Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
"Da!"
The smoke rolled back with a thicker, suffocating malice near the warehouse line, fed by the dry pitch and timber still burning inside the collapsed storage wall.
Muire pressed forward through the haze, her arm locked across her nose and mouth as her eyes streamed with hot tears from the acrid air.
Ahead, a line of Mackenzie guards was forcefully shoving the crowd back, carving out a loose cordon between the public pier and the treacherous, groaning skeleton of the warehouse structure.
She had to weave sharply twice around clusters of men who had frozen in terror to stare at the burning beams suspended overhead, glowing orange and black like the ribs of some massive, dying beast.
She coughed, shouting over the din, "Tamhas Fairfield!"
A young dock boy, no older than fourteen, pointed a trembling finger toward the left pier without being asked. Muire lunged in that direction, breaking through a pocket of grey fog, and found him.
Tamhas was down on both knees beside a crushed section of shelving.
His large, calloused hands were locked around a blackened oak beam that had pinned a younger dockworker’s legs to the planks.
A second worker was straining from the opposite side, but the wood wouldn't budge.
Her father's face was dangerously crimson, his jaw locked, his coat long gone. His shirt was completely soaked through with sweat, and a darker, blooming stain at his shoulder that made Muire’s throat instantly constrict.
"I'm here." She dropped heavily into the soot beside him, digging her fingers beneath the rough timber. "I've got it, on three, Da."
He didn't waste a breath arguing with her. "Three!"
They heaved together with a synchronized, desperate burst of strength.
The pinned worker dragged himself free with a raw, agonizing cry just as the beam crashed back down onto the planks.
Tamhas sat back hard on his heels, his head bowed as he drew in ragged, wheezing gasps of air.
Muire slammed her hand against his back, feeling the violent tremors racking his broad frame.
"Yer shoulder," she breathed, her voice concerned.
"It's naethin’, lass."
"It isnae naethin’, it's bleeding through." She scrambled around his side to inspect the wound. The thick fabric of his linen shirt had been shredded from the cap of his shoulder halfway down his arm. Beneath the threads, the gash wasn't deep, but it was jagged and weeping a steady stream of red.
Muire grabbed the hem of her own sleeve, tearing a strip of the cloth, and pressed it firmly against the cut. Tamhas hissed through his teeth, his spine jerking straight.
"I've had worse than this," he grunted.
She kept her palms pinned flat against the wound, refusing to lessen the pressure.
Around them, the perimeter had tightened to a chokehold.
The organized, militaristic cadence of Mackenzie commands echoed down the smoke-choked line.
Sealing the exits, segregating the damaged cargo, holding every surviving hand for immediate questioning.
Muire looked past her father’s shoulder, scanning the blackened ruin of the loading area.
The burned crates had been dragged into rough, separate piles away from the uninjured goods.
Heavy-set Mackenzie men were picking through the ash with a quiet, lethal deliberation.
Not the chaotic scrambling of merchants saving their livelihood, but the methodical sweep of hounds sniffing out a specific scent.
Near the gaping mouth of the southern warehouse, three barrels had been abruptly roped off and aggressively slashed with white chalk.
A fourth barrel sat just a few yards apart from the cluster.
Muire’s eyes narrowed as she recognized the markings carved into the wood.
It wasn't the Mackenzie stag. It wasn't the mark of any merchant house that had ever crossed her father's ledger.
It was a series of deep, crude notches arranged in a pattern that mimicked a trade brand but wasn't. The proportions were entirely wrong, the spacing too deliberate, like a secret language etched into the staves.
They were the exact same markings she had spotted on the barrels being quietly redirected right before the fire started.
A local harbor official approached the lone barrel, a heavy iron pry tool raised in his grip.
But before the metal could bite into the hoop, a shadow detached itself from the remaining smoke.
The man stepped directly into the official's path, murmuring a short, low command.
The official froze. Without another word, the stranger gripped the top ring of the barrel and rolled it quietly, smoothly, back into the shadows of an adjacent, intact stone alleyway.
