Lyra wasn't just angry.
She was incandescent.
I'd seen her fight. I'd seen focus, calculation, even the ruthless efficiency war makes of good people. But this—this was different. This was a sun that didn't light so much as consume. A storm with its jaw unhinged.
I wanted to stop her. I wanted to let her finish it. There wasn't time for either.
"Stay with her," I told Revik, eyes never leaving the chaos at the docks. "Keep her from losing herself."
He didn't argue. He ran.
Muir's gaze caught mine across the fog-wet alley. No words. The merchant was running. If Lyra's fury was a wildfire behind us, then the fastest mercy left was to end this quickly.
We took the alleys at a sprint, boots slapping through puddles that reflected the orange sway of the burning ship. The dock district knotted into switchbacks of slick wood and stacked crates, the air thick with fish brine and smoke. Ahead, the merchant's lantern bobbed like a dying star—faltering, stumbling, fear dragging at his heels.
His stragglers tried to be brave. The first glanced back. Muir's answer was a crack of cold: ice bloomed in the man's throat, frost dusted his lips, and he folded without a sound. The next peeled off right; my blade met the ribs he opened to me and slid in clean before grinding on bone when I twisted. He collapsed at my feet, more breath than man.
Two more turned to make a stand—panic instead of discipline. Muir rooted one in place, a lattice of ice racing up his legs and shattering him into glittering pieces. The other swung wide and angry. I let him. Step in, pivot, one stroke—his neck opened in a red smile across the alley wall.
Then only the merchant remained, cornered where the lane dead-ended at a blank stack of stone.
He flattened himself to it, panting, knuckles white on the gold head of a cane that had never once done a day of work. Perfume clung to him under the stink of terror.
I lowered my sword but didn't sheath it. "I told you. We just need to talk."
He tried to square his shoulders. "You think I'll hand over anything you ask?" he rasped. "Do you have any idea who I serve?"
"Not for much longer," I said.
A crack went through the posture. Rage fluttered, then guttered. He clawed at the wall like it could open for him. Muir watched with the idle curiosity he gave rare birds—pretty, doomed, not worth saving.
"Pathetic," Muir murmured.
I was stepping in—wrist, shoulder, pressure, the work beginning—when a black flicker hissed past my jaw. A dagger thudded into flesh with the heavy sound of true hurt.
The merchant screamed. The blade had pinned his palm to the stone. He tore himself free, shredding meat, then crumpled to the cobbles, cradling the ruin of his hand.
Lyra stepped into the mouth of the alley.
The fire was gone, but it had left itself behind. Ember-rimmed eyes. Smoke in the angle of her throat. Her steps were measured: not the stagger of rage, but the click of intention.
"Lyra," I said, softer than I meant to.
She didn't look at me. She crouched in front of the merchant, daggers loose as if her hands had been made for them. He tried to scoot back and found only wall. His breath chittered.
She tilted her head, studying him like a problem. Then, with slow, deliberate care, she slid both blades into his knees.
The sound he made wasn't human.
Muir didn't joke. He didn't move. I kept my face still. Horror wastes energy; mercy is a language not everyone gets.
Lyra twisted the steel—once, twice—and drew it out. Blood ran down his shins into the cracks in the cobble. He sagged onto his back, panting, the whites of his eyes all that was left of him.
"Lyra," I said again, her name a line I was throwing across a widening gap.
She turned. No apology lived there. No triumph. Just a cold purpose that made something in me ache with equal parts pride and dread.
"What?" she asked, voice flat. She flicked red off one blade. "He's still alive, isn't he?"
He doesn't deserve to be. She didn't have to say it.
"We need what's in his head," I said.
Her jaw worked once; the daggers dipped a fraction. Over the roofs, the ship crackled and roared, a wind-fed beast. To our left, steel clashed on steel—Revik holding whatever hadn't died clean the first time.
A window banged open somewhere above us. Voices, distant at first, then multiplying: shutters clacking, dogs barking, a woman's harsh "Who's there?" The night waking up to blood.
The merchant found breath. "Mon—monster," he spat, eyes fixed on Lyra. "Crazy cunt. Street filth. I'll see you on a hook—"
He didn't finish.
I stepped in and hit him once across the jaw. A whisper of lightning rode my knuckles—just enough to stun. His eyes rolled; silence dropped onto the alley like a lid.
Muir exhaled. "Neighbors seem lively," he said, tone sanded down to practical. "We should be uglier elsewhere."
"Bind him," I said. "Hands tight. Knees will keep him humble."
Lyra rocked back on her heels and stood. For a breath she swayed—not from weakness but from something inward and heavy, as if heat still moved in her bones with no place to go. When she looked at me, I saw it: a shadow behind the eyes. Something else was there.
Lights flared in windows. More voices. A man shouted for guards; another for his wife to get away from the sill.
"Right," Revik said, stepping into the alley's mouth, blade bloody and boots darker. He took us in—the merchant slack on the stones, Lyra standing over him like a verdict—and tried for wry. "If the goal was subtle, I'd rate us a generous three."
Even he couldn't make it land. His gaze hooked on Lyra, then slid to me. Tight, questioning.
"Move," I said. "East stairs. We'll take the cut behind the cooper's yard."
We worked fast. Muir trussed the merchant like cargo, gag tight, wrists and elbows bound, rope crossing his chest to keep the arms dead. He hissed once when Muir jostled his knees and earned a cheerful, "Oh, sorry, darling," that fooled no one.
We were two steps from lifting him when a sound found us—small, animal, wrong.
Lyra's head snapped toward it. The corner of the alley opened onto the wider dock and, beyond the fog, the ruined wagon. Snow steamed where fire had licked it. A thin shape stood in that torn light, shackles still around twig-thin wrists. Her dress was little more than rags; her hair clung in damp ropes to her face.
The last of the girls.
She didn't come. She didn't run. She stared at us from a place beyond staring, the way people do when they've gone somewhere inside and the body hasn't caught up.
Lyra moved first.