Harbend smelled of rust and diesel and the faint, sweet rot of fish guts baking in the afternoon sun. Adrian stepped off the train into air so thick with humidity it clung to his skin like a second shirt. He had not been here in fifteen years, but the city had not changed in any way that mattered. The same cranes loomed over the same docks. The same gray warehouses lined the same potholed streets. The same men with the same hollow eyes loitered on the same corners, waiting for work that would never pay what it promised.
He carried a single duffel bag. Inside were clothes, cash, a knife, and a satellite phone he had purchased from a former colleague who asked no questions. The letter from Dorian was folded in the inside pocket of his jacket, close to his chest. He had memorized every word, but he kept it with him anyway, a talisman against the possibility that it might dissolve into the same unreality that had swallowed his brother.
The Broken Anchor sat at the end of a pier that had partially collapsed into the harbor twenty years ago and had never been repaired. The bar itself was a two-story structure of warped timber and corrugated iron, leaning slightly to port as if the whole building were a ship that had run aground and decided to stay. A faded sign creaked on rusted chains above the door, depicting an anchor cracked cleanly in half.
Adrian pushed through the door. The interior was dim and smoky, lit by bare bulbs that dangled from the ceiling on frayed cords. A dozen men sat at scattered tables. None of them looked up. In a place like the Broken Anchor, a newcomer was either a threat or a victim, and the regulars preferred to determine which before making eye contact.
The bartender was a woman in her fifties, her gray hair pulled back in a tight braid, her forearms corded with muscle and laced with faded tattoos. She was wiping glasses with a rag that looked dirtier than the glasses. When Adrian approached, she set down the glass and looked at him with an expression that conveyed nothing but patience.
"I'm looking for Jago," Adrian said.
The woman's expression did not change. "A lot of people look for a lot of things."
"I was told to ask for him here."
"Told by who?"
"Someone who lost a brother."
Something flickered in the woman's eyes. She set down the rag and studied him more carefully. Then she nodded toward a door at the back of the bar. "Through there. Stairs go down. He's in the cellar."
Adrian crossed the room. The door led to a narrow staircase that descended into a space that smelled of damp stone and old whiskey. The cellar was smaller than the bar above, occupied by a single table and four chairs. Three of the chairs were empty. In the fourth sat a man who looked like he had been sitting there for a very long time.
Jago was old, seventy at least, his face a map of wrinkles and scars. His left eye was clouded over with a milky film. His right eye was sharp and dark and missed nothing. He had a bottle of something amber on the table and two glasses, one of which was already poured.
"Sit down," Jago said. His voice was a rasp, the product of decades of cheap liquor and cheaper cigarettes. "You're Kane's brother. The soldier."
"The soldier, yes. How did you know?"
"The same way I know most things." Jago pushed the empty glass toward him. "I used to work for Triton. Not on the ships. I was shoreside. Recruitment, mostly. Finding men who wouldn't be missed and pointing them toward the docks."
Adrian did not sit. "You put my brother on that ship."
"I put a lot of brothers on a lot of ships." Jago poured himself a drink and drank it in one swallow. "I didn't know his name until later. After I got out. After I started trying to make amends for what I'd done. Not that amends are possible, in my line of work. Some stains don't wash out."
"You told me someone lost a brother. Who are you?"
Jago refilled his glass. "My name is Silas Jago. I had a brother once. His name was Emrik. He was a good man, better than me. He worked for Triton too, on one of their first ships, the Perdition. He thought he was doing honest work. When he found out what the ship really was, he tried to report it. They threw him into the processing grinder while it was still running." He paused. "That was sixteen years ago. I've been trying to burn Triton down ever since."
Adrian sat down. The chair creaked under his weight. "What do you know about the Misericordia?"
"I know it's still out there. I know it's one of the worst of them. The captain is a man named Harrow—Marcus Harrow. He was a naval officer once, Veridian Navy, dishonorably discharged for brutality toward his own crew. Triton hired him the same week he was court-martialed. He's been running their ships for fifteen years. He treats the men under him the way a farmer treats livestock. Worse, maybe. Livestock has value."
"Where is the ship now?"
Jago shook his head. "That's the question, isn't it? The Misericordia doesn't broadcast its position. Its AIS transponder is either turned off or broadcasting a false identity. Sometimes it's registered as a Veridian vessel, sometimes as an Archipelago freighter, sometimes as nothing at all. The only way to find it is to be on it."
Adrian studied the old man. In the dim light of the cellar, Jago's face looked like something carved from old wood, worn smooth in places and rough in others. His one good eye was steady, unblinking. He was either telling the truth or he was very good at lying, and in Adrian's experience, the two were not mutually exclusive.
"You said you recruited men for Triton," Adrian said. "How does it work?"
Jago leaned back in his chair. "You're not seriously considering this."
"How does it work?"
