Confiscation of Assets

Where could forty ravenous hunters hide when the entire northern causeway blazed with the light of three wailing civic sirens?

Miltrow dropped flat onto the salt-crusted spruce planks of the northern drying gantry, her nostrils filling with the familiar tang of gutted pike and boiling resin. Behind her, forty Reed-Slingers crouched low beneath the fish racks, their stomachs growling louder than the distant bubbling of the great tar pit. They had run through three alleys to shake Gable's searchlights after bursting through the soft-block pen. Now their tongues felt thick as cured hide, and their flint knives hung useless at their belts.

Ahead, three wicker skiffs drifted at the edge of the landing platform, laden with the evening haul of armored lake-pike. The fish were fat, slick with black grease, and utterly unreachable.

A three-foot band of humming scarlet light ran along the entire edge of the pier, hovering an inch above the water like a solid glass ribbon.

"Citizens of Sub-District Seven," Administrator Gable's voice boomed from the center of the boat basin.

The twelve-foot apparition stood atop the surface of the pitch-slick lake, his glowing blue heels leaving ripples of yellow spark-dust that hissed against the cold muck. His crisp municipal tunic showed no trace of the sulfur soot Brandcombe had dumped over his shoulder joints ten minutes earlier, though his left collar badge still spun in uneven, frantic circles.

"In response to the unauthorized evacuation of Educational Module Four, your regional privilege tier has undergone mandatory downward recalibration," Gable announced. He raised a colossal, translucent hand. "Effective immediately, all aquatic harvest activities are suspended pending Settlement Flotation Compliance."

Miltrow ground her molars together. She gripped a five-foot ash pike-pole and leaned toward the planks. "We have pulled gar from this channel since my great-grandmother had baby teeth, spirit. Stand aside before I drop a boiling pitch-kettle on your skull."

"Hostile rhetoric logged as Non-Cooperative Dialogue," Gable replied serenely, unbothered by the threat. "Tribal personnel attempting uncertified pier egress lack Grade-A buoyant torso harnesses. Current drown-risk ratio: eighty-four percent. To prevent regrettable municipal fatalities, all food reserves are impounded."

A second beam of red light shot from Gable's chest projector, striking the bronze-capped cedar kiosk at the center of the pier. With a sharp snap, the scarlet grids across the drying platforms intensified, reinforcing the seal around the sixty racks of cured pike and locking down the remaining salt barrels.

"My dried fish," hissed a hunter behind Miltrow.

"Quiet," Miltrow snapped without turning her head.

She watched the sweep of the projector. Gable's chest dial clicked every four seconds, shifting his scanning cone forty-five degrees to the west before swinging back toward the main channel. The sulfur smoke in his collar had done something to his peripheral tracker; every third rotation, the blue beam stuttered against the salt fog, leaving an eight-foot gap in the scarlet fence near the lower mooring post.

"Harlan," Miltrow whispered, pointing toward the third skiff. "The moment his light hits the crane tower, roll the wicker basket under the rope-chute. Do not touch the light. Grab the line and pull."

The hunter nodded.

Miltrow counted the clicks of Gable's chest dial. One. Two. Three.

The beam shuddered, catching on a cloud of brine-vapor.

Miltrow bolted across the wet decking. She stayed below the waist-high fish racks, sliding her bare feet along the slick timber where the salt crust offered purchase. She hooked her arm around the mooring pylon, threw her body under the propped rope-chute, and snatched the braided hemp tether of the center skiff. With a clean heave of her shoulder, she yanked the vessel against the dock edge, grabbed two twenty-pound pike by their gills, and kicked a three-foot wicker hamper directly into Harlan's waiting hands.

As she lunged back, her shoulder clipped the corner of the kiosk's illuminated distribution tray. The contact did not shock her; instead, a solid slate of condensed green light slipped free from the kiosk's ledger slot, clattering across the timber near her knee.

She snatched the hard-light tablet, tucked the pike under her left arm, and threw herself over the salt barrels just as Gable's scanner swept back across the pier.

A red barrier slammed shut behind her heels with a deafening crack, shearing the trailing tail of her otter-skin pelt clean off.

"Individual harvest attempt terminated," Gable announced to the empty pier. "All dock assets confiscated under Emergency Directive Seventy-One. Next authorized nutrition distribution: post-examination cycle."

