Renato paced back and forth on the balcony of the High Tide suite.
The morning breeze swept in from the Bay. Frowning, the Swordsman looked past the low buildings and warehouse roofs in front of the inn, toward the forest of masts in the Bay.
Most of the sailing ships lay in the deepwater anchorage beyond the Dock District, their hulls rocking gently with the tide. Flags at their mastheads curled and unfurled in the wind. Now and then, a few gulls darted between the rigging, leaving short cries in their wake.
Before he knew it, Renato had spent nearly two hours thinking on the balcony, and scorching sunlight was falling on his armor.
The pitch-black plates swallowed every ray without a hint of reflection, while the intricate golden runes on the armor blazed more brilliantly than the sunlight itself.
He silently reviewed the progress of the past few days.
At first, Barnaby had been brimming with confidence, thumping his chest and promising that patrolling the coast would be a piece of cake. He had even insisted that nothing was impossible as long as the Governor's Mansion was willing to give the order.
Yet in Renato's eyes, the patrol operation Barnaby was leading had not gone smoothly.
It was not that the harbor staff refused to cooperate. With help from a local fixer like Crooked Mouth, who knew every unwritten rule of the docks, and the Governor's written orders hanging over them, the inspectors had soon been forced into small boats to search the waters around White Harbor island every day, in addition to their regular weekly patrols.
According to Crooked Mouth, the inspectors were inefficient and sluggish, dawdling at the docks for almost half an hour before every outing, but they still carried out their inspections in strict accordance