The Sounding Gate

Overview

The Sounding Gate is one of the best-known harbour entrances of The Tidelace Coasts: the marked mouth of a Gaugeward harbour, together with the sounding house, beacons, and Open Bench that decide who may pass it and when, under the harbour families who hold them. It was the first great site of The Gaugeward Leagues and the scene of their first great quarrel, in which Gnomes had to decide, over the bodies of drowned crews, whether their exactness still protected the coast or only flattered it.

It is still where that quarrel is carried on most loudly: the harbour where every reading is called aloud on the quay, and the one every other harbour is measured against when the old charge of vanity is made.

The Place

From the sea, the Gate is a narrow entrance between rock and shoal, with a current that sets hard across it at mid-tide and lies still at slack. A marked channel threads it. Its posts and beacons are the most watched marks on the coast, and the beacon tower on the headland above passes the Gate's state along the signal line. The shoal on the seaward side is called the Proud Bank along the whole coast. Its sand covers the ribs of the craft lost on the false marks of the Quarrel, and at the lowest spring tides the masts of one of them still show. Divers from the Human hamlets go down on the bank at slack water after the treasure that, by the hamlets' telling, went down with the richest of those craft, a sounding house's gauges of silver and the dowry of a harbour heir; some come up with a coin or a fitting, and every few years one does not come up.

Keepers and Users

• The sounding house and gauge house hold the readings of the approach and the instruments that make them.
• The receiving wards keep the harbour and its quays and decide what traffic the harbour can bear.
• The tide hall and the Open Bench are where the eldest harbour families settle quarrels over entry, and where a moved marker or a closure is made to stick by the families gathered to hear it.
• The beacon wardens and the pilot families keep the lights and ledgers and take the helm of every stranger's craft at the entrance.
• The wreck-watch is the harbour's own small company of hired spears, Human and Gnome, paid from the tide hall's chest to walk the headland in the storm season and to hunt down wreckers for the price on their heads.

The users are Gnome coastal craft working the Lacework, fishing boats, and boats from the nearest coastal Human hamlets, which wait on the declared window like anyone else. Rarely, a Windscar party that the harbour masters have let inward comes in from the outer receiving grounds under a pilot. The Gate stands behind that seaward world, and such an arrival is always watched, with the quay guard close at hand.

The Medieval Present

The Gate's year turns on its readings. In the calm months the sounding house sounds the approach again on a fixed round and after every storm, and each result goes to the Open Bench before any mark is touched. A moved marker is announced there, entered in the beacon ledger, and then moved. In the storm season, when the entrance may be shut for weeks, the tide hall sits more often and hears what the summer left unsettled. Each season closes with the readings compared aloud on the bench, and at the Festival of the Tides the harbour comes down to the quays for Maris of the Tides and reads out the names of everyone the Proud Bank has taken.

History

The Gate was already one of the most trusted approaches of the young League world after The Founding of the Gaugeward Leagues (c. 165,000-c. 146,000 BR). In The Sounding Gate Quarrel (c. 155,000-c. 149,000 BR), heavy traffic and wild weather set its receiving wards, who wanted broader windows and bolder sailings, against its sounding houses and signal keepers, who were accused in turn of keeping old readings as current and markers unmoved for their family's pride. The quarrel split the harbour families, sent crews onto the Proud Bank on marks one family swore by and another called false, and ended only when the strongest houses forced a peace. Exactness that could be trusted was split from vanity: soundings, marker changes, and declared risk now had to be called aloud and could be challenged.

Tensions

• The bench that waits. After a storm, the sounders know a channel mark is false, but the Open Bench cannot sit until the weather clears, and by the Gate's custom the mark may not move unannounced.
• A party piloted in. The harbour masters have let in a Windscar party from the outer coast, but the Gate's pilot families will not take its heavy craft through the entrance on the present readings, and the next sounding is weeks off.
• The gauge off the bank. A hamlet diver has come up from the Proud Bank with a silver gauge in a rotted case, and is asking a sounding house's ransom for it on the quay.
• A rival's challenge. A sounding family from another harbour has challenged one of the Gate's readings before the Open Bench, as coast custom allows.