The refugee harbour is burning in a fire that Tirad doesn’t know how it was ignited. The iron gates and stonewalls of the island will not let the flames get in to the land. The wooden patches, plastic floatables and ragged sailcloths are in bright flames, the women and children are suffocating and burning or throwing themselves into the water. Oxan has torched them alive ruthlessly; they probably wouldn’t save them from drowning. Pieces of burnt wood and molten plastic fall around hitting the heads of the children who try treading the water and swim away from the deadly incident. A couple of boats sail from the main docks to the flaming refugee harbour, but they can’t get close. They must have sailed to collect the women and children from the sea surface. And then what? Would Oxan let them in or throw them back into the water or the flames? The Oxan and Saviour negotiations with the refugees has ended before getting started, so easy and quick and without any need for planning, scheduling and with no cost! Starting a fire on the harbour was not too difficult, finding someone to take the fall for it was and who better than Tirad to take the blame? They would say he had set the harbour on fire, stolen the coins and a boat and fled. Dalia had told the truth and the incident had unravelled.

“Did you know?” Tirad shouts, turning towards the boatman. But he is not there! Narivan sees him swimming away from the boat. He must have finally untied his hands and feet and escaped while they were shockingly watching the fire. He is going towards the burning flames. Tirad looks around to where he had put his bag and coins. The boatman didn’t have the time to take them with him. But he doesn’t know whether the boatman had taken the five hundred coins of the advanced payment with him or not. They will need the coins to buy food and fuel. He knows very well that he has lost this round to Mart. He can’t go back to Oxan and he can’t get to the Saviour Island with this amount of fuel. The horrific assassination of the Saviour Ship will probably happen very soon, before Tirad can get his hands on enough fuel to sail there. Everything had played out to Mart’s favour so far. They have no other way to go now. Narivan sits behind the wheel and turns on the engine upon Tirad’s command. Dalia is still staring at the flaming horizon. The fire has devoured whatever it could find on the surface, from wood, fabric, flesh and skin. It can find no more and is slowly dying out. It will be the sea’s turn, taking its share from the fire. The sea will engorge the flames first and then the bodies of the burned and drowned. The land is next in the line, embracing the swollen corpses on its shores the morning after.