The street was already chaos. Smoke drifted low, turning the air to ash. People coughed. Someone screamed down by the square, the sound raw enough to cut.
Dacey ran towards the waterfront, along with most of the growing crowd around her. Some carried pails, looking to fight the fire. Other carried their bundles and heirlooms, looking for escape.
Dijkstra clung to her shoulder. "Left," he crowed. "There are men at the river gate. Men at the dock. It's organized, efficient evil."
Dacey didn't answer. She saved her breath.
At the harbor, the scale of the trap hit her like a fist to the gut.
A thick iron chain stretched across the mouth of the estuary, hooked to iron posts and cinched tight. No fishing boat was getting out. No trader. Nothing. Men in red stood along the quay, griffin badges on their breasts, torches in hand. Pitch barrels waited too close to the warehouses, and the sight of them made Dacey's skin crawl.
A few townsfolk had gathered at the water's edge anyway, shouting and pleading. One man tried to duck under a guard's spear and got cracked across the face with a cudgel. He went down hard, not getting back up.
Dacey's anger at the injustice of the situation grew. She had seen raids before. Bear Island had lived under the shadow of ironborn sails her whole life. She knew the sounds men made when they realized they were prey. She knew the look in the eyes of those who had decided to die fighting.
This town hadn't decided yet, so Dacey would decide for them.
She shoved through the crowd and stepped onto the dock as if she belonged there. A guard turned, saw the hammer, and raised his torch.
"Halt," he barked. "Orders from Lord Connington. No one leaves. Go back inside."
Dacey smiled in a way that showed teeth. "I've got my own orders."
He took one step toward her. That was his mistake.
Dacey drove her shield into his chest. He flew backward into a stack of crates with a crack of wood. Before the second guard could level his spear, she hooked the shaft with her hammer and yanked. The guard stumbled. She struck his knee hard enough that it bent wrong.
Another man rushed her with a short sword. Dacey met him with the shield rim and then with her fist. Her knuckles sank into his cheek. Bone popped. He folded with a wet moan.
More guards shouted. Torches bobbed. Feet pounded on planks.
Dacey ran for the chain.
She seized it with both hands, fingers locking around iron links slick with river damp. It was heavier than any anchor line she'd hauled, heavier than any net full of thrashing fish. It was meant to hold ships.
Dacey bent her knees and pulled.
The chain did not move at first. It bit into her palms and tore skin. She grunted and leaned back, low and rooted, putting her weight into it the way Maple had taught her. The weight of her magic, the power reminiscent of a mother bear protecting her cubs.
The air hummed wrong around her, hot and abrasive. Such ambient magic was antithetical to the nature of Dacey's own.
Finally, the chain shifted.
A roar rose behind her as the guards realized what she meant to do. A spear jabbed toward her ribs. Dacey twisted, letting it scrape the shield on her arm, and pulled again.
The iron post groaned.
Dacey's breath came out as a growl. Heat rose in her chest, in her throat. She felt larger, as if her bones had made more room for force. Dacey didn't stop heaving.
Finally, the post ripped free with a scream of metal and splintered wood. The chain slackened, dipping into the water with a splash. The harbor mouth opened a hand's width, then a foot, then more as the freed end slid.
People surged.
"Now," Dacey bellowed, voice carrying over smoke and panic. "Move. Boats. Any boat. Go."
The crowd turned into a stampede. Fishermen ran for skiffs. A woman shoved a child into a boat and climbed in after him. Men leapt aboard with poles, pushing off from the dock in a frenzy.
A guard grabbed Dacey from behind, trying to drag her down. She elbowed back, caught his throat, and slammed him into the planks. He stopped moving.
Dijkstra flapped up from her shoulder and circled overhead, keeping his mouth shut like he'd been told to around strangers. His white wings flashed through smoke like an omen.
Dacey spotted one bigger vessel moored near the harbor light, a trading cog with a single mast. Its deck was already filling with folk, and a man in an ornate cloak stood at the gangplank trying to shout order into panic.
"Back," Dacey snapped as she ran up. "You'll sink her before you clear the dock."
The man turned. He was not a fighter. His hands shook. But his eyes held. "I'm Lord Quincy Cox," he said, like the name should matter.
"And I've been sailing since my fifth nameday," Dacey responded. She shoved past him onto the deck, scanned the rigging and the lines in one quick glance, and felt something in her chest ease.
She knew ships. She knew sailing.
Her mother had put her on a boat before she could properly braid her hair. She had learned knots with her teeth when her hands were too small. She had ridden storms off Bear Island that would have swallowed soft southern men whole.
Dacey grabbed a line and barked at two wide-eyed fishers. "You. Cut the moorings. Not that one, that one. If you cut the wrong rope we'll drift sideways into the pier and burn up."
They stared at her, then obeyed.
Lord Quincy's wife clutched a boy against her skirts. The child had tears streaking his face, soot already smudged on his cheek. "Please," she whispered. "Please."
Dacey's voice softened, just a fraction. "Get below deck. Both of you. Stay low."
Onshore, the sept's roof collapsed in a shower of sparks. The sound rolled over the water like a wave. A few people on the docks screamed and froze, staring as if they could not believe fire could eat stone.
From somewhere closer, a different shout rose, harsh with command. More Connington men were pouring into the harbor now, torches and crossbows, trying to stop the flood of boats slipping out.
Dacey took the tiller. Her hands closed around it like greeting an old friend.
"All right," she said, loud enough for the deck to hear. "Oars on the port side. Push off. Someone get that sail ready. If you don't know how to tie a line, grab something and hold on."
A crossbow bolt thunked into the railing a foot from her hand. Another snapped past her ear. Someone shrieked.
Dacey did not duck. She shifted her stance and shoved the tiller over, guiding the cog's nose into the opening where the chain sagged. The boat scraped, wood groaning. A fisherman shoved with a pole until the hull slid free.
They cleared the harbor mouth by inches.
The lighthouse loomed to starboard, its top already lit not with its steady guiding flame but with reflected fire from the town. Smoke wrapped it in a dirty scarf. The harbor light that had kept sailors safe now watched its own town die.
The whole sky above had turned bruised orange. The wall held people in like a soup pot. Dacey could see figures at windows pounding, silhouettes swallowed by smoke. The sound reached the water in pieces. Screams, coughing, prayer, rage.
And under it, that eerie magical hum, growing louder, as if something was being pulled from the world by force.
Dacey swallowed bile.
Dijkstra landed on the mast and looked back, red eyes reflecting flames. For once he did not look pleased. "That is a lot of fire," he said quietly, almost to himself.
Lord Quincy stumbled up beside her, pale and shaking. "What is happening?" He croaked. "Why would Lord Connington do this? We were loyal."
Dacey's grip tightened. "It's some sort of ritual sacrifice," she said flatly. "Those red priests are truly evil to kill so many. I don't know what foul magic they unleashed, but I'm glad to have escaped it."
A hot breeze from upriver caught the sail at last, filling it with a snap. The ship leaned, turning its nose toward open water.
Saltpans shrank behind them, still screaming.