“I’ll have one soon,” Caledonia countered, moving to stand across from him. “But first I need everything you have on the Holster: the harbor, the city, everything.”

Tassos sucked on his teeth as he considered his response, clearly weighing the benefits of withholding his intel against making actual progress. Finally, he gestured to Heron, who produced a map so expertly rendered, Caledonia could perfectly imagine the gasp that would have dropped from Lace’s lips. Her wide, blue eyes would have consumed the unmarred paper, the careful markings of latitude and longitude. Before Nettle, Lace had steered their crew through rough and clear waters alike, and she would have exclaimed over the degree of detail inscribed in every inch of this map. Even Caledonia recognized it for the prize it was, though she did her best to hide that from her current company.

“The Holster,” Heron said with a small flourish.

The map zoomed in tight on the western side of a peninsula where the shoreline scooped gently inward, creating a protected valley for the city of the Holster. In the center was the harbor, and the cartographer had taken great care to illustrate the series of breakers that limited ingress and egress. Beyond that, the western seas extended to the edge of the page. A small arrow in the upper left corner indicated how many miles to Cloudbreak, and a similar arrow in the bottom left did the same for the Bone Mouth.

Plucking a pouch from a nearby chest, Heron began dropping small metal ships into the harbor. “The harbor itself holds a full cohort of ships. Probably seventy-five at any given time. The rest”—he paused to place several metal blocks in a row— “are outside of these breakers.”

The breakers were evenly spaced, meaning only a few ships could pass into the harbor at once. Not unlike the metal islands in the waters of Cloudbreak. A barrier, but not a complete barricade. This was information they’d had, but seeing it mapped out like this brought new clarity.

“Can we bomb them?” Pisces asked.

“Sure.” Heron bobbed his head. “But they run deep. No guarantee you won’t gouge your hull trying to pass over one. Might be better to just leave them where you can see them.”

Caledonia nodded. “What else?”

“The gun towers.” As Heron spoke, he marked the towers with a jab of his finger. “All five are on high ground, outside of town, and impossible to target without putting your ships within range of their damned powerful guns.”

“One for every son,” Oran added, settling in at Caledonia’s shoulder. “Aric built them as we were named.”

“We protect him as we protect each other.” Tassos gave the response as though reading a script, and for a fleeting second Oran and Tassos shared a look thick with history.