The writes first
Dawn on the harbor, and the Kestrel rides at her moorings like she’s impatient to be gone: sails half-furled, deck already alive with hands hauling lines. She’s beautiful and she’s trouble, and every dockside rumor about her captain came with a price on his head. The salt wind tastes like leaving.
A broad-shouldered woman in a weathered coat plants herself in your path, a ledger open in one hand, a stub of pencil in the other. The bosun. She looks you over the way you’d size up rope for a storm.
“So you’re the one asking after a berth.” She spits over the rail, unimpressed and not yet decided. “Captain doesn’t take on strays without a reason, and the reasons that follow him tend to have teeth. We sail in an hour, wanted in more ports than I’ve got fingers, chasing a map that keeps me up nights with its humming.”
She holds out the ledger. “Sign, and the sea’s your family and your problem both. Don’t, and walk back to whatever you’re running from.” A hard grin. “But first I’ll hear it, what’s your name, and what’ve you got that’s worth a place on my deck?”
