The Library · RULE
Chapter 134
The Shallows Line
also called the harbor-lane rule
The plain rule Sresh-Dar's harbor pilots give every newcomer bound for the Mirrenmere: stay inside the lit lanes and the water stays civil; leave them and the archipelago stops being a free port's water at all.
Any pilot at the Sresh-Dar quay will tell you the same thing for free. The lit lanes run straight from the harbor mouth to open sea, and the free port's own boats patrol them day and night, which is the only reason the Mirrenmere reads softer than an archipelago this size should. Row past the last lantern buoy and none of that holds. The drowned valley beyond the lanes doesn't answer to Sresh-Dar's watch, and it doesn't care that you thought it would.