The Turnwater Quays

Overview

The Turnwater Quays are the busiest station of The Soundchain Roads, a cluster of quays, sheds, and declaration tables in the corridor's largest sound on the outer edge of The Tidelace Coasts. Here escorted parties of The Windscar Pacts are counted, their cargoes sorted and provisioned, and their onward way decided by Gnome station keepers and pilots, with an Answerward officer looking on. They were the first named place where Orc-Gnome trade became routine rather than a test of the harbour door.

Turnwater carries more than its share of the corridor: the heaviest convoys, the closest watching, and the memory of having been first the place where the corridor narrowed hardest, with kindreds coming down the stair in arms, and then the place where it learned to reopen. If The Answering Sound is where the coast was forced to answer, Turnwater is where it does so every day.

The Place

Most Windscar parties first see Turnwater from the head of the Gullstair, the corridor's busiest cliff descent, which ends at the station's beach yard. It is a long way down, cut steps and ramps on the open face of the sea-cliff, and every season it takes someone: a herd beast that panics on a ramp and carries its drover over the edge, a loaded mule on wet stone, a child. Crag eagles nest on the face and stoop on kids and lambs on the open ramps, and drovers carry slings down the stair for them. Escorts say the stair takes one, so walk second, and mark each death with a cut in the rock beside the step where it happened; the lowest flights are scored like a tally. The escorts' word runs down the stair to its foot, and the station keepers' takes over in the yard.

Keepers and Users

• The station keepers have held Turnwater's quays and stores for generations, and the station's answer is theirs to give.
• The sounding house and pilots keep the turning water and the inner lane readable and take every transferred cargo along it.
• Answerward officers of The Answerward Pilotage keep a heavier presence here than at any other station, weighing the reasons for a delay, rowing out to holds in the Patience, and vouching for what answer each party was given.
• Declaration clerks write the answers and keep the Turnwater Roll, the list of kinds of traffic reopened under the Reopening Accord, each with its burden, season, and the day it is looked at again.

The users are Orc escort captains and their parties: kindred delegations, traders, messengers, and above all the heavy convoys and driven herds that the lighter stations along the coast decline. Some kindreds keep camping grounds above the beach yard and return to them every season. The goods are the corridor's: hides, felt, wool, and stock coming down; fish, cordage, worked metal, lamp oil, and fine craft-work going back up. The station pays beast-hunters to keep the moorings clear, and a few of them do nothing else. Young Orcs hire on as stair-runners, carrying loads down the Gullstair for a share of the price and racing each other on the ramps for wagers, and the station posts a bounty on Patience thieves, which the runners collect more often than anyone.

The Medieval Present

Turnwater's year is the escorts' year. In the calm months, when the High Scars passes are open, parties come down the Gullstair on most days; word comes ahead from the cliff-tops, the party is met and counted at the foot of the stair, and the captain gives his word at the table. Most parties are received for transfer and their goods change hands on the quays without going further. Some are given a pilot and sent on along the inner lane. Some go into the Patience to be held, with a day named to look at it again. A few are sent to stations that can bear them.

History

Turnwater grew into the corridor's first routine site in The Tidelace Coastward Exchanges (c. 121,000-c. 112,000 BR), when staged arrival became habit and the Answerward Pilotage (c. 135,000-c. 129,000 BR), trimmed back by then, found its work tied to ordinary transfer. Here the Gaugeward Leagues became keepers of a dependable trade and the Windscar Pacts expected traders rather than desperate parties.

Tensions

• A renewal copied. One kind of heavy load closed in the closure years has never come back onto the Roll.
• Whose stair. A rockfall has broken a flight of the Gullstair, killing two drovers and a dozen beasts, and herds can no longer come down.
• An officer who stays. The Answerward officer at Turnwater has begun sitting at the declaration table every morning, suggesting which parties the sound can take before the station keepers have said what it can carry.
• The cave hoard. The station's crews have found one of the cliff-foot caves stacked with stolen hides and casks, marked by three different kindreds and a Gnome lighter family.
• Knives in the Patience. A party held for most of a season has lost half its hides to night thieves, and its escorts have killed a Gnome lighterman they caught on a moored craft after dark.