A long pause. Then Jago sighed and poured himself another drink. "There are recruitment offices all over Harbend. They don't advertise. You have to know where to look. They hire men from the bottom of the barrel—drifters, migrants, men with no families and no futures. Men who won't be missed. They offer contracts: three years, good pay, a chance to send money home. The contracts are lies, of course. Once you're on the ship, the contract doesn't matter. Nothing matters except the captain's word."
"And if I wanted to sign one of these contracts?"
"You'd go to a place called the Kelpie's Rest, near the south docks. You'd ask for a man named Orson. You'd tell him you're looking for work at sea. He'd give you a form to fill out. He wouldn't ask many questions. The point is that you don't have questions. The point is that you're desperate enough to accept whatever they offer."
Jago paused, his eye narrowing. "But you're not desperate, are you, Kane? You're something else. Something more dangerous."
"I'm a man looking for his brother."
"No." Jago shook his head slowly. "You're a man looking for a fight. I've seen enough of them to know the type. You've got the look of someone who's been in war zones. Someone who knows how to kill. Triton's recruiters will spot that a mile away. They don't want soldiers. They want victims."
Adrian said nothing. Jago studied him for another long moment, then reached into his coat and withdrew a folded piece of paper. He slid it across the table.
"This is a list of names," Jago said. "Men who have escaped Triton's ships over the past five years. Most of them are dead now—Triton has a long reach. But a few are still alive, hiding in places where the company's money can't find them. If you want to understand what you're walking into, talk to them first."
Adrian took the paper but did not open it. "Why are you helping me?"
"Because I'm old and I'm dying and I'd like to do one thing right before I go." Jago's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "And because I read about the Ashby ruling. I know what it means. The courts have given Triton a license to do whatever they want. There's no legal solution left. That means the only solution is something else."
He finished his drink and stood up, his joints cracking like dry twigs. "I've said everything I can say. The rest is up to you. If you go through with this, if you actually manage to get on that ship, you should know one thing: the Misericordia is not just a prison. It's a system. A machine designed to break men down into their smallest parts. Most of the people on board have been there for years. They've forgotten what land looks like. They've forgotten their own names. If you want to survive, you'll need to become something less than human. And if you want to save your brother, you'll need to become something more."
He walked toward the stairs, then paused at the bottom step. "One more thing. The person who sent you that message—the one who told you to ask for me—I don't know who they are. But they know things they shouldn't know. Be careful who you trust. In this business, friends and enemies wear the same face."
Then he was gone, his footsteps creaking up the stairs and fading into the noise of the bar above. Adrian sat alone in the cellar, the list of names unopened on the table before him.
He unfolded the paper. There were twelve names. Most had been crossed out in red ink, with dates scrawled beside them—dates of death, he assumed. Three names remained untouched. Beside each was a location.
The first name was Mikal Venn, last known to be living in a fishing village called Saltford, three hours north of Harbend by bus. Beside his name, Jago had written: Escaped Perdition, 2018. Lost three fingers to frostbite. Knows the processing decks better than anyone alive.
Adrian memorized the names and the locations. Then he folded the paper, placed it beside his brother's letter, and stood up.
Outside, the sun was setting over the harbor, painting the water in shades of orange and red. The cranes stood like silent sentinels against the dying light. Adrian walked through the dock district toward the address Jago had given him for the Kelpie's Rest, not to go inside—not yet—but to see it. To understand the shape of the enemy's territory before he set foot on it.
The Kelpie's Rest was a squat concrete building wedged between a fish processing plant and a warehouse that had been abandoned long enough for vines to claim its walls. A single light burned above the door. A man in a dark jacket stood outside, smoking a cigarette. He watched Adrian pass with the flat, incurious gaze of someone who had seen everything and cared about none of it.
Adrian kept walking. He had what he needed for now. Tomorrow he would go to Saltford and find Mikal Venn. Tomorrow he would begin to understand what the Misericordia really was.
Tonight, he would find a room and sleep, if sleep would come. It rarely did. The nightmares had been his companions for too long to be easily dismissed. But tonight, he suspected, they would be joined by new ones: the image of a ship that appeared on no tracker, sailing through an ocean that belonged to no nation, carrying a cargo of men who had been erased from the world.
And somewhere in the dark hold of that ship, Dorian was still alive. Or had been. Or might be.
Adrian walked until the dock district gave way to quieter streets, and he found a boarding house that asked no questions and took cash. The room was small, the bed hard, the window overlooking a streetlamp that flickered in the damp air. He lay down fully clothed and stared at the ceiling, the letter from Dorian pressed against his ribs.
In his mind, he was already at sea. Already descending into the hold. Already learning the terrible arithmetic of survival in a place where life had no value and law had no reach.
The lamp outside flickered once more and went out, plunging the room into darkness. Adrian closed his eyes and waited for morning.
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