GAZETTEER · THE VALE

The Lame Ox

aka the Ox

The Underbridge's dockside taproom, named for the beast that dropped dead hauling barge-cargo up its front step and got carved into the doorframe as a joke that stuck — where salvors, divers and debt-holders drink off the day at the one table in the quarter nobody can repossess.

Fennug Old built the bar out of a beached barge-hull and never got around to changing the name once the ox story stopped being funny and started being the sign. It is warm in a quarter that isn't warm at anything else: low beams, a fire that never quite goes out, and a house rule Fennug enforces with a ladle — nobody drinks alone if they don't want to, and nobody who's just been to Morel's Hold pays for their first cup. Divers dry out by the hearth with salt still in their hair; a Marrow Lances recruit and a Finders runner argue the same three points every night and never once come to blows over them. It is the quarter's actual government, in the sense that more gets settled here than at the Counting-Floor.

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