Stormwatch

A crew rows out to Stormwatch Tower to lift a deed and a strike log before the Tower Syndicate can, sharing the boat with a Magistracy inspector, a Lamplighter with a long crate, and a Ferrymen’s post-warden. An hour after the boat leaves, the first true break in the Lid in ninety years opens over the rock: lightning every minute, the sea over the jetty, and the unsalted dead rising out of the flooding cellars. Each of the three strangers has an agenda that collides with the job, and the only way off the rock is the quarter-hour of still water when the eye passes over before dawn.