The Tide Clock Tower

The tower door is open. Old Corwin Vane is inside, oiling a mechanism that hasn’t needed oil in years, and he doesn’t seem surprised to see you.

Up close, the clock’s two hands aren’t the plain iron shapes they looked like from the hill — each ends in a small, worn brass disc, stamped with a mark you half-recognise from a maritime museum: a harbour token, the kind old shipping crews once carried as a paid passage. Someone built them directly into the mechanism, not as decoration.

Corwin follows your eyes to the hands and says nothing, waiting to see what you’ll ask him.

What do you do?

• Ask Corwin directly about the debt
• Come back after dark and examine the mechanism yourself