rapped the back of a reluctant governor with the flat of her palm until it sighed into line. The air smelled of brass-sweat and boiled tarragon tea—there was a food stall on Crooked Row that dared to steam culinary things in coil-warmed tins; Tamsin liked the tartness in the cup. That detail had nothing to do with her work and everything to do with how she liked the world: spicy and practical.
Rowan Keel arrived turning his hat in an embarrassed wind. He was nineteen and forever surprised by how heavy a spanner could be. He carried a crate of replacement seals like a carefully delivered promise.
"You let the cat sit on the lathe and call it a day?" he said, grinning instead of complaining.
Piston yawned and batted at one of Rowan's fingers, as if bargaining for a treat.
"He filed for ownership last week," Tamsin said without looking up. Her voice was a file on a violin string—precise, a little dry. She jammed a new seal into a clutch housing, palms staining black as though ink had an opinion about punctuality. "If you expect court you should at least bring proof."
They worked companionably, that peculiar affection that comes of many small tasks performed together. She showed him how to steady a spring while hammering a peen, how to feel the harmonic whine of a coil with his teeth pressed to a metal post (only joking; she would never actually recommend that). He learned to listen to the machine the way a musician learns to listen to an orchestra: patience first, impatience last.
The shop itself was a collage of things with no single span of purpose: a battered gyrostabilizer leaned against a shelf of catalogued springs, a pair of handlebars with an electric eye hung over a hat rack, and a faded poster announced the annual Sky-Float—a local celebration where children launched little puff-balloons painted with faces. It was important to Tamsin that the world had room for frivolity; she tuned governors so people could whistle on deck, not so they would have to lose song.
A knocking at the door shifted the rhythm. The sound was polite but determined. Tamsin wiped her hands and moved to open, expecting a messenger or perhaps a confused streetvendor who'd wandered off the market route. She found Captain Elias Voss on the threshold, his coat still salted with last night's spray and his eyes as warm as the steadied hum of a well-tuned engine.
"Harrow," he said, stepping in as if the room were part of his ship's plan. "I've got something for you."
He did not place a crate on the bench. He put a card: a hand-stamped seal that meant more than ink. Tamsin read the name on the letterhead and felt, somewhere under the grease on her knuckles, a quickness that was curiosity rather than joy.