Another body drifted farther out, this one a woman—one of the ship’s cooks, perhaps, or a passenger—her hair spread around her like seaweed.
A third bobbed in the current, and my stomach lurched. I recognized the man. He was one of the sailors I’d seen from the tavern, one of the officers who had sat while the hooded figure spoke of attacks and targets and commitment to a cause I still couldn’t name. The man’s eyes were open, staring at nothing, his fine clothes were scorched, and his mouth hung slack in an expression of surprise, as if death had come too quickly to process.
You are either with us or you become targets.
He had been with them, yet they killed him anyway. Or perhaps the ship itself was the target, and he was considered an acceptable loss, collateral damage in a war that did not care about individuals.
I tore my gaze away and choked down bile.
Hideous smoke continued to rise from where the ship had been, marking its grave.
Near the bucket brigade’s abandoned position, someone pulled bodies from the water. Goro was there, helping drag a burned man onto the dock. The man was alive—barely, his skin red and blistered, weeping fluid. He kept screaming, a thin, contemptuous sound like an animal in a trap. I knew I would hear his cries in my dreams for many nights to come.
“Get a physician!” someone shouted.
But there were too many injured, too many dying, and I doubted there were enough physicians in Bara to tend to them all, even if they came.
Goro looked up and saw me watching. His expression was hollow and haunted in ways I never imagined the friendly man could appear. He shook his head slowly, as if to say,This ismadness. This is all madness.Then he turned back to the burned man and tried to offer what comfort he could.
A wet shroud of silence fell over the docks, smothering and constricting rather than comforting. It was that strange, hollow silence that followed violence. Men gaped, trying to process what they had just witnessed.
Then the shouting began.
Questions. Accusations. Panic.
“What in the hells happened?”
“. . . an accident?”
“I heard . . . like gunpowder going up—”
“Sabotage! It had to be sabotage!”
Movement erupted across the harbor, not the organized chaos of fighting a fire, but something more frantic. More desperate.
On the ship berthed next to the destroyed vessel, sailors were already casting off lines. Its captain stood on deck, shouting orders, his face pale, his eyes burning brighter than the flames had moments ago.
“Get those moorings loose! Now!”
A sailor tried to protest, “But we’re not fully loaded—”
“I don’t care! Fucking cast off or swim home!”
The crew scrambled, and within minutes, the ship was pulling away from the dock, its sails only half raised, leaving cargo and revenue behind in their haste to escape.
Two berths over, another captain did the same, his vessel lurching away from the dock with an urgency that nearly capsized a rowboat in its path.
“Where are you going?” the dockmaster shouted up at the fleeing ship.
“South!” the captain called back. “Away from this cursed city! Away from your fucking war!”
A third ship followed. Then a fourth.
I watched the exodus, as captains who had been unloading cargo or taking on supplies now abandoned everything. Some left crew members behind on the docks, men who had been ashore when the decision was made. Those men stood staring after their departing ships, suddenly stranded in a city that was eating itself alive.
“Cowards!” someone yelled after them.
But more voices joined in agreement with the fleeing captains: “This harbor isn’t safe anymore!”
