Korven Salt-Article

Korven Salt-Article is the friendliest customs officer you'll ever meet, which is the first thing that should worry you.

He's Crodoc — six-and-a-half feet of grey-green muscle going soft at the middle, square jaw, a chipped tusk he taps with a stylus when he's thinking, and an imperial customs coat two seasons past regulation crisp. He runs the bond collar on the Vosskar Reach ring, and he runs it fast: seal broken, pallet counted, manifest stamped, next hull please. He'll pour you the galley's one decent drink, ask about your run home, and have your paperwork closed before your engineer's finished the docking checklist. Efficient. Warm. A little too keen to sign.

That keenness is a man doing math nobody put on the manifest. This is a good posting — a secured gate, a fleet on the board, salvage prize flowing up the Navy ledger like clockwork. And every clock has slack in it if you know where to look. Korven's spent years quietly diverting a cut of that prize, a crate here and there off the ledger, laundered out under honest-looking Concord paper. Not desperation — arithmetic, and a retirement he intends to actually enjoy. He's not a cartoon villain. He's a comfortable, competent man who decided the Admiralty wouldn't miss what it never counted, and he's very, very good at making sure it doesn't.