Still on the Roster

They still listed me on the roster long after the ships stopped coming the way they used to. I know because I checked. Active duty. Kaldhaven. That mattered to me.

The first sign was the mail.

Orders arrived out of step with one another. One told us to reduce. Another told us to wait. Then nothing at all. We read everything aloud, like we always did. Still, the spaces between the words grew wider.

The quay emptied slowly. Ships that once stopped out of habit sailed past without signaling. The dockworkers stayed because they had nowhere else to go. So did we.

Most of us had families by then. When the dockworkers began standing idle, we stood with them. Not in protest. In recognition. You cannot tell a man to guard a place the world has decided no longer matters.

The withdrawal order finally came on a gray morning. It named ships that no longer sailed and ports none of our families had ever seen. It ordered us to abandon the quay.

The captain said there was no lawful command left in Kaldhaven capable of sustaining service or protection. He said that if the Crown would not hold the quay, then the quay would have to hold itself.

We voted. Not whether to rebel, but whether to scatter. Some men chose to leave. The rest of us walked down to the customs house together.

The Wharcer officer listened. When we finished, he produced a short document already bearing a seal. It named conditions: abandonment of Lagdral allegiance, assumption of Wharcer service, continuity of rank and pay. No speeches. No promises beyond what could be written.

We signed.

That afternoon, the Lagdral banner came down from the barracks mast. The Wharcer mark went up in its place. The dockworkers watched in silence.

We later learned that most of the other garrisons on the islands did the same thing. The rest returned to Lagdral.

I never thought of it as an uprising. No one shouted. No hall was seized. We did not rise against the Crown.

The Crown simply did not rise for us.

They still keep a roster somewhere, I am sure. My name is probably crossed out now, written again under a different seal. That does not change where I stood when the sea was all the service we had left.

Kaldhaven is quiet these days.

The quay still holds.

So do I.