I knew we were close to Breidey once the screams of gulls were drowned out by the din of a busy dock. I stepped off as soon as the captain gave the signal to go ashore; my feet had barely hit the planks when a shout reached my ears. I stepped aside and three barrels were rolled past me onto the ship I had just left. The whole dock felt busy. I hardly saw youths lingering, old men playing Overlade, nary a dockworker drinking on a House's coin. It seemed everyone had a job and was busy at it.
Before I had reached the shore end of the dock, my contact, Silvius, had found me. He was dressed like a merchant from Rika Tikur, with the stature of a man from Baerfrost and skin sun-baked the way only Isles people are. The captain had warned me of the local custom; the warning had not prepared me nearly enough.
The local custom is not a handshake but an arm-shake, and it felt like gripping a steel beam, though I think Silvius held back during the shake part, since I was still standing at the end.
On the way to the workshop I commented on his build. He wore a smile and told me he started out rolling barrels and lifting cargo; he leaned in and told me he still does when the day demands it.
In his workshop he introduced me to the workers, and I saw how they organized their tools before I ever saw his office.
The wrangle ran quite a while before we came to terms on price, prototype delivery, and assay-terms. It was unlike most bartering sessions I'd had. He seemed honest, but not naive; he knew what his people's work was worth and wouldn't have settled for less.
After another Breidey arm (I had gotten better, I have to admit) he invited me to dinner, and I have an inkling he would have done so even if we hadn't come to an agreement.
Breidey is the promise of honest work for honest coin. And Breidhofn is the biggest port showcasing that every day. Its prosperity draws youths from other islands in search of work, and Keelborn in search of ground that drifts slower than a deck.
The port city is where the Nation Afloat comes ashore and blends into one people that hauls on the same line. Different faces of different stations, all meeting on the Breidey arm.
Yet to imagine Breidey as all work and no play would be missing the second half of the coin...
On the Hill, Sjornahol, overlooking the whole dock and part of the city, sits Fyrsta, the first hull Breidey ever launched, repurposed for music and relaxation.
Her hull is strung as a resonating body the size of a house, a hullharp, not the only one of her kind, but as far as historical records show, the first.
Her conductor stands within, and the players follow his lead. They play from a wide list of songs, and the conductor picks a different one each day. Sometimes he adds a new one. But all songs mean the same thing: the end of the working day.
She sings a little early on days a storm is coming in, a little late on launch days, as if she wants to watch the new hull down the slip before she calls the island home. The players insist they keep the hour to the minute, every day, per the first Settlement. Each Breideyer still believes their own.
When the notes carry over the workshops and docks alike, the tools go find their homes, the top buttons open, a barrel gets placed one last time for today, and everyone takes a deep breath.
Fyrsta sings. The work for today is done.
The last notes of Fyrsta's song still hang in the air when you notice the island has already changed key.
Within a quarter hour, the docks have filled with people playing Overlade, dockhands are swimming in the sea, and families are picnicking on the Hill.
And any of them might be one of the nobles who own the island.
The whole of Breidey is owned by the Houses, a nobility with titles and no royalty. Silverbeak's home sits on land leased from House Lunnar; as Dockmaster he oversees three docks for House Kjolur; his favorite fistloaf maker is owned by House Reki.
Wards, docks, fields, or works, all of it finds its place in an old ledger the Houses keep, and they decide which to lease, which to rent and which to keep.
But even these ledgers can be bought and sold. Once a House finds their coffers run dry, their vaults harboring hardly more than dust, there are always offers from merchants to relieve them of debt and title, the practice Breidey calls a Restructuring.
So the Houses do what they need to do, work honestly. They do their diligence in maintaining public infrastructure, to meet their end of the bargain, to be fair employers. The Houses do what they need to be honored. Should they not, they will find workshops without workers, boats full of barrels nobody will unload, their own cook serving nothing but bread and water.
Because on Breidey the Houses are bound.
The master-agreement binding every soul on Breidey, the Settlement. Terms renegotiated every four years at the Long Table, between the Houses and the people.
All of island life is argued, negotiated and discussed at the Long Table; some topics come up every time, some are brought up once every twenty years. Wages, working hours, dues, walkout rules, as well as joint funds for many a thing, infrastructure, education and the maimed's share, to name a few.
The first topic is always the same: the selection of Breidey's voice, the Chair of the Settlement. They receive envoys, sign treaties, and speak for Breidey at the Raft, a position open to worker and noble alike.
The Long Table is the island's political fever, some years it's quiet, fast, a done deal in the first day of negotiations. Some years it's loud, it drags itself out the whole week. Most Long Tables find their Breidey arm within the week, because both sides fear running out the week without one.
