"Maybe," she said. "Probably not, if he'd slewed it like that. Lachlan wouldn't have slewed it like that. Lachlan wouldn't have done it at eleven at night with one deckhand and no tagline. Neither would Aled, if he'd slept. That's the point, Dex. The shackle's the last thing that broke. It's not the first thing." She stood up. "Will you find Mr. Arruda a cup of coffee, please? And then go and tell the Ratline workers to wait at the crew gate, and call the office and get me Commander Brophy on the phone. I'm going to need to spend some of his money."
Aled was on the bridge wing when she found him, alone, looking down at the yellow chain around the crane. She did not show him the footage. She told him what was on it, and the times, and the hand to the face, and he listened without turning around, and when she was finished he said, "Yes."
That was all, for a while. Yes. The wind pulled at his white shirt.
"I've done this job thirty-eight years," he said at last. "I've never put a crew member in a hospital. Not once. I used to tell people that. I used to be proud of it, God forgive me, like it was something I'd done instead of something I'd been lucky enough to have happen." He turned around. His eyes were red. "I asked Kemble for crew in August, Tavi. I asked him three times. You've seen the emails. He said hang on, so I told them hang on. And then I was too proud to say we couldn't, so I made the sheets say we could. And then a boy got hurt, and I looked at that report on Saturday morning, and I thought, if I write down the truth, they lose everything. The crew. Lachie. Solveig. Every one of them gets tarred with what I did. So I wrote it the way I wrote it." He shook his head slowly. "I told myself I was protecting them. I was protecting me. I know that now. I think I knew it then."
"Celestine wouldn't sign," Octavia said.
"No." Something like a smile. "Good girl. She'll make a captain."
"Aled, listen to me. I'm going to tell you what I need, and then you're going to decide." She held up a hand and counted on her fingers, the way he had taught her to give orders to a deck crew in a gale: short, numbered, unarguable. "One. You file amended casualty reports with the Cayman authority and the Coast Guard before this boat moves. The true times. Who was on the controls. Your signature on them. Lachlan's statement gets withdrawn, and you write that you asked him to sign it. Two. You give me the real rest-hour records for every crew member since July. Not the corrected ones. The ones they wrote first. I know Solveig kept copies, because I trained her, and I'll get them from her if I have to, but I'd rather have them from you. Keelhaven reports a major non-conformity to the flag. They'll probably send somebody to meet you in Antigua. Three. Two extra crew for the delivery. Delivery deckhands with their tickets in order, out of Ratline, waiting at the crew gate right now, and Keelhaven pays them if the owner won't. Four. The crane gets proof-tested by the surveyor, Lachlan operates it, in daylight, with every hand on deck and a tagline on both ends. Five." She lowered her hand. "You don't stand a watch tonight. Celestine takes the first watch and the middle watch. You go to your cabin when you clear Brenton Reef and you sleep for eight hours, and that's in writing too."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I don't sign. The boat stays here. She misses the window and the charter, and the owner fires Keelhaven and probably you, and the flag finds out anyway, because I'm sending them the footage either way." She held his eyes. "I'm not offering you a deal, Aled. The reports go in regardless. What I'm offering you is the chance to be the one who sends them."