Where the Road Comes Down

This is the one part of the country built to be read by strangers. The freight is counted on open tables. The books lie beside the benches where the witnesses sit. Before a clerk closes a written line, a witness says it aloud — the ship's name, the class of cargo, the warmth owed and paid, the pair assigned to each guest — because nothing here is held to be true until it has passed through both a voice and a page.

The skytraders call it a harbour. We call it the line-water mouth: the place where a free road becomes a witnessed one. The moorings are basalt and ice-cut socket and imported bronze; the ledgers are bound in treated hide and faced with cold-glass, and the paper the traders bring is kept only for tallies that will not need to last, because the damp ruins it in a season.

One rule stands above the rest, and a guest meets it before their ship is fully tied: no guest moves unwitnessed. It is not suspicion. It is the same care we give one another — under the roof, a person whose whereabouts no one can vouch for is a danger first to themselves. Keep to your pair, and the whole country opens past the dock.