“I’m glad you feel that way,” Corbin said with a hollow smile. “I didn’t really like you living in Bart’s house. Where the devil is Holder?”
I dipped the hem of Corbin’s shirt into the bucket and wiped some of the soot off his sweaty face. “Did you send him to rouse the town?”
“Yes. And to bring back my crew to fight the fire. He should be here by—”
A shout interrupted him. I sighed with relief when I saw Holder lope toward us, but that relief died when Corbin frowned.
“Where the hell is my crew?” he asked me, then yelled that question to Holder.
“Asleep,” he answered, grabbing his side, stopping in front of us to double over.
“God… need… start jogging again… out of shape…”
“Asleep?” Corbin asked, his scowl almost as black as the smoke. “Why didn’t you wake them?”
“Couldn’t,” Holder panted. “Tried. Drugged. All of ‘em. All over the floor at the whorehouse. Think it was the rum.”
“All of them?” Corbin yelled.
“Yes.”
“Renata,” I said, remembering my suspicions about her. “It had to be Renata.
She drugged them.”
“More likely was Bart,” Corbin said grimly, grabbing a shovel from one of the men returning with tools. “Amy, you go down to the town and see what you can do about getting us some help. If we want to save the town, we’re going to have to have a lot more help.”
“I could help dig trenches—” I started to say. Corbin flickered a glance toward my bloody, blistered hands. “Right. I’ll go get everyone who’s able to wield a shovel or axe. Bas! You come with me. I need your speedy legs.”
Corbin held a quick conference with the firebreak workers to explain where he wanted the fire stopped. Bas got to his feet and limped toward me. I plunged both hands into the bucket of water Corbin had abandoned, biting back a scream of anguish at the feel of water on the open wounds, splashing a bit of it on my face.
“You ready?” I asked Bas as he stopped next to me. I frowned at something missing. “Where’s Bran?”
“Got him here,” he said, pulling open his hand-me-down jacket. “Didn’t want him to get burned.”
Inside the jacket, tucked into an inner pocket, Bran was snuggled up safe. The bird squawked a couple of times, bobbing his head as he always did in greeting.
“Oh. Good place for him. Come on, we’ve got people to wake up. I’ll take the north side of town, and you can do the—holy crap, what was that?”
We had just reached the gates when a massive blast shook the ground, the sound of it so palpable, it could be felt as well as heard.
Behind me, feet thudded on the grass.
“What the bloody hell—” Holder asked as he, Corbin, and a handful of other men burst from around the back of the house.
“Earthquake?” I asked, having definitely felt the ground tremble.
“Cannons,” Corbin answered, his face grim. He pointed toward the harbor, barely visible through the smoke as a slightly lighter black patch on a field of ebony.
“Cannons? Someone is firing cannons now?”
“Not firing,” Corbin yelled, throwing down his shovel as he jumped forward.
“Blowing them up. Bart’s attacking the town.”
Chapter 25
I’m telling a terrible story,
