POV: Thorne Shellbay, Master Shipwright
Location: Driftspire and nearby fishing villages along the Fingers' coast
Thorne Shellbay had built ships since before Robert was king. His family had been shipwrights when the Targaryens still had their dragonrider kings on the Iron Throne—and his grandfather once claimed that their blood ran saltier than the sea itself.
Thorne didn't much care for lords. Most knew less about the water than a gull knew of fire. They liked their banners and broadswords. But the sea? The sea took men, boats, kings, and fools.
Still, he'd come when summoned.
Word had traveled fast: Lord Alester Longlight was building a fleet.
Not just repairing fishing boats. Building. That was enough to draw Thorne from his salt-yard on Shellstone Point.
He arrived at Driftspire three days before the full moon, along with a handful of other builders—some grey-bearded, some just out of their apprenticeships. Most scoffed at the invitation. A few, like Thorne, were simply curious.
What he found surprised him.
There was organization.
Timber sorted by type. Ropes hung by weight. Bronze fittings imported from Gulltown. Drydocks half-carved from the coastline with scaffolds already rising.
And Lord Alester—lean, quiet, ink-stained—wasn't issuing orders from a cushioned chair. He was measuring angles, discussing hull curvature, debating plank width.
"I want deeper keels," Alester said, spreading a charcoal drawing across the table. "Flat-bottomed skiffs won't hold against the Shivering Sea swells. These ships need to cut the waves, not ride them."
"You mean ocean-worthy ships?" asked Berald Hollowfin, an old builder from Mistmouth. "For what? Fishing? Smuggling?"
Alester's voice was calm. "Trade. Projection. Security."
"War?"
"Eventually."
Most of the men chuckled. But Thorne didn't.
He leaned over the sketch. "What's this curve in the underbelly?"
"Ballast distribution," Alester said. "To keep the center of mass low. It's how we'll outpace Sisterman corsairs."
Thorne scratched his beard. "You been talking to Braavosi, boy?"
"No. I've been listening to the sea."
Later that day, as Thorne walked through the tavern near Driftspire's new workers' camp, he heard the rumors.
Three men were hunched over tankards of brown ale, whispering.
"They say the new lord cracked open a vault in the cliffs. Found Rhoynish treasure, ancient maps… maybe even a spellbook."
"I heard there was a carving in black glass—showed ships sailing under stars that ain't in the sky no more."
"Seven save us, I heard a voice came from the walls when they lit the torches. Like the stone was speakin' in tongues."
Thorne said nothing. Rumors flowed like tidewater in dockside inns. Still, he noted the fear in their voices.
Someone else muttered behind him, "A spear made of star-metal, sharp as lies and cold as a mother's hate."
That part, Thorne knew, was new—and wrong. No one outside the dig crew had seen the spear. Which meant the story was growing on its own.
Like rot.
That night, Thorne sat with Alester under a canvas awning by the dockworks, drinking boiled wine to chase off the cold.
"You're stirring things," Thorne said. "Things beneath the waves, and beneath men's feet."
Alester stared out toward the black horizon, where the Shivering Sea swallowed all.
"I didn't start it," he said. "I just found the door."
"Now the wind's blowing strange," Thorne replied. "You ever seen what happens when you raise a harbor where none's meant to be?"
Alester finally looked at him. "We change the world. Or it changes us."
Thorne nodded. A fair enough answer. Dangerous. Honest.
He poured himself another cup, then pulled Alester's designs back onto the table.
"I'll build you one. Just one. She'll be lean, fast, hold twenty men and a hundred questions. But if I smell ghosts in her hull, I'm scuttling her myself."
Alester smiled. "Agreed."
Two weeks later, the first of the Longlight hulls began to take shape on the shores of the Fingers.
It was longer than most, with ribs like a predator and sails patterned like teeth. And all along the cliffs, men still whispered about the vault of shadows and starlight, and the boy-lord with a spear of night-blue fire.
Chapter Five preview title:
Of Fire and Favors (POV: Elyra Longlight)
At a feast hosted by Bronz Yohn at Runestone, Elyra Longlight navigates the hostile undercurrent among the Vale nobility. Alester courts alliances—and perhaps a bride—while whispers of ancient discoveries and Sisterman attention follow close behind.