The Salt Cartographer
A disgraced naval cartographer is offered one last commission: chart a stretch of coastline that has swallowed three ships and their captains without a trace. What he finds recharts more than water — it redraws what he believes about the man he used to be.
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The Salt Cartographer
Turn the page below to read The Salt Cartographer from the first line to the last — the complete book, chapter by chapter.
Chapter One: The Letter
The letter had traveled four ports before it found him, and by the time it reached the boarding house in Kesh Harbor the wax seal had already cracked once, resealed with a thumbprint of cheaper wax by whoever had carried it the last leg.
Idris turned it over twice before he opened it. He did that with most things now — turned them over, looked for the catch. Three years of drawing coastline for merchants who wanted their harbor fees lowered had made him careful in a way the Admiralty never had.
The hand on the address was Alderman Pruitt's, which meant the letter itself was not. Pruitt didn't write his own correspondence any more than he rowed his own boat.
1Mr. Vane, it began. The Admiralty requires a survey of the waters known locally as the Gannet Shoals, off Marrow's End, following the loss of three vessels in as many years. No cause has been established. You are recommended for this commission on account of your prior experience with difficult coastlines, and on account of your availability.
That last line was Pruitt's idea of a joke. Vane's availability was not in question. He had drawn six harbor charts in the last two years and eaten maybe four hundred honest meals in that time, and there was a difference between the two numbers that he tried not to think about after dark.
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