4135.91 · April 1815 AD
Some Promises Are Easier
Ezekiel Blackwood is an excellent teacher. He knows the ledgers, the shipping routes, the customs officials who can be reasoned with. He knows which rules matter and which are merely suggestions. He knows how to spot a man who will bend and how far that man can be bent before he breaks. William Jeffries is learning quickly. Perhaps too quickly. There are lessons Blackwood wants to teach him that don't appear in any ledger. And there are invitations that, once accepted, cannot be refused.
The law is not justice, Blackwood tells him. It's merely power dressed in robes and ritual.
Three weeks in Hobart Town. Three weeks of ledgers and lessons, of watching Blackwood navigate a world where the written rules and the actual rules occupy different countries entirely. William has seen the gaps in the records now—seen them and understood them. Smuggling, Blackwood calls it with a shrug that makes the word sound almost innocent. Creative interpretation of the rules.
Then comes the invitation. Midnight. The warehouse. Observation only, Blackwood promises. A chance to understand how certain transactions are conducted.
William goes. He watches crates of Caribbean rum offloaded by lantern light, customs officials conspicuously absent, money changing hands in the darkness. He says nothing. His silence makes him complicit.
And then Blackwood places a customs declaration before him. A shipment of wool bound for Sydney. Additional items packed within the bales. The declaration should reflect only the wool itself.
William thinks of Eliza. Of the watch against his chest. Of the man she believed him capable of becoming.
He picks up his pen.
That night, he writes her a letter he will never send. Then he burns it.
Some promises, it seems, are easier to keep than others.
