“Listen,” Ren said, quietly. He had taken Woodro aside, while Tass stood with Bran near the big tropical tree. Its vines draped down, almost obscuring the Dispatch from view. Zashee stood on board, making preparations. All three had been waiting with the ship, ready for Vanci’s return. They had not believed Renado’s story—that a year had passed! And that Vanci had been captured, or that the Family had fallen. When Tass had told them the same thing, then they began to believe.
“What?” Woodro said. He had volunteered to pilot the Dispatch on its final voyage. He stood next to Ren, a man probably ten years older than him with sinewy biceps and a half-shaved scalp. He shifted foot-to-foot, getting himself ready for what was to come. Their plan.
Ren counted out ten coins from his own. He had already divided the three hundred fifty Grey Sea coins they had earned in Kedar. He had given fifty to each of the crew, and seventy-five to each himself and Tass. But now he gave Woodro another ten. “Burn as many of their ships as you can. Burn the harbor, burn the docks. Like I said, this money is for all of us. We go our own ways, but you’re all welcome to stay with me and Tass. This ten is your bonus, for risking your skin.”
Woodro clapped his hands. “Whatever you say. It’s been a year. Most people think we’re dead. If I die, I prove them right. But if I live…. If I live.” He grinned, and took the coins he’d been offered.
Ren smiled and nodded. “Meet us at the Seastar Tavern, if you decide to.”
As soon as Woodro was aboard the Dispatch, Zashee leapt back to the shore, splashing through the lapping waves. Woodro checked the barrels of kindling they had prepared. Ren helped big Bran and Zashee shove the ship off. As Woodro drifted into the wind and dropped his sails, he set fire to the first piles. They had no spark vapour, they had no coal. Just enough cloth and wood to turn the boat into a bonfire on the waves.
Ren and the others started the walk back into town. The sun was not up yet, but it soon would be. The combustible Dispatch would arrive in port before they did, even at the brisk pace Ren set.
Tass said little, though Zashee and Bran bantered about what had transpired in their absence. They took bets on what had changed during the year and what had not. Ren thought of what had changed. When they mentioned their respective families, he could only think of Johanna and her nervous new lover. He walked in silence and watched a cloud of smoke grow across the chopping waves. The dense forest hid most of the city from view.
When they neared the harbour, he let his breath out through his teeth. The Dispatch was lodged between a two-mast galley and a dock, but the flames had spread so much further. There had been a camp set up on along the waterfront, a congregation of grey and white tents. Fire lit half of them and spread onto the salty wooden buildings in the port. Two other ships were alight, one of them half-sunken.
“Cat’s son,” Bran whistled. “He did it. Burned the bastards! We’ll see you in town, if there’s any town left!” With that, the two jogged ahead.
“Let’s go,” Ren said to Tass, and doubled their own pace. They reached the Seastar soon enough, only to find it encompassed in a crackling blaze. The staff and patrons had already abandoned it. The street was full of soldiers, trying to put out the fire on their tents, their buildings, or their friends. The inferno soon encompassed the entire district, forcing Ren and Tass away from their intended safe haven.
They sought out another tavern, higher in the town. Tass wound her shawl around her head, to be safe. The place, called the Rogue River, seated them near the windows, overlooking the immense cloud of smoke that covered the city. Ren only sat for a moment, then leaned close to Tass. He spoke with her in hushed tones. “If Woodro survived, he’ll wait for us at Seastar, burning or not.”
“I’ll wait here. No one knows me. The only tavern I ever frequented in Sheld was the Emerald Eye,” she said. “Go.”
“Are you certain?” Ren asked. “Every time I turn my back, I lose whoever I was with.”
“Go,” Tass said. “We need him, Ren, and you know it.”
Ren nodded. “I do,” he said. “Please stay safe.” He put his hand on his sword hilt and marched out of the inn.
He returned half an hour later, with Woodro in tow. The warrior and sailor walked with an arrogant gait and a smirk. He was singed, his shoes lost, and his shoulder grazed by an enemy arrow, but he only spoke about the delightful day he had had. He was eager to keep fighting Ren’s enemies with him.