A hung Settlement, when the old Settlement runs out and the new one isn't agreed upon. The moment when no work is done, for no guarantee is given, the sudden halt to the whole industrial marvel of the Isles.
Though one topic never gets brought up, Fyrsta's hour. The time the hullharp plays has been the same since it rang the first time in the Year the Barrels Sat.
A moment in time when wages were lowered or frozen outright, when working hours ate the leisure, when the crews had had enough and planned the founding walkout. Fyrsta's song rang out and the island stopped, boats sat with barrels no one unloaded, cooks walked out of the kitchen, barmen left kegs untapped. The moment the proudest Houses learned who truly moves what.
It ended with nobles rolling the barrels beside their crews. Both sides still talk of it with pride, the moment the Houses and the Rolls signed the first Settlement and Fyrsta sang.
The Rolls, the other arm that shakes on the Settlement. The Breidey promise turned into an institution, an all-trades-spanning union.
The entry requirement is simple: work an honest day and you're on the Rolls by Fyrsta's first note.
"Why it's called the Rolls? Lad, are ye daft? You roll barrels like we made the nobles do and then you're on the Rolls."
Declining the Rolls is technically a possibility, though practically highly inadvisable. For anyone declining the Rolls will find the Closed Counter: no bread from any baker, no room from any landlord, no passage from any ferryman. No exceptions and no hard feelings, until an honest day's work opens every counter at once.
While declining is a possibility, leaving is not. I have found no clause, no section, no ruling, no precedent for leaving. The register carries names that long have left the island. I have found one account of a person returning and finding their name still listed.
So the Rolls contains every person not part of the Houses, be that cleaning maid, Dockmaster or inventor. Every craft is included, from wheat to the Helmworks.
Midarra, the central sweetwater sea, changes with the weather, and the weather flips on a moment's notice. A tenth of it is the floating isles, charted ground that has moved since the chart, and every hull bound for Balatur Erui and the Hafra beyond has to cross it. And rarely the sea turns strange altogether. The Villveder comes without warning: magic takes hold of whatever a navigator carries, a needle wanders, a bearing true at dawn is wrong by noon.
A Helmworks reads through all of it. Hulls from every shore of Midarra put in at Breidhofn to buy their own and have it kept.
"Aye, sure quite a lot of things on deck come from the Order of Steam, a few things come even all the way from Vindul. But if pirates would let me only keep one thing? I'd choose Breidey Helmworks before they finished their demands. I would never want to face the rolling fog without one in my hand and I damn well make sure to bring them in for scheduled maintenance. An Order of Steam's needle may break while on guarantee but a Helmworks, properly maintained, will probably outlive me."
Breidey workshops are the only ones that are licensed and able to create the Helmworks, precision Occultech to find out where you are and where you're headed on an ever-changing sea.
Works include such creations as bearing-keepers, drift-clocks, and weatherclocks.
A weatherclock is an ingenious piece of instrumentation that reports weather as time rather than condition, how much fair is left, when it turns and how long the turning lasts. It always reads the air where it stands, and no further than a day's sail, which is why a fleet buys one per hull.
And every Helmworks comes Breidhofn-sealed with a small number leading back to the Helmwright standing for it.
The island not only makes the instruments for sailing but also the hulls when they are needed.
Breidey builds hulls not only for merchants and on order, but for the Isles as well.
Breidey fields more keels for the League than the next five islands together, and holds exactly one vote at the Raft for it.
When in 2524 the second wave of corruption broke and the dungeons surfaced, Breidey was fielding most of the League's fighting keels and still is.
Two facts no one in the Isles can deny. Breidey keels broke the corruption wave at sea and Breidey timber sealed the drowned gate.
The Houses' ledgers keep track of all of it. The keel-franchise argument and Standing Watch campaign are marked in the books on the asset side. A Watch needs hulls, Helmworks, yards and most of all, a leader. Breidey could offer all four.
"A loss? A sacrifice? You misunderstand, this, this is an investment in the future of the Isles and who will lead them, dear Chairman."
Since then two Long Tables have come and gone, and the confidence has not changed, only the patience under it.
The Houses have already started preparing for the Standing Watch, assured of its eventual creation. Three covered shapes, resting on slips, waiting for a command yet to be voted on. Hulls made to patrol the Isles, being carried in the Houses' ledgers as an asset, maintained by quiet yard-crews hardly on any Houses' ledger. An asset they are assured will pay off.
If the vote passes, they can deliver the Standing Watch in months instead of years. If it keeps failing, they still have three warships to sell, though the Houses do find any non-League buyer ill-suited. Not that any House would ever sign them away unless it is to the Standing Watch.