The official simply watched him disappear into the dark, his pry tool lowering to his side. He made no move to follow.
Muire stared at the empty space where the evidence had just vanished.
"The markings on those staves," she murmured, the words slipping from her lips before she could catch them.
"What markings?"
She flinched, spinning around. Roddy had materialized directly behind them without making a single sound.
A feat that should have been physically impossible for a man of his size, yet there he stood.
He was barely three feet away, his grey-blue eyes already locked onto the exact alleyway where the barrel had vanished. He had seen it too.
"The ones on the barrels being wheeled away before the first blast," she said, watching his hard profile for any flicker of reaction.
"I noticed them before everything went up.
And on the ones yer men just roped off." She stepped closer, her voice dropping below the roar of the remaining flames.
"That man who just took the fourth one, is he one of yers, Laird? "
A pause followed. It was a fraction of a second, so brief she would have missed it if she hadn't been watching the rigid line of his jaw.
"Nay," Roddy said flatly.
She snapped her gaze back to the alley. It was completely empty now. Both the man and the mysterious cargo had unmade themselves in the dark. The harbor official had already turned on his heel, casually scratching a note into his parchment as if nothing had occurred.
Beside her, Tamhas grunted, attempting to heave himself to his feet. His knees buckled instantly. He reeled sideways, catching himself heavily against Muire’s good shoulder. She took his full weight, her boots sliding slightly in the soot as she strained to keep them both upright.
Roddy was there before she could slip. His massive, gloved hand shot out, clamping around Tamhas’s uninjured arm and stabilizing him before the older man could crash back into the dirt. Tamhas looked up at the laird, his weathered face in pain.
"There is a healer at the castle," Roddy stated, his voice an unyielding baritone. "I'll have her see to the both of ye."
"We're nae yer concern, me laird," Muire said quickly, forcing her tone to remain perfectly even, hiding the sudden flutter in her chest at his physical proximity. "Ye've done more than enough on the pier. We can see ourselves back to our own hearth."
"Yer faither cannae walk the length of this dock without limping, lass."
"He'll manage."
Tamhas turned his head, leveling a look at her that she knew intimately.
"I'm nae asking," Roddy said. He didn't look at her; his focus remained entirely on Tamhas, a deliberate choice that made Muire's skin prickle with frustration. "I'm offering. The horses are already being brought to the slipway."
Muire looked down at her father's shoulder, watching the fresh crimson continue to stain the white linen she held.
She looked at his pale face, seeing how his weight had yet to fully return to his own limbs.
Then she looked around the ruined dock—the iron cordon of guards, the strange barrels, a devastating fire that had been deliberately set, and a thief who had walked away with evidence while an official willfully looked the other way.
Finally, she looked up at Roddy.
He was waiting. There was no impatience in his broad stance, no heat in his grey-blue eyes. He simply stood over them like a mountain.
"Fine," she said.
When the horses arrived, she flatly refused the assistance of a Mackenzie groom.
Roddy leaned against his mount's saddle, watching in silence as she managed to guide Tamhas onto the horse herself. He saw the sharp, involuntary catch in her breath, the way her left shoulder hitched as she compensated for the deep ache from her collision with the stone wall.
She shifted the angle of her lift, her jaw locked hard, refusing to acknowledge the pain. She was the sort of woman who would accept a man's help exactly once before deciding she'd rather bleed out than ask a second time. He had already used that single allowance on the pier.
He swung himself into his saddle with fluid ease and gave the sharp hand signal to move out.
The trek from the smoking harbor up the steep ridges to Mackenzie Castle wasn't long, but the trail climbed aggressively against the cliffs. The wind whipped off the water, biting and cold, cutting straight through their damp clothes and carrying the bitter stench of soot that clung to their skin.
Roddy kept his stallion exactly one length behind Tamhas’s mount, close enough to lunge if the older man lost his seat, yet far enough to afford him the dignity of the ride.