As they climbed the wide stone stairs of the city streets, Ren noticed something. There was more dirt in the air than the smoke from their fires. There was a second, enormous cloud of debris hanging over the city and lining the shingled roofs. It was centered around the upper town, where Worker’s Rise and the family estate were. “Did they burn the estate?” he wondered. The damned priests didn’t know when they had damaged enough.
They strode through the doors of the Rogue River Inn as inconspicuously as possible, though Ren felt like all eyes were on him. He’d set fire to the port today, after all. But Tass still sat by the window and Woodro soon joined her.
Ren did not. He needed to see for himself what had happened in his absence, just as he had needed to see the bodies hanging over the gates. He walked slowly though, for he dreaded his discovery. The dirt and smoke that greyed the air and bothered his nose got thicker as he climbed another flight of stairs to the upper city.
But it did not hang over the old Gharo estate. It was Worker’s Rise. When he bridged the last tier, and got an angle of view up the street he froze. The dome was not there. A mound of rubble was visible, just over the angle of the rooftops, grey and smeared against the murky sky. He walked forward in a daze, into an abandoned courtyard full of dead bodies. There was no longer a crowd. There was no longer a battle.
Ren had stood here, just two days earlier, in the midst of anarchy. Now he stood before a still, haunted grave. The entire structure of Worker’s Rise had been collapsed. Whatever supports had held it had been sabotaged from the inside, he suspected. The loyalists who had faced the siege had brought it down on their own heads, and the heads of every soldier who had entered that tunnel. He recalled a thought of his—comparing the spectacle to a jaw of death. He had had no notion of how true that was.
He pulled aside the first rock he came to, smearing a dry chunk of human beneath it, and stopped. There was no one alive in this. It would take months of hard labour to clear the massive ruin, and no one would. Whoever had lived inside had made this their tombstone.
Ren let out his breath again, blowing away the thick dust of fire he had caused and disaster he now witnessed. It was all done now. He was all alone. There was no family, there was no Sheld. Not the city he had grown up in. He whispered a quiet word of peace over the mountainous ruin, and then walked away.
It was a long walk back to the Rogue River Inn. It might have been one of the longest walks Ren had ever taken. Two weeks ago, the only thing concerning Ren was the disapproving ire of his criminal father. He had only returned with a percent of the projected earnings. How had he wasted himself this time?
He passed through the once-familiar streets of Sheld like a dream. This was a different life. He was a different man. He felt alien to himself, and the city felt just as foreign. What had Gharo done? What had Lerran? How had it come to this?
Ren stopped in front of the tavern and looked at his hands. He was not cut out to be a workman or a labourer, but perhaps he had the silver-tongue of a merchant. He didn’t know what he’d do, and he didn’t know how he would provide for Tass. What was this world he had awoken in.
He climbed the steps to the tavern door and opened it. Woodro looked up from the window first; the cocky sailor was grinning of course. But Ren quickly realized that smile was something else, when Tass turned her shawled head in his direction. She was smiling too. Ren sat down at their table as quickly as he could cross the room.
“News came,” Woodro said. “They lost the battle at Worker’s Rise.”
Ren blinked. “I saw the ruins… everyone on our side died.”
Tass put her hand on his. “No,” she said. “They lost. We heard hundreds of Grey Brethren soldiers died inside. Whoever brought down the supports waited until the army was inside. Hundreds more have died or gone missing in the ‘catastrophe in the harbour’.”
“Hundreds?” Ren asked, in disbelief. He put his palms on the table.
Woodro chuckled. “And neither of their two galleons will be sailing anywhere. However-many of the bastards are left, they’re on the run now.”
Ren nodded and let himself smile at last. “We can rule the ashes,” he breathed, and laughed despite himself. ‘What world?’, indeed. He ordered his friends an extra serving of pork from the tavern kitchens, with ale to wash it down.