Chapter 17: Veyra Mourne Comes Ashore

The harbormaster's building had been empty since the second week.

Not damaged — that was the thing that made it useful and the thing that made Aldric suspicious of its availability. The fire had taken the southern warehouse row and collapsed the customs inspection shed into rubble that still hadn't been fully cleared, but the harbormaster's building itself stood largely intact, its western wall scorched to chest height and its roof missing three spans of timber that had since been replaced with salvaged planking that didn't quite match. Someone had cleared it. Someone had replaced the planking. Aldric had asked Pia about the work order and she'd found nothing in the maintenance log, which meant either the log was wrong or the work had been done under a different budget line or it hadn't been done by anyone who reported to him.

He'd noted it and moved on, because there were forty other problems that morning and the building was empty and the roof was fixed and that was net positive regardless of who'd arranged it.