Blacktooth Bay

Blacktooth Bay (Blachtandh) is the principal settlement of The Iron Coves, named for the jagged black basalt teeth that rise from the water at the bay's entrance and make approach lethal for anyone who does not know the one safe channel through them.

Geography

Inside the teeth the bay is deep and well sheltered, ringed on three sides by steep volcanic hillsides that drop almost straight to the water. The settlement clings to every flat surface on those slopes, buildings stacked wherever the ground allows and joined by steep staircases and narrow paths rather than anything like streets. The volcanic rock gives everything its look: dark gray-black stone, buildings made of the same material as the hill they sit on. Roughly half the Coves' population is here at any given time; few live here permanently.

No walls

The teeth at the entrance, the hillsides, and the reefs around the whole archipelago are the wall. A naval force attempting the bay would have to thread the entrance without local knowledge, under fire, which is suicidal; a land approach means crossing the island's interior through dense and dangerous growth the locals know and an invader does not.

The docks

The docks are the working heart of the settlement and the reason it exists. Rough timber on tarred piles, repaired and extended by whoever needed the repair, with no plan behind any of it, and vessels moored three and four deep when the anchorage is busy. Nothing here is built to last and everything is built again.

There is no machinery worth the name. A few clockwork cranes stand along the water, salvaged off quays in cities that could afford them, and most are seized solid. The salt takes them within a few years, and no guild exists here to maintain an engine or a gear train. One or two still turn, badly, worked by men who learned them by breaking them. Everything else moves by hand: sheer legs, block and tackle, rope, and more backs than any other port in the world needs for the same cargo.

This is the practical limit on the Coves, and it decides what the archipelago can trade in. A built harbour lands a hold in a day because the stone it is set into does the work. Blacktooth Bay takes three, and only if the weather holds. Small valuable cargoes that fit in a boat and leave through a fence suit the place. Bulk goods that have to cross a quay do not.

The market

Everything available, no questions asked, provenance irrelevant. There is no permanent structure; it happens between buildings, on the docks, in certain taverns, wherever buyers and sellers find each other. The Fences' Association operates openly here, a large established business with complete community acceptance.

The taverns

The most important civic institution in the Bay, where everything that matters happens: negotiation, information trading, crew recruitment, alliances, dispute resolution, and entertainment. Each major tavern has its own character and clientele. Decisions affecting the whole community are discussed in the largest ones, and a captain who controls an important tavern has more influence than any formal authority, because there is no formal authority to exceed.

The Hoesings

A Hoesing sells drink and the company of rented slaves, and says so on its sign. It is a separate trade from a Therplae, which sells food, drink and beds, and nobody here pretends otherwise about either. The slaves are the house's own or rented in from a slaver, and they wear the collar and clothing that mark them, which the cooks and the cellarer do not. A slave's refusal holds in a Hoesing exactly as it holds anywhere else in the world, and a house that will not enforce it loses its women to a slaver who will.

There are more Hoesings in Blacktooth Bay than in any settlement of comparable size, for the obvious reason, and the established ones are better kept than most of what surrounds them. A house with a reputation guards it carefully, having no guild behind it and nothing else to trade on.

The criminal guild district

The Fences' Association building is large and well built by local standards, with its own dock. The Information Brokers' Network occupies a discreet building with deliberate acoustic insulation. The Forgers' Guild can be found by the chemical smell of its documents. The Assassins' Brotherhood is the most deliberately unremarkable building in the district and identifies itself by the absence of distinguishing features.

Residential

Whatever space is available: dark stone, timber framing, roofs of salvaged timber, sail canvas, or dark tile where it can be got, stacked up the hillside using the slope as a back wall. There is no district by wealth or position; a successful captain may live beside a struggling crewman because that was where the space was.

Character

Built by people solving one immediate problem after another, and it looks like it. Black stone, salvaged timber, pitched roofs on steep slopes, steeper stairs, the teeth visible from almost anywhere, vessels in every state of repair, mismatched brass catching lamplight. Dark, dramatic, chaotic, with an almost violent beauty. At night it is nearly black except for tavern windows and dock lanterns — the darkest settlement in the Known World, and the loudest.

See also

• The Iron Coves · Whispering HollowThe Veil Currents · Piracy · Hoesing · The Slave Market · Moving Goods