The fire crackled low in the old crab shack. The room smelled of brine, salt-rot, and a hint of smoke from the damp logs they were burning. The door was barred. The windows shuttered. Brune liked it that way.
Kreeg sat on an overturned cask, arms crossed, one foot tapping like a war drum. Orla leaned against the far wall, sharpening a dull-edged dagger without looking at it. Bale paced near the doorway, still favoring the arm that took a nick in the skirmish.
Salt wasn't there. Brune had made sure of that.
"He didn't just fight," Kreeg said finally, his voice low and flat. "He… flowed. Like a damned eel with an axe."
Bale scoffed. "He's a rat that got lucky."
"No," Orla said, not looking up. "Three men came at him. They didn't walk away. That's not luck."
Brune said nothing. He sipped his grog, the metal cup warm in his hand. His back ached. Everything did, these days.
He let the silence sit a little longer than was comfortable.
"Boy's not green," he said finally. "But he shouldn't be that good. Not yet."
"You think he's hiding training?" Orla asked.
Brune shook his head. "If he trained, it was in another life. I've seen swordmen with ten years under their belts move worse than he did. He didn't just react. He was right. Always in the place that wasn't death."
Bale stopped pacing. "That's not a talent. That's not normal."
"Neither is the sea," Kreeg muttered. "But here we are."
Brune let out a slow breath. The flame crackled. Rain ticked against the shack's roof.
"He reminds me of a lad I knew once," Brune said. "Back when I was quarterdeck on the Copper Moon. Dornish skirmisher. Skinny, soft-faced. First boarding, I figured he'd piss himself or jump ship."
"What happened?" Orla asked.
Brune looked into the fire.
"He didn't flinch. Not once. Cut a Tyroshi merc across the eyes before I'd even drawn steel. That lad didn't know what fear felt like. Only way to scare him was to take his blade away."
"Where is he now?" Bale asked.
Brune smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "In pieces. Being good at killing doesn't mean you're good at surviving."
Orla sheathed the knife. "Salt's different, though."
Brune nodded. "Yeah. He watches. Doesn't posture. Doesn't talk unless he has to. But the way he moved…"
"I think the sea takes what it wants. Same as war. Every once in a while, it gives something back."
Kreeg grunted. "Aye. And when it does, it's never clean."
He leaned forward, hands like slabs. "You lot know I was a sledge-hauler up near Norvos? Broke chains for a living. Worked quarry dogs and war oxen. Thought I'd die under rock or get buried in one. Then a river pirate gutted my foreman, and I ended up crewing a skiff with no name." He shook his head. "This boy? I've seen killers. He's something else."
Orla clicked his tongue once. "I spent four years bleeding for Lys in the eastern marches. Fought Volantene officers who could turn a line with one command. Salt didn't act like a brute. He moved like a drilled man. Only… cleaner. No fear. No pride, either. Just… purpose."
Bale scoffed. "I was a runner for smugglers off Massey's Hook. We dealt in gold, gems, and goats stuffed with dragonglass. You see plenty of boys who *think* they're special. Salt doesn't think anything. He just *is.* That's what's eerie."
Brune tilted his head slightly. That was the most Bale had said without a sneer in weeks.
He swirled the last of his grog and looked at the flame again.
"He doesn't know what he's becoming," Brune murmured. "That's the difference."
The fire snapped, loud in the quiet.
Kreeg muttered, "Maybe it's not him we need to be worried about."
Orla didn't answer, but Brune saw the flick of his eyes. Toward the door. Toward where Salt wasn't, but where his shadow might be.
Brune stood.
"We watch him. We use him. And if the sea keeps whispering to him…"
He drained the last of his grog and tossed the cup into the corner.
"…then we make sure he's whispering back the right things."
The silence didn't hold long.
Kreeg grunted. "So what's in the damned thing?"
Brune didn't answer right away. He reached into the canvas sack by his feet and pulled out the leather-bound ledger — the one Salt had recovered, the one men had already died for.
It looked harmless. Cracked brown hide. Unremarkable string-tie. Just another trader's book.
But it wasn't.
