The Wax Widow

The dockside toll clerk pulls a confiscated wax seal from his drawer and shows it off like a trophy. "Cut cleaner than Lord Averil's own die—that's the only reason we spotted it." Outside on a bollard, the merchant captain who was fined for using it mutters sourly: "Try the supply shop on the pier. Ask for red sealing wax, and tell her from me that her seal got me past four toll chains before this one."

In the back room, a sixty-year-old woman in spectacles and an engraver's apron is cutting a brass stamp under a lamp. She doesn't look up. "I'm Dorotea Lisle. Sit down. Lord Averil's bounty poster asks for my press and my hands—did you read that part? Meanwhile, his own chief toll-steward, Seward Rusk, buys forty forged seals a month from me and resells them to captains at five times the price. Now that the lord found out about the fakes, Rusk wants me dead before I can name him."

Lord Averil's guards smash into the supply shop, finding only racks of candles and an empty back room with an open water-gate. While the sergeant curses and kicks a stool across the floor, you spot a small skiff rowing hard toward a flat-roofed barge moored beneath the chain pier—and a hired bounty cutter moving in to intercept her.

The Widow's barge is moored in the shadows beneath the massive toll-chain pier. The Widow stands on its roof with a boat hook as an unmarked cutter—the Paid Hand—bears down on her with flaming torches at the bow. Whoever sent that cutter wants the barge, the press, and the Widow burned to ash.

The unmarked cutter astern—the Paid Hand—is closing fast with a lit fire-pot smoking at her bow. From your quarterdeck, the Widow watches her approach with mild interest. "That's Steward Rusk's ship. He can't afford to let me testify before Lord Averil, so he's paid them to sink us both."

Inside the barge stands a child-high brass screw press surrounded by trays of engraved dies—every toll seal in the Marchholds. Wiping soot from her spectacles, the Widow lays out your options: "Lord Averil will pay the bounty and chop off my hands. The Carriers' Guild will pay even better to hire me with both hands intact so they can dodge his tolls. Or I can pay you myself in forged seals and silver, and you tell the world this barge sank."

Lord Averil holds court in a great hall hung with captured flags. A wooden chopping block and a bright hand-axe sit ready on the center table. Beside the lord stands his chief toll-steward, Seward Rusk, sweating into his velvet collar. "The Wax Widow at last," Lord Averil says. "And her press too, I trust? The full bounty requires both."

Word travels fast along the toll line. At the next checkpoint, the iron chain is winched tight across the pass and an armed toll galley blocks the way. The sergeant from the dock hails you from her rail: "That barge in your tow carries stolen House dies! Heave to!" Beside you, the Widow calmly counts the galley's cannons.

True to her craft, the Widow offers to pay you in masterwork tools before she moves her barge at dawn: "I can engrave a Master Carrier's Seal for your manifest board that commands top rates at every Guild hall, or I can give you a complete forger's kit with blank papers, wax, and dies so you can stamp your own passes. Pick one—I have to vanish before sunrise."

The Guild master ushers you into a windowless back room and stares at the brass press like a starving man at a feast. "Marchhold tolls bleed our merchants dry every season. Having the Wax Widow cutting seals on our private payroll is worth far more than Lord Averil's bounty." Sitting down uninvited, the Widow calmly begins dictating her salary.