The Man with Clean Warrants

A fresh grave sits on the windward side of the haven, and the widow Corra Dray still keeps the document that put her husband in it. She spreads the warrant across her table: heavy official parchment, neat calligraphy, a genuine court seal pressed in red wax, and the name of a quiet net-mender who never left this rock in his entire life. "Stroud showed this warrant to the guards, and they stood aside while he killed my husband. He collected the bounty at the next haven down the line—and then had the nerve to come back and tip the gravedigger."

At the next haven's payout office, the clerk remembers Captain Stroud well: polite, immaculate, and always in a hurry. He also remembers the warrant—because another one arrived by the exact same courier yesterday with the bounty fee already deposited in advance. He spins the new warrant around on the counter. It names your ship for smuggling, flying false colors, and murdering a crewman in a brawl—every word a lie, yet stamped with an official court seal. Just outside the harbor, a bounty hunter you've never met is already shortening sail to intercept you.

For two days nothing bites. On the third morning, two ships sail in from the east flying Stroud's blue pennant—a subcontracted bounty hunter and her armed escort. They carry a freshly stamped warrant for the fictional deserter you invented in a tavern four nights ago. The parchment is only three days old, and the wax seal is completely genuine: someone sitting on the Articles court is stamping murder warrants to order.

The captured captain, Dagny Holt, is sick of working for Stroud. "He pays by the head and asks no questions, so I didn't ask any either. The warrants arrive by courier, already sealed by a powerful friend of his in high places whose name I never learned." She sets her account book on your table. "Between jobs, Stroud anchors at a dismasted counting hulk with his flagship and an escort vessel. I can mark its location on your chart—or row out in a skiff and invite him to parley. He loves to talk."

The counting hulk is an old dismasted Guild tally ship chained to a sea-stack. Moored right beside her is Stroud's immaculate white flagship, the Just Reward, shadowed by an armed escort ship. Warm lamplight glows through the hulk's stern cabin windows where Stroud keeps his records, and their lookouts haven't spotted you yet.

Fifty years old, immaculately dressed, and smelling faintly of soap, Captain Emeric Stroud sets up a folding table and two chairs on the neutral rock. "Captain, you have already cost me a subcontracted ship, so I take you quite seriously. I can burn the warrant bearing your name right here and pay you handsomely to sail north. Or I can give you a far bigger prize than myself: the name of the Articles court judge who stamps my warrants. I merely collect the heads—she is the one who chooses who dies."

Sitting in your brig with his coat neatly folded beside him, Stroud adjusts his wrist irons. "Off to the Articles court, I presume? I should mention that a close friend of mine sits as a judge on that very bench—and prisoners have been known to slip out of haven jails." He lets the threat hang in the air. "Of course, if you took me back to the widow Corra Dray's haven, they would hang me tonight. It all depends on whether you want the official bounty fee, Captain, or actual justice."

The stern cabin is a bureaucrat's paradise: neatly ruled account books, a copying press, and a column of forty names with a bounty fee recorded beside each. Nine of the names are marked with a small cross—innocent victims who were never posted on any bounty board. Tucked behind the press sits a genuine Articles court seal block with its judge's name carved into the handle. Through the stern window, you spot a skiff rowing over from the Just Reward: Stroud has seen your lantern.

Anchored off the court rock beside an armed escort rests the Fair Hearing, where Judge Odile Farrant is strolling her quarterdeck. All you hold is a slip of paper written by a fugitive bounty hunter, without Stroud himself to testify. If you challenge a sitting Articles judge to trial by combat, you had better win—because the court will believe whichever captain sails back to the pier.

Three senior captains sit in judgment beneath the Articles banner. As Stroud bows to the bench, the stern woman occupying the Third Chair carefully avoids looking at him. The presiding judge reads the warrant aloud: "Delivered alive as posted. The court pays your bounty and will try the prisoner in due course." Stroud catches your eye with a faint smirk—knowing 'due course' leaves plenty of time for an accomplice to unlock his cell.

The entire haven gathers silently on the pier as you bring Stroud ashore. Standing at the front with the false warrant in her hand, the widow Corra Dray watches Stroud stare down at his boots. The guard captain speaks to you in a low voice: "We can hang him ourselves tonight beside her husband's grave. Or you can hold him aboard your ship under guard for three days until an Articles judge arrives to make the execution legal—though Stroud's allies will surely hear and come to rescue him before then."