The sky above the north quarter of Harth turned the color of bruised iron and sulfur smoke.
Incendiary shells—heavy clay jars packed with rendered animal fat, crude naphtha, and ground charcoal—curved through the grey clouds on long, whistling paths. They did not burst with the neat precision of royal ordnance. They shattered against the wet slate roofs of the tannery quarter, spraying sheets of sticky, greenish-yellow fire that clung to wet cedar shingles and washed down into the eaves.
Within ten minutes, three timber sheds along the lower wharf were roaring with oily flames, sending thick plumes of black, greasy smoke drifting across the river.
Jon Hale hauled a heavy wooden crate of steel-tipped crossbow quarrels across the slick flagstones of the bridge tower, his boots finding purchase in the muddy silt that had washed over the quay. The air tasted of burning pine resin and river silt, stinging his eyes until tears blurred the outline of the north battlements.
Below him, along the flooded streets of the wharf ward, civilian fire-gangs were already moving in disciplined, rhythmic lines.
Apprentice coopers and weaver women, their hair wrapped in wet wool rags, passed leather buckets of river water hand to hand from the docks to the burning sheds. There was no screaming, no wild panic in the lanes. Under Bessa Karr’s meticulous municipal logistics, forty iron-banded water cisterns had been filled to the brim at dawn, and sixty loads of river sand sat in dry bins at every street corner. When…
