The ship arrived at Tidewatch on a morning so still that the harbor's surface reflected the sky like polished iron.
It was not a ship from any known maritime tradition. The Pale Coast's fishing fleet used shallow-hulled vessels designed for coastal waters — broad, flat-bottomed boats that could navigate the tidal shallows and the reef channels that protected the coastline from deep-water storms. The kingdom's fledgling naval fleet, built under Admiral Serath's direction over the past decade, used heavier warships — triple-masted vessels with reinforced hulls and stonesteel-plated rams, designed for coastal defense rather than open-ocean travel.
The ship now anchored in Tidewatch's outer harbor was neither of these things.
