The Heron Figurehead

Lashed inside the wreck's cargo hold and wrapped in heavy canvas is a carved wooden figurehead: a heron-headed woman with an open beak and a brass tube fitted down her throat. A shipyard mark is branded beneath one wing. Looking closely at the grain, you see she was cleanly sawn off her ship rather than torn loose in a wreck.

That night, the cargo hold reeks of old pitch and brine. Your deckhands refuse to sling their hammocks near the carving—every sailor knows a figurehead sawn off a living ship carries a dark curse. Still, whoever wrapped her in heavy canvas took great care, and the folds feel stiff with something hidden inside. You have time to inspect one detail before the watch changes.

The shipyard foreman recognizes the carving before you even finish unwrapping the canvas. "The Excise sawed her off the Grey Heron nineteen years back to settle a tax debt. The ship still flies under the old captain's daughter, and she hasn't held her bow steady in a gale since." Nearby, an antiquities dealer by the gate spots the carving and starts counting silver into his palm.

You spot the Grey Heron pitching wildly in a howling gale, a bare timber stump where her figurehead ought to be. Worse, an Excise revenue cutter is closing on her windward beam flying a seizure flag—coming to collect on the exact same nineteen-year-old debt. When the Heron's captain spots the carving lashed on your deck, she nearly lets go of her helm wheel.

The dealer buys maritime curiosities for noble houses that like to hang old ship carvings on their walls. "I'll pay you a fair price right here and crate her myself. Or, if you deliver her to a noble estate in the next region, I'll pay carriage on top. Rich collectors love meeting the captain who salvaged a piece—it makes a better story over dinner." Not once does he ask which ship she belonged to.

In the sheltered lee of a sky-crag, the freighter's crew bolt the heron figurehead back onto her bow. When the Grey Heron swings out into the gale again, she holds her nose dead into the wind, steady as an anvil. Her captain wipes her eyes on her sleeve. "The tube in her throat was a bow cannon. When they sawed her off, we cast a twin barrel from the same mold. Take it with my blessing—or take our old masthead vane and a purse of silver."

The estate steward has the crate pried open inside a grand hall hung with forty other ship figureheads: roaring lions, painted maidens, a sea-king gripping a snapped trident. Beneath each carving gleams a brass plaque engraved with a vessel's name, a date, and—under several of them—the words "Seized for Debt." He counts out the silver written on the shipping label and waits for you to leave.