Portsmouth

Portsmouth is the Council’s territory and a possible counterweight to the Coterie, but it offers no dependable refuge: the Council is compromised from within, and the approach to it becomes part of a plan to draw Venus out rather than secure its help.

Council Territory and Reputation

Lock raises the Portsmouth Council as a possible exception to the claim that the Coterie controls everything. Duncan confirms that the group can go there and ask for help, but warns that the Council is too weak to offer meaningful protection. Its members are consumed by infighting and petty disputes; Venus has at least half in her pocket, while the rest may answer to other interests. In Duncan’s assessment, personal agendas, not public responsibility, determine whom the Council serves.

That account complicates the idea that Portsmouth’s Council simply stands against the Coterie. The Council may look out for the weak and keep groups like the Coterie out in some areas, as Duncan describes more broadly, yet its local branch is compromised enough that he considers it hopelessly corrupt. He adds that being in Portsmouth, on the Council’s own turf, would make a difference—suggesting that the institution’s authority depends partly on where a confrontation takes place, even if its reliability remains doubtful.

The Approach from New Castle

The address the Council gives Duncan leads the group not to a meeting place in Portsmouth itself, but to a yacht club in New Castle. The party hides its van in a lot behind a church, screened from the road by trees and the building, rather than parking openly at the club. They anticipate that anyone following them would first have to proceed on foot, making pursuit easier to notice.

They take Olive with them rather than leave her in the van, then circle the yacht club toward the water. At the docks, a speedboat waits among the sailboats; its bored attendant ushers them aboard and silently releases the mooring lines after Duncan’s group confirms that the boat is meant to take them to the Council. The discreet, indirect route underscores how little trust they place in the people they have come to consult.

A Place in the Baiting Plan

The group expects no real assistance from the Council. Instead, the visit serves a second purpose: the Council now knows where Ava will be, and the group expects someone working for Venus to pass that information along. By making their destination known, they hope Venus will leave her protected position to attack them somewhere more vulnerable.

Portsmouth therefore signifies both a potential boundary to Coterie power and the weakness of relying on formal authority to enforce it. The Council’s compromised standing makes it a poor shield, but contact with it still has strategic value: the attempted appeal helps turn the group’s exposure into bait. The distinction between the Council’s territory and the meeting’s New Castle approach matters—the plan uses the Council connection without treating its promises as protection.