Last time, you arrived by morning barge at Greywater Crossing, where Brindle tried to sell you a “royal” spoon that was plainly stolen tavern flatware. You followed the trail to the Brined Lantern, met Petch over excellent chowder, and learned where to find Old Mother Fenn so Sera Duskhallow could finally deliver Aldric Fenn’s pipe and finish a promise cleanly.
Magistrate Corvis Hale then pressed a job on you: carry a strongbox and survey instruments across the flats to a distant camp, warning that the Low Tide Charter could not be trusted. With the evening window approaching, you also tracked down Ferryman Quill and learned his unsettling toll—passage bought with questions you would never be able to ask again. When the tide began to turn, the drowned bells rang eight times under water that was still too high, stunning the quay. You crossed anyway, and along the way spotted an uncharted stone arch in a distant bowl of mud, with a green-bronze glint that echoed a strange key on Petch’s ring. You delivered the shipment, took payment, and bedded down at the survey camp, ending the night under one proper, solitary bell—and the unanswered question of who rang the eighth at high tide.