“The third creature came over the wall while they were still counting the dead from the first two.”
Orren let his hand fall still across the strings of his lute.
Old Tom Rusk stood beside the hearth of the Bent Lantern tavern, working a knot between his weathered, dark brown hands. Most nights he could turn a shipwreck into an excuse for another drink. Tonight he had chosen the worst Crawl Blackwater could remember.
“Three?” a young dockhand asked from near the door.
“Three confirmed,” Tom said. “People argued about a fourth for years. Three were enough to empty a street.”
The dockhand glanced toward the shutters. Orren wished Tom had waited until the man finished his ale.
Three days earlier, something had breached Ashgate, the fortified entrance on Blackwater’s landward side. Eleven people had died. Seven were still missing. Tonight the council was promising repairs, the Bellwatch guards were asking people to remain calm, and everyone in the tavern had found a reason to sit farther from the windows.
Orren had been trying to give them something else to think about. A bright harbor tune. A few jokes. Nothing that required anyone to imagine the other side of a locked door.
Then Tom had stood up.
“You promised me a story,” Maude said from behind the bar. “If you make those children cry, you’re the one sitting with them.”
The tavern keeper nodded toward two small figures sharing a bench with their mother. Water dripped from their coats into a pan Maude had pushed beneath their feet.
Tom looked at the children. For a moment Orren expected an argument. Instead the old sailor pulled a chair closer to the hearth and sat.
“Then I’ll tell it properly.”
Orren knew Tom well enough to hear the effort in that answer. He shifted the lute against his knee. Damp chestnut curls clung to his forehead, and his shirt sleeves were rolled above forearms that still ached from an afternoon unloading cargo. On a good night his music paid for supper. On a bad one, the docks did.
He played here five nights out of seven. He knew which shutter rattled, which floorboard complained beneath Maude’s left foot, how long the kettle hissed before she remembered it. Usually he could fit those sounds around a tune and make the Bent Lantern feel warmer than it was.
Tonight he kept losing the beat to the rain.
“The old Floodward Crawl,” Tom said. “Down where the water comes through your floor and the people uphill say it’s only a puddle. You’ve heard how it ended. Half of you know the song.”
“You told it last winter,” the dockhand said.
“And you talked through it last winter. Listen this time.”
Maude pointed her cloth at Tom. He sighed.
“Please.”
One of the children smiled. Orren put a quiet chord beneath it.
Tom glanced at him. “Lower.”
Orren found the lowest string and plucked it. The note traveled through the chair into his leg. At the same instant, thunder rolled over Brinehook, the harbor district crowded around the tavern.
Tom’s eyes flicked toward the shutters.
Orren played the note again. This time only a pipe in the wall answered with a faint metallic hum. He loosened his grip on the lute. Thunder arrived often enough in Blackwater to make a prophet out of anyone willing to keep guessing.
“The first one was seen on a roof,” Tom continued. “A woman looked up from closing her shop and found it crouched over the chimney. She dropped the shutter bar. It turned toward her.”
The mother on the bench drew her children closer.
“But she was already down,” Tom said. “Flat behind the counter. It crossed the roof above her, looking for something standing tall enough to see.”
The older child pushed his feet beneath the bench.
Orren remembered practicing the same movement under a kitchen table, years before his fingers were long enough to reach a lute’s strings. Belly down. Head low. Stay below the windows. Every child in Blackwater learned it.
“Why didn’t it look in?” the dockhand asked.
“Did you miss every drill as well?” Maude said.
“I’m asking for the children.”
“Their mother takes them to drills.”
Tom held up a hand before Maude could finish with him.
“Their sight’s poor,” he told the children. “Worse beneath them. That’s why we get down and stay down. It doesn’t make you invisible. It gives you a chance.”
He laid the cord across his knees.
“The woman kept still. The bellkeepers saw it move along the roofline and started the warning. The harbor called the ships in. Three fast peals. The district towers passed those same three along.”
Tom tapped three times on the chair arm. Orren supplied the gaps with his thumb against the lute.
“Then the Crawl alarm,” Tom said. “No gaps. Just ringing, until the people still outside had crawled wherever they could.”
The younger child looked toward his mother. She touched his knee.
“Like we practiced,” she said.
“Exactly,” Tom told him. “The first warning gets people off the piers and starts the shelters opening. The Crawl alarm puts you on the ground. You don’t run home because you like your own cellar better.”
Orren watched the young dockhand rub one thumb over his knuckles. Most of the patrons had heard this story before. Hearing it three days after Ashgate was different.
“There was a boy outside a cooper’s shop when the ringing started,” Tom said. “Too far from the shelter door. He crawled under an overturned cart. His mother had gone back inside for his little sister.”
Tom paused. Usually he used a pause to make the room beg for the next line. This one lasted only long enough for him to wet his lips.
“The second creature dropped into the street. Right beside him.”
Orren stopped playing.
“He could see one foot through the spokes. Had to keep his face against the stones to stop himself looking up. Rain was running under his collar. He wanted to sneeze.”
The younger child pressed a fist to his nose.
“Did he?”
“Not then.”
Tom leaned forward, and Orren saw the cord tighten between his hands.
“The thing walked around the cart. Slowly. There were people crawling along the gutter on the other side. Their hands made little splashes. The creature kept passing them.”
“The rain,” the older child said.
Tom nodded. “They don’t hear like we do. Little noises get lost in a storm. The boy could move a hand. Could pull his feet farther in. What he couldn’t do was jump up and shout for his mother.”
Water hissed against the tavern shutters. For once, Orren was grateful for the noise.
“A man across the street saw the foot beside the cart,” Tom said. “He thought the creature had found the boy. So he took a brazier from the shop doorway and threw it.”