What really interested him were the five great canals cutting into the city from where the harbour began. Called colloquially ‘hairs’, these tremendous indentations of the sea intruded upon the land, like the spaces between the teeth of a comb, each of them with small harbours and piers of their own to house the military vessels of the Black Fleet to repair, reload, and rearm the vessels. Wooden pulley cranes, ropes, and warehouses dominated the areas around the Hairs, barrels of gunpowder and crates of food rations, thick coils of rope, and the occasional cannon or two could be seen littering the ground or hoisted in the air. Handy had seen a few cannons in Skymount and again in Ifrendare, and they seemed much bigger than these ones. He grimaced at the implications. Very few vessels were actually in the hairs for servicing now, and the ones that were seemed to be little more than small two mast ships. Jacques had explained that the portions of the Black Fleet that patrolled these waters were on its way back to the home ports, and these were stragglers. The frenzy of ships at the exterior harbours was due to the merchant houses doing their damnedest to do last minute trading before docking their fleets for the winter. The eastern seas simply weren’t safe during the winter and spring.