The enemy fell back, not because they were beaten, but because they had learned enough.

  Smoke drifted between the warehouses in slow sheets. The fires still burned. The forges still rang. Somewhere beyond the first line of buildings, men were counting losses and deciding what came next.

  Drew realized his hands were shaking only when he tried to lower them.

  “You didn’t freeze,” Diego said.

  Drew blinked. “I…”

  Diego cut him off with a small shake of his head. “Most people do. First real fight. First push. They lock up. Or they run.”

  He gestured toward the shattered glass and the scorch marks on the stone.

  “You stayed where you needed to be. You used what you had.”

  A pause.

  “You didn’t make it worse.”

  Diego met his eyes, expression unchanged.

  “You’re not a fighter. But you didn’t get anyone killed by panicking.”

  Then, quieter:

  “For a first time, that’s acceptable.”

  Drew let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Thanks.”

  The reality of it began to settle in, too fast, too heavy. He shook his head hard, as if he could dislodge the images crowding behind his eyes.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Diego looked around at the exhausted defenders, the bodies piled where they’d fallen, then up toward the keep where the last of the organ guns sat recessed in stone.

  “We hold,” he said. “Until they regroup. Or until reinforcements arrive.”

  He turned. “Come.”

  Diego led him into the overcrowded bastion, past a makeshift field hospital and into a hall lined with wounded and the newly still.

  “Sit. Rest while you can.”

  Drew’s legs finally gave out as the adrenaline bled away, his limbs turning to lead. He slid down the cold stone wall and fell into terror filled dreams.

  Drew woke with a sharp inhale.

  For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Then his eyes found the narrow, recessed windows high in the stone wall. Sunlight spilled through them in steady, unhurried bands.

  Not dawn.

  Midday.

  His stomach dropped. How long had he been out?

  He pushed himself upright too fast, pulse racing then stopped.

  The keep felt wrong.

  The crowded hallways from the night before were nearly empty now. A few people moved with quiet purpose, not urgency. No shouted orders. No running feet.

  He stepped through the open keep doors.

  The sounds of distant combat still carried on the wind. Muted. Irregular. Far enough away to feel unreal. Outside, crews worked methodically, hauling carts through cleared paths. Bodies had been dragged aside and stacked without ceremony, marked with stakes to keep them from being mistaken for the living.

  This wasn’t panic.

  This was cleanup.

  A young clerk hurried toward him, breathless but composed.

  “Mr. Wilson, please come with me. Leonor sent me- Factor Leonor. She asked to see you immediately.”

  Drew frowned. “Are we still under attack?”

  The clerk shook her head, almost smiling. “Not here.”

  She lowered her voice as they started walking.

  “There was a major engagement at Thren’s Reach last night. When word reached Deadwake, the coalition fractured. The forces that broke contact didn’t regroup.”

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  “Then what did they do?” Drew asked.

  “They scattered,” she said. “Some fled. Others began sacking other islands. Warehouses. Smaller docks. Places without fortifications.”

  She glanced back at him. “Leonor says the attackers learned two things. That Thren’s Reach wouldn’t fall quickly. And that Thren’s holdings here are too costly to attack head-on.”

  Drew slowed. “So they’re… burning everything else.”

  “Yes,” the clerk said simply.

  Relief flooded Drew.

  Selfish, bitter relief.

  Then the shame hit, hot and immediate.

  The attackers couldn’t get them so they were off pillaging others. What world the Looming Drift was.

  Drew was led to a ransacked office in a warehouse. Several crates substituted for the broken table along the wall.

  Leonor didn’t waste time on greetings.

  “We didn’t win last night,” she said, spreading a rough map across the table. Stones and carved markers already dotted its surface. “We survived. Most other factions splintered.”

  She tapped the outer ring of islands.

  “The coalition fleets broke when Thren’s Reach held. Once they realized the keep wasn’t falling, they scattered. Not retreat. Scavenging.” Her finger moved, quick and precise. “Half the outer islands were sacked before dawn. Warehouses emptied. Crews taken. A few burned for spite.”

  Drew swallowed. “But the attack stopped.”

  “It redirected,” Leonor said flatly. “Which is worse.”

  She slid a marker off the map entirely.

  “Most fleets are gone. The Black Ledger, the Azure Knives, the Free Masts. They took what they could carry and ran. Only the Crimson Wake stayed intact.”

  Rafael’s name went unspoken. It didn’t need to be said.

  “The markets heard the fighting before the smoke cleared,” Leonor continued. “Coin is freezing. Contracts are being voided. No one knows who controls what anymore, so they’re assuming the worst.”

  She finally looked at Drew.

  “Deadwake cannot stabilize itself alone. Not fast enough.”

  She turned the map, revealing the Golden Ledger’s holdings marked in careful ink.

  “We need coordination. Supply corridors. Public reassurances that trade will continue. That requires the Ledger.” A pause. “And they will not listen to me.”