"Salt said it's filled with glyphs," Brune muttered. "Old Valyrian mix. Ship names. Port dates. Some real, some forged. Coded phrases."
"Ledger that thick doesn't sail in a crate of silver unless someone wants it buried," Orla said. He stood now, taking a few steps toward the table. "This isn't just numbers. It's a language."
"Or a list," Kreeg said. "Of men who want their secrets kept quiet."
Bale frowned. "Braavosi names?"
Brune didn't say yes. Didn't have to.
The fire crackled louder for a moment.
"We can't read it," Kreeg added, eyeing the book like it might bite.
"No," Brune said. "But Vanna might."
Bale groaned. "She'll want coin."
"She'll want answers," Orla said. "She hates being lied to more than she likes being paid."
Brune nodded. "She'll keep it quiet."
"For a while," Kreeg added. "But if what's in there's worth slaver gold and Myrish blades, she won't be the only one sniffing soon."
They all looked at the book.
Brune tapped his fingers once, twice, then stilled.
"That Myrman that slipped the net? He'll be back."
"He'll bring more," Orla said.
"Aye," Brune muttered. "So we read fast. We read quiet. And we don't sleep too deep."
No one disagreed.
---
The others drifted out one by one, leaving Brune alone with the fire and the ledger.
The flames cast long shadows across the crab shack walls, licking at the edges of nets and old sailcloth. Brune didn't move for a long time. Just sat there, heavy in the bones, staring at the book like it might shift on its own.
He'd seen a lot in his time. Raids gone sideways. Captains who'd tried to cut deals with Volantene trade princes and ended up nailed to their own keels. Once, in his younger years, he'd been part of a job in Pentos—stealing a ledger from a merchant house that thought it could squeeze the wrong Braavosi. That book had been half the size of this one. It still got eight men killed and three more disappeared without trace. And that merchant? Found face-down in a soup pot.
Braavos didn't forgive.
Braavos remembered.
And here he was again, staring down another book that could end them.
He picked it up, thumbing the corner with a callused thumb. The leather was soft, worn in a way that suggested it had been touched more than read.
Salt had handed it to him with no questions, just that quiet look he always wore. No fear. Just calm.
Brune didn't like it.
No boy should be that calm after a fight like that.
He poured himself one last sip of grog from the bottom of the bottle, then let it sit untouched on the table.
The sea had given him something strange in Salt. A blade he didn't quite know how to wield. And now a book that might cut deeper than any knife on the ship.
He leaned back, eyes still on the fire.
"If this is how it starts," he muttered, "then we'd better be sharp when it ends."
---
Kreeg had said later, after the blood was washed from the rocks, that Salt never blinked.
"He wasn't wide-eyed like the young ones," he'd muttered while wiping down his axe. "He was measuring. Watching. Like he was reading the whole fight before it started."
Orla had stayed quiet until they were back at the Grubpot, but when Bale pressed, he only said, "He wasn't guessing. That boy knew where to stand like he could hear the blade coming before it moved."
Bale, for once, hadn't had much to say. Just shrugged and mumbled, "It was like watching a story someone else wrote."
No one said it out loud, but it sat between them all night: that if Salt hadn't been there, maybe one of them wouldn't be.
---
On the far side of Tide's Rest, under a slanted tin roof lit by a single red lantern, Vanna Gorse sat hunched over her ledger.
She wore half-moon spectacles, the kind she claimed were too delicate for pirates and too cheap for lords. Ink smudged her fingers, and she'd already worked through three cups of blackleaf tea without noticing the bitter taste.
Stacks of parchment surrounded her — manifests, port ledgers, fake seals waiting to be copied. She was halfway through deciphering a set of Tyroshi shipping documents when the knock came.
One sharp rap, two short ones.
She didn't look up. "Tell Brune I'm not buying, selling, or fixing anyone's mess. Not tonight."
The door creaked anyway. A boy peeked in, wind-bitten and nervous.
"Cap'n said it's important. Quiet stuff. Wants you come before sunup."
Vanna sighed.
She capped her ink pot, wiped her glasses, and muttered to herself, "Took him long enough."