Miltrow did not wait to hear the rest. She sprinted down the lower gangway, her hunters trailing in a disciplined, silent line behind her, until they ducked beneath the heavy oak foundations of Gougerow's canoe shed.

Inside, the boatyard smelled of dried marsh-grass, scorched pitch, and defeat.

Gougerow was already there, rubbing tallow into a deep split on his palm while inspecting a stack of unpitched pine ribs. Thatchwick sat atop an overturned tar vat, tossing her yellow Complainant Token between her palms with sour amusement. Brandcombe leaned against the central mast-post, furiously scrubbing sulfur residue from his rattle of dried gar-bladders with a greasy rag.

Miltrow dropped the two heavy pike onto the workbench with a wet slap. The forty warriors outside partitioned the raw flesh instantly, chewing the oily meat in stony silence.

"Two fish," Gougerow muttered, looking at the carcasses. "For seventy people."

"The northern gates are walled in red," Miltrow said, wiping fish blood from her forearm. "Gable locked the skiffs behind light-fences. He claims nobody can touch the water without buoyant torso harnesses."

"Flotation vests," Thatchwick corrected with a dry chuckle. "He cited my cousin's crew for the same nonsense three moons ago. The machine thinks because the tar lake will swallow an elk, humans cannot float on reed rafts."

"Can we cut the barriers with sulfur smoke again?" Gougerow asked Brandcombe.

The shaman grimaced, holding up an empty birch-bark pouch. "I burned the last of the north-ridge sulfur in Gable's face on the gantry. Unless someone wants to crawl into the deep venting vents under the boiling sump to scrape the crusted rock, my spirits have no more breath."

"Then we starve in three days," Miltrow said flatly. "The drying racks are in cages. The troughs are dry because Thatchwick filed a complaint. And the boatyard is shut down because Gougerow's scrapers are locked in a box."

"Do not blame my grievance for the machine's madness," Thatchwick said, pointing her token at Miltrow. "The kiosk was supposed to give me priority extraction rights, not seal the whole neighborhood."

"You handed the demon a stick and acted surprised when it hit you," Miltrow said, stepping forward until her shadow covered the smaller woman.

"Enough," Gougerow growled, slamming his adze handle onto the bench. "Bickering will not put grease in the cauldrons or fish in the pots. Miltrow, what did you drop on the table?"

Miltrow looked down. She had forgotten the slab of glowing green light clutched in her right hand.

The object was as thick as a split pine plank, perfectly smooth, and cold as river ice. Luminous white glyphs ran across its surface in precise, orderly rows, shifting slightly whenever her fingers brushed the border.

"It fell from the kiosk when I pulled the skiff," Miltrow said.

Brandcombe leaned in, his eyes widening. He raised two fingers and touched the surface, tracing the glowing marks. "The ancestor's script. Look here—the top glyph matches the seal on Gable's collar."

"What does it say, shaman?" Miltrow demanded. "Can we burn it?"

"It is solid light, Miltrow, you cannot burn a sunbeam," Thatchwick scoffed, leaning over Brandcombe's shoulder. She studied the symbols, comparing them to the indentations on her complainant token. "That glyph there means Nutrition Allocation. And below it... that square with three horizontal bars... that was on the pier kiosk."

"Translate it," Gougerow said.

"It says the fishing gates will not unlock until Sub-District Seven achieves a passing score on the Annual Civic Cleanliness Examination," Thatchwick said slowly, her cynical sneer fading into disbelief. "Scheduled for tomorrow at noon in the central forum."

The shed went completely quiet, save for the rhythmic bubbling of the tar pit fifty feet below their floorboards.

Miltrow looked from the glowing tablet to the exhausted warriors resting in the shadows outside the shed. Her hunters could bring down a bull mammoth with bone-tipped spears in a snowstorm, but they could not spear a light-fence, and none of them knew what civic cleanliness meant to a twelve-foot ghost.

"We have Thatchwick's token," Miltrow said, her voice dropping into the quiet cadence she used before leading a charge across broken ice. "We have Gougerow's knowledge of the machine's joints, Brandcombe's understanding of its glyphs, and my spears to keep order."

She placed her calloused palm squarely atop the green directive slate.

"Tomorrow morning, we do not fight the ghost with flint," Miltrow said, looking each of the three rivals in the eye. "We take their exam."