There! Yes, there on the far side of the harbor, at the end of a long arm of pier, sat stacks of drums. He knew them by their color: bright red. Hundreds of them. There was activity at the pier next to it, but the area around the barrels was deserted. Calmly, trying to think slower than the pulse beating in his throat, Dariel steered across the harbor, turned and angled in, coming to the docks on the far side, so that they would be sheltered somewhat from view.

Once docked and tied secure, Dariel turned to the waiting crew. “This is it. The pitch in these barrels makes an unholy fire. It’ll blast that soul catcher to pieces and leave a fire that’ll burn for days there. The more barrels we can get, the better. Let’s go, quickly but calmly.”

They could not be sure that the league used the people as laborers yet. Since slaves kept by the Lothan Aklun weren’t necessarily adorned in the same ways, those with the most noticeable signs of “belonging” stayed hidden. Skylene, Tunnel, the two others of the Kern clan, and Birké crouched on the far side of the deck. Under Dariel’s direction, the others began the work of shifting the barrels from the pier to the boat.

The next pier over seemed to be closer each time Dariel glanced at it. Fortunately, the boat moored there was on the far side, and the attention was thus directed away from them. A group of Ishtat Inspectorate guards stepped off the vessel and stood for a time talking beside it. Dariel kept up the motions of loading and securing, but he watched them every chance he got. He just caught the scent of the mist pipe one of them was smoking. Enjoy it, he thought. Just relax and enjoy the pipe and don’t turn around.

The barrels were heavy enough that they had to be tilted and rolled along on their rims, and then carefully leaned from the dock into the hands on board the ship waiting for them. This last move in particular needed to be done slowly, as demonstrated when Tam let a drum loose too soon. It crashed down on the edge of the deck and teetered a moment. Then it fell back against the pier and splashed into the harbor’s gray waters.

“Forget it,” Dariel said. “Keep going.”

“I’m sorry,” Tam said. “I thought—”

“It’s floating,” another observed.

Dariel cursed. There was no retrieving it, as it bobbed under the pier, just out of reach. “Leave it,” he said, hoping it would stay trapped among the pier’s many pylons. Tam continued to apologize, but Dariel cut him off, not as kindly as Skylene had been with him earlier. “Just keep working. Try to look like you know what you’re doing.”