The Salted Channels

The Syndicate wasn't just dredging scrap or muscling independent salvagers out of lucrative tracts. Szabol’s crew was actively dropping high-grade military ordnance—pneumatic pressure mines and hydrostatic charges—directly into the commercial channels of the lower city. They were salting the waterways with explosive hazards, creating deliberate disasters that would justify the Directorate stepping in to seize total hydro-control over the entire independent canal network.

And the wreck he had dove this morning—the K-884-V—wasn't an accident either. It was the supply ship that brought the hardware down from the Upper Arsenal.

"You greedy, murderous bastards," Tivian muttered.

He slipped the heavy slate manifest into his haversack, pulled the second and third slates from the desk, and shoved them deep between the canvas folds. This was hard proof—proof that linked Szabol’s gang directly to state-sponsored sabotage.

A boot heel slammed down on the top rung of the iron ladder above.

"Feri?" a rough voice barked from the hatchway. "What's taking so long with that grate? Janos says he saw ripples under the stern."

Tivian froze, dropping his hand to the brass spanner at his hip.

A second set of boots followed immediately. Two men were coming down the ladder.

Tivian ducked behind the curved flank of the boiler just as the first man stepped onto the diamond plate. It was a broad-shouldered dock enforcer with a scarred neck, carrying a short iron belaying pin. Behind him came another thug with a notched diver’s knife tucked into his belt.

"Feri?" The scarred man stepped forward, his eyes scanning the empty workbench. Then his gaze dropped to the floor plates, catching the smear of fresh, wet mud trailing toward the coal bunker. "What the hell—"

Tivian struck.

He stepped out from behind the boiler, swinging the heavy brass spanner in a flat, vicious arc. The forged head caught the scarred man across the collarbone with a sickening crack. The man cried out, stumbling sideways into the hot steam pipes with a hiss of burning wool.

The second thug reacted instantly, lunging forward with his diver’s knife aimed at Tivian’s ribs.

Tivian twisted his torso, the blade slicing through the canvas of his haversack and scratching the tough leather of his vest. He didn't give the man space to recover. Tivian drove the heel of his boot into the thug’s knee, feeling the joint buckle, then snapped his left forearm across the man’s throat, slamming him hard against the boiler face.

The heat radiated through their clothes. The thug lashed out with his fists, striking Tivian’s already bruised cheekbone and reopening the cut from two days ago. Blood welled hot along Tivian’s jaw.

Tivian gritted his teeth, ignored the white flash of pain, and brought the spanner down on the man’s wrist. Bone gave way; the diver’s knife clattered to the deck.

Before the man could scream, Tivian gripped his collar and drove him face-first into the iron grate of the firebox. The thug went limp, collapsing in a heap over the coal pile.

Behind him, the scarred enforcer was scrambling back toward the ladder, clutching his broken shoulder and drawing a brass signal whistle from his coat pocket.

"Help! Intrud—"

Tivian lunged across the deck, caught the man by his leather belt, and hauled him off the ladder rungs. They crashed onto the iron floor plates in a tangle of limbs. The enforcer tried to bring the whistle to his lips, but Tivian drove a solid fist into his mouth, shattering teeth and knocking the brass whistle across the bilge.

The man gagged, thrashing wildly. Tivian pinned him by the throat with his forearm, his brass spanner raised high above the enforcer’s forehead.

"Make another sound," Tivian said, his voice dropping to a low, venomous rasp, "and I’ll vent eighty pounds of superheated tallow steam straight down your gullet."

The man went rigid, his eyes wide with terrified recognition. "You... you’re the Lánczy bastard. Szabol said you were drowned in the trench."

"Szabol was mistaken," Tivian said coldly. "Tell him the Lánczys don't drown easy."

Tivian drove the butt of the spanner into the side of the man’s temple, knocking him clean out.

Tivian stood up, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Blood dripped from his split cheekbone onto the front of his shirt. His ribs throbbed from the blunt fury of the brawl, but the bones were intact.

He looked at the boiler.

The coal in the lower box was already glowing a deep, angry orange from Feri’s earlier stoking. The pressure needle on the brass dial was trembling upward—twenty pounds, thirty pounds. The tallow plug in the bypass was heating fast.

He had less than three minutes before the pressure built to critical threshold.

Tivian grabbed his haversack, verified the Directorate slates were secure, and pulled a handful of dry waste rags from the engineer's bin. He tossed them directly into the open firebox door, kicking the grate half-shut to feed the draft.

Then he leaped for the iron ladder.

He scrambled up through the deckhouse hatch and burst onto the cutter’s main deck. The cool, damp night air hit his face like a slap of cold water.

Out on the pontoon, a fourth guard—alerted by the muffled thuds from below—was already running down the gangway with a heavy iron pike leveled.

"Who’s that on the deck? Stand down or I’ll run you through!"

Tivian didn't break stride. He vaulted the cutter’s starboard rail, hit the pontoon with a rolling dive, and drove his shoulder directly into the guard’s shins. The man let out a yelp as his legs were swept out from under him, his pike clattering uselessly against the timber decking.

Tivian scrambled to his feet, grabbed the fallen pike, and rammed the heavy ash shaft deep into the mooring cleat ring, jamming the slipway’s release lever so the gate couldn't be swung open from shore.

"Sabotage! Sabotage at the slip!" the watchmen on the high stone quay began shouting.

A brass alarm gong began to clang across the Red Channel compound, sharp and rhythmic, tearing through the quiet fog. Lanterns flared to life along the warehouse ramparts. Shouts echoed across the water as armed enforcers spilled out of the bunkhouses.

Behind Tivian, inside the belly of the Vércse, a deep, unnatural groan shuddered through the iron hull.

It started as a high-pitched scream—the sound of forty pounds of tallow vapor hitting the impenetrable carbon plug and backing violently into the intake manifold. The iron skin of the cutter vibrated so hard that ripples broke across the surface of the canal.

Tivian turned and dove off the edge of the pontoon into the dark, murky depths of the basin.

He kicked hard, swimming deep beneath the surface, heading toward the submerged outflow culvert that connected the drydock to the open canal network.

Ten seconds later, the boiler blew.

Even underwater, the shockwave hit Tivian like a physical blow to the spine. The concussive thud resonated through the water, followed instantly by the grinding, violent screech of tearing metal and splintering oak.

The hydraulic back-blast had done exactly what the math promised: the manifold exploded downward, blowing the entire keel assembly out of the cutter's bottom.

Tivian surfaced fifty yards away, behind the moss-grown granite abutment of the canal bridge, and wiped the oily water from his eyes.

Across the basin, the Vércse was finished.

A towering plume of white, tallow-scented vapor and black soot billowed into the night sky from the shattered deckhouse. The cutter’s bow was reared up at a grotesque angle, while the stern was already sinking rapidly into the churning mud of the slipway, dragging the pontoon down with it. Syndicate guards were running along the quay in complete pandemonium, shouting orders, throwing useless buckets of water, and trying desperately to keep the sinking wreck from crushing the adjacent pump-barges.

Szabol’s prized enforcement warship wouldn't be raiding the Lánczy slipway at dawn. It wouldn't be sailing anywhere ever again.

Tivian adjusted the heavy strap of his haversack, feeling the hard, rectangular weight of the Directorate manifest slates pressed against his ribs.

Szabol Kengyel and his Directorate masters had tried to bury the Lánczy family at forty fathoms. Now, Tivian held the papers that could tear the Grand Silt Directorate’s conspiracy wide open.

He sank back into the fog-shrouded water and stroked silently toward the blind cut where Oszkár and the Holló waited.