Kade’s office smells of tar, paper, and the particular worry of men who love ledgers more than they love being wrong.

The salvage chest is oak. The key is on a string Kade pretends is ceremonial. He opens it because you have Pell’s look on your face, which is a look that has opened worse doors.

Inside: a seal-skin, whole, cool, not bloody, not a market pelt chopped for oil. Whisker-holes along a muzzle-shape. The kind of coat a story would call a door. The kind of coat a biologist would call a seal’s. In Salt-Turn you are allowed to hold both thoughts without your head falling off.

Kade says, “If I leave it on the Stack, someone worse takes it.” He is not a villain. His hands shake when he sets the key down, and that is a kind of weather too.

Pip mouths it’s a self.

You mouth it’s a promise.

Through the window, Wren’s extra nets make their green hill. The Promise-Post stands on the quay, old marks cut into it: closed days, small sets, a crude seal, a crude moon.