Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
"Ye're short by fourteen barrels, Cormac, and daesnae stand there telling me the tide took them."
The man across from Muire shifted his weight, his boots grinding into the grit of the wet dock planking. He looked somewhere past her left shoulder, a telltale dodge that gave away his guilt before he even spoke.
Muire kept her eyes locked on him, her charcoal poised in a steady hand above the open ledger.
"The count was right when we loaded," he muttered.
"The count was right when ye loaded." Muire drew a sharp, black line through his fabricated figure and gouged the correct number into the paper beside it. "Which means somewhere between yer ship and this dock, fourteen barrels of our grains went walking. I'd like to ken where."
Cormac’s jaw worked, a muscle ticking under his weathered skin as he chewed on an argument he lacked the nerve to voice.
Around them, the harbor roared with its usual morning fury.
Ropes snapped taut overhead. Heavy wool-clad shoulders jostled past as boots hammered across the damp wood.
Men bellowed tallies over the grind of shifting cargo and the deep, groaning creak of rolling hulls.
The thick stench of salt, rotting fish guts, and wet twine hung heavy in the damp air.
Muire breathed it in, using the cold sting of the coastal air to anchor her patience before she snapped.
"I'll have them checked," Cormac finally growled.
"Ye'll have them found," she corrected, snapping the ledger shut with a sharp crack. "Before midday."
She turned her back on him, threading through the chaotic press of bodies toward the main loading row.
Halfway down the dock, her father, Tamhas, stood deep in counsel with a harbor official.
His voice carried that low, unshakeable weight that always steadied the docks.
Hearing it usually meant the world was spinning exactly as it should.
Then, she felt it.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a sudden movement. It was a heavy, prickling weight at the edge of her awareness, like a low whisper spoken too close to the skin.
Muire glanced left.
A man stood by the stack of covered crates at the far end of the loading row.
He was tall, impossibly broad across the shoulders, his dark silhouette cutting through the shifting morning haze.
He wasn't hauling hemp. He wasn't checking manifests.
He stood perfectly still, his grey-blue eyes locked entirely onto her.
When her gaze found his, he didn't break the contact.
Most men looked away from a direct stare. He did not.
Muire held the look for one long, breathless second before forcing her chin up and turning back toward her father.
It's nothing.
The docks were a magnet for drifters, scouts, and merchant opportunists. A stranger's stare wasn't worth the sudden heat rising in her chest.
"The Aldren shipment is two days behind," Tamhas said as she reached his side, his eyes never leaving his paperwork.
"Three," Muire replied, flipping the ledger open to mask her distraction. "They sent word with the dawn tide. The current ran hard against them."
Tamhas grunted, a familiar rumble that meant he’d already guessed as much. The official nodded, scratched a mark onto his parchment, and moved away. Muire forced her charcoal to make small, precise tallies, but her skin still prickled with the awareness of the stranger by the crates.
She didn't look back.
Instead, she moved toward the southern loading row to check the next manifest, but a sudden movement near the warehouse stopped her cold.
A cluster of eight or nine barrels was being rolled away from the main inspection line.
They were moving fast, diverted toward the dark entrance of the southern warehouse.
A clerk was arguing in low, frantic whispers with the foreman directing the crew, pointing twice toward the official checkpoint.
The foreman muttered a short, harsh command.
The clerk went pale, stepped back, and let them pass.
Muire halted.
As the barrels rolled, she saw the sides facing her. They bore no merchant mark she recognized. That alone wasn't unlawful, but the pace was wrong. It was too fast, too deliberate. She took two steps toward them, her fingers flipping through the ledger pages to find the southern warehouse intake.
She never found it.
The sound struck first. A deafening, violent crack that shattered the air and emptied her mind of all thought.
Before the light even registered, a wall of blistering heat slammed outward from the storage row.
Fire tore through the stacked timber, erupting in a roaring, climbing sheet of blinding orange up the warehouse wall.
Panic broke out instantly. Workers shrieked, scattering like mice. Muire froze, the heavy leather ledger crushed against her ribs as the first acrid wave of grey smoke hit the back of her throat.
"Da!" she gasped, twisting wildly to find where Tamhas had been standing.
Above her, a massive oak beam severed from the roof overhang.
It dropped without a sound she could hear over the roaring blaze.
She caught its massive shadow plunging fast through the smoke, and her instincts screamed.
She bent her knees to leap aside, but her boots caught on the uneven wood.
The beam was too close. Too fast. She braced for the impact.
Then, a violent weight hit her from the side.
A solid, unyielding wall of muscle and wool plaid drove into her, knocking her clean off her feet.
The force carried her three full steps through the haze before slamming her hard against the stone wall of an adjacent building.
The ledger flew from her limp fingers, skidding into the dark.
Pain shot down her shoulder as it struck the masonry.
An instant later, the burning beam crashed onto the exact spot she had just been standing. The deck planks shattered like glass under the weight, collapsing inward into the roiling black water below.
Muire gasped for air, her lungs burning.
The heavy body pinning her to the stone shifted, bracing.
A broad, scarred hand pressed flat against the stone right beside her cheek, trapping her.
In the sudden, suffocating proximity, she was acutely aware of everything about him.
The massive breadth of his chest, the scratch of his heavy wool kilt against her bare shins, and the scent of leather and cold rain cutting through the choking smoke.
She turned her head, her breath hitching.
It was the man from the crates.
Up close, his features were sharp, hard-carved, and forbidding.
His jaw was clamped tight, a dark stubble shadowing his face.
His grey-blue eyes weren't looking at her; they were moving with terrifying speed across the burning docks, calculating every exit and tracing the movement of the fleeing crowds.
He wasn't panicking. He was reading the chaos like a map.
"Are ye hurt?" His voice was a low, gravelly rasp, vibrating against her chest.
Muire rolled her shoulder against the stone. It throbbed, but the bone was whole. "Nay," she breathed, straightening her spine. "Me faither. He was by the main line."
"Which direction?"
She pointed through the roiling smoke. Before her hand could even drop, he had grabbed her uninjured arm and was moving, cutting a path through the heat. She had no choice but to follow.
The harbor had dissolved into hell in a matter of moments. The wind off the water fed the flames, driving the fire through pitch-treated wood with terrifying speed. Shapes moved blindly through the dark smoke. The skin on Muire’s face blistered from the heat.
The stranger moved through the panic like an iron plow. When a knot of frantic dockworkers blocked their path, he simply turned his shoulder and shoved forward. The men took one look at his face and parted instantly.
Muire noted the submission with a chill, keeping close to his heels.