Muire rode beside her father. Her green eyes flicked continuously between the rocky path ahead and the pale lines of Tamhas’s profile in a steady, protective rhythm.
It was a practiced vigilance; she had looked after this man for a long time.
She was measuring his strength without letting him see her do it.
Roddy shifted his gaze to the horizon before she could catch him watching her.
His vanguard rode in a protective wall at their flanks and rear.
Two of his best scouts had stayed behind at the slipway to finish the sweep.
The barrel was gone, the markings were a mystery, and the harbor official who had allowed a thief to slip away would be locked in a stone room with Edwyn before the sun dipped below the peaks, whether the bastard willed it or not.
Six men.
Six saboteurs had laid those fires, someone within the territory had orchestrated the movement of the unmarked barrels beforehand, and someone far more powerful had watched the pieces fall from outside his borders.
The strategy wasn't entirely unfamiliar.
He had seen the shape of it in smaller skirmishes over the years.
Trade blockades, route disruptions, the systematic intimidation of merchant houses.
He simply hadn't deduced who possessed the coin and the malice to execute it at this scale. Or why they had chosen now to strike.
But he had his suspicions.
The massive iron-reinforced gates of Mackenzie Castle groaned open as they approached the lower courtyard. Before the horses had even come to a full halt against the cobbles, three of his household staff were already moving toward Tamhas.
Roddy dismounted, tossing his reins to a young groom without looking, and strode over to Tamhas's stirrup.
"Can ye walk?" he asked.
"Aye." Tamhas proved it, sliding carefully from the leather. He stood upright on the stones, though his jaw clamped so hard the muscle bunched under his skin.
Muire was already on the ground from the opposite side, her hands instantly hovering near her father's coat, her face smoothed into that same fierce, guarded neutrality. She wasn't going to let an ounce of panic show in front of the man she was trying to protect.
"The healer," Roddy commanded, addressing the nearest servant. "Tamhas Fairfield first. Then see to the lass." He kept his eyes forward, deliberately sparing them both the inevitable argument she would have waged.
Behind him, he heard her draw a sharp, sudden breath that was very nearly a vocal protest. Then, she slowly let it go.
The servants gently guided them through the massive timber doors. Roddy remained standing alone in the center of the damp courtyard, listening to the heavy rattle of the iron gates closing shut behind them. The castle was locking down. Edwyn was at the pier. His sentries were on the walls.
He turned and strode into the shadows of the keep.
The healer's quarters lay off the eastern corridor, the air thick and warm with the competing scents of dried lavender, crushed cloves, and burning tallow candles.
When Roddy passed the open threshold, Tamhas was already seated on a low stool, his shirt stripped away as a pair of capable, elderly hands examined the long gash on his shoulder.
Muire sat on a bench across the room, tucked into the shadows. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her ribs, not from the chill of the stone, but in the rigid posture of someone holding themselves together by sheer force of will.
He noticed the clean, shallow red line slicing along her jaw. He had watched the steel bite into her on the dock. It would heal without leaving a scar on her skin.
The healer finished binding Tamhas and turned her focus toward the bench. Muire submitted to the prodding. But when the healer gently peeled back the torn linen of Muire’s own sleeve, the amount of dark crimson drying against her skin was far greater than the fabric had suggested.
Muire looked down at her own arm, her green eyes widening slightly with a faint, detached surprise, as though her flesh had managed to fare worse than she had allowed herself to calculate.
Roddy stepped back from the doorway, retreating down the dim corridor until he was hidden from her line of sight, though his gaze remained fixed through the archway.
He reminded himself why he had brought them within his walls.
He had brought them here because the old man required stitches, because the girl was bleeding, because his harbor was compromised, and because he had no guarantee that the bastards who set that fire wouldn't return to silence the only merchant sharp enough to notice the unmarked barrels moving in the dark.
That was the only reason.
He stopped at the turn of the stone stairwell, his palm pressing flat against the freezing, unyielding masonry of his castle.
That was all it was.