  Drew frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because I represent force,” Leonor said. “And right now, force looks unstable.”

  Her gaze sharpened.

  “You represent production.”

  She leaned back.

  “Isabela trusts you. More importantly, her faction believes your new ships keep them alive through winter.” Leonor’s tone hardened. “You will act as liaison. You will speak for Deadwake’s capacity to rebuild, not its appetite for revenge.”

  “And Rafael?” Drew asked carefully.

  Leonor’s mouth tightened by a fraction.

  “Captain Esteban Pérez is dead. The Crimson Wake is a problem I will handle,” she said. “Your task is to prevent panic from becoming collapse.”

  She gathered the markers in one smooth motion.

  “If we fail,” she added, already standing, “Deadwake fractures. Nueva Trujillo steps in to ‘restore order.’ And no one here will like the terms.”

  She paused at the door.

  “Congratulations, Drew Wilson. You’re no longer just an engineer.”

  Drew trudged through the looted streets of Deadwake.

  He wore a plain worker’s coat, the kind that vanished into crowds. Beside him walked the Ledger Auditor Leonor had sent, similarly dressed, head down. Together they blended in with palanquin bearers and soldiers moving through the wreckage.

  The windvine pole bit into Drew’s shoulder far more than it had any right to. Sweat ran down his spine as they navigated shattered stone and overturned carts. He promised himself he would never again take being carried for granted.

  Church bells rang without pause, their sound overlapping from island to island until it became a constant, anxious drone.

  As they moved closer to the inner islands, civilians stopped hiding. Shutters flew open. Voices followed.

  “Bloody cowards!” a man shouted from an upper window. “Sending the Crimson Wake to do your fighting for you!”

  Another voice joined him. Then another.

  But the insults thinned as they pressed on.

  “We will work!” someone yelled, suddenly desperate. “Cargo, hauling, anything!”

  A woman pushed through a half-collapsed doorway, clutching a shawl. “My son went with the Venture Coalition,” she cried. “He hasn’t come home. Has anyone seen him?”

  “They took my crew,” a dockhand shouted. “Took the ships and left us nothing!”

  Hands reached out from the edges of the street. Not in anger now, but pleading.

  “Please,” someone sobbed. “Just tell us who’s in charge.”

  The soldiers kept the crowd back, hands firm on pike hafts and shields.

  The mothers’ cries cut through Drew anyway.

  Drew looked down at his hands.

  Clean. Steady.

  He remembered loading the crossbow. The mechanical rhythm of it. Crank. Slot. Aim. Fire. Repeat. He’d done it so many times it had stopped feeling like choice.

  His fingers twitched.

  He pressed his palms against his thighs, willing them to stop shaking.

  He had killed yesterday.

  The realization landed harder than the noise of battle ever had. He saw it again, the man collapsing, gut-shot by the crossbow. The woman, frozen for half a heartbeat too long before she fell dead. The way it had all happened so fast.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, as if he could dislodge the images.

  Ametzu had died just as quickly.

  And he had nearly followed him.

  Drew forced himself to straighten. Whatever he felt, whatever he had done, there was no space for it here. Not now.

  He lowered his head and kept walking.

  As their group neared the Golden Ledger island, the streets thickened with bodies. What had been scattered knots of onlookers condensed into a moving press, voices rising until the soldiers were forced to shove and shoulder a path forward.

  The square ahead was already choking.

  Cargo frames squatted uselessly in the open plaza, sails furled, keels scraping stone where they had been dragged down and abandoned. Crews clustered around them, shouting over contracts that had lost their meaning overnight. Seals were waved like talismans. Ledgers were thrust into faces that no longer cared.

  “No one’s honoring it!” a man screamed. “You can’t just—”

  As they crested the bridge into the square, another voice cut through everything.

  “I’m ruined!”

  A man vaulted the railing without hesitation. He vanished into the open air between islands, swallowed by the crowd below before the scream could even finish.

  Drew froze.

  Further down the embankment, two women stood locked hand to hand. They didn’t shout. They didn’t look back. They stepped forward together.

  The soldiers pushed harder after that.

  Their path toward the Golden Ledger clearing house painted in bright yellow. A pair of debt collectors were laying into a man and a woman with short bludgeons, blows measured, practiced. When Thren’s banner loomed close, they didn’t stop. They simply dragged their charges aside, clearing the way like furniture.

  The beating continued behind them, uninterrupted.

  Drew’s mind couldn’t even process the pandemonium and he was here to secure an alliance? He swallowed and was ushered past the briefly unbarred doors with the Ledger Auditor.

  Inside grave faces of soldiers nailing planks to the windows set about their work. Clerks and scribes rushed about arms full of sheets and books.

  A harried woman approached “Drew Wilson I presume?” Drew nodded. “Follow me Chief Factor Marisol Ríos is expecting you.”

  Drew took one last look at the square outside.

  Deadwake was already tearing itself apart.