Blowing the Seawall

I stared at the heavy cast-iron manifold mounted directly above the foundation wall.

The cannery had been built seventy years ago on old Scottish dock-engineering. To keep the deep-water intake from collapsing under coastal storm surges, the builders had installed an equalizing pressure cylinder—a four-foot chamber of heavy iron bolted directly against the exterior seawall.

Beside it ran the high-pressure brine line from the upper salting rooms.

Niall's dying words flashed through my memory: Secondary salt-gate interlock. Lever two. Lever four.

"We don't swim through the pipe," I said, wading rapidly toward the iron manifold. "We blow the entire wall into the bay."

Lorcuin followed my steps, the water now sloshing against our chests. "With what? We don't have blasting powder."

"We have something more volatile," I said, reaching up to the seized brass valve on the pressure housing. "Refined silver solvent is cut with kerosene and volatile sulfur spirits to keep it liquid at room temperature. What happens when you superheat compressed solvent inside an airtight iron cylinder and slam it with raw high-saline brine?"

Lorcuin’s eyes flared with sudden understanding. "A vapor explosion."

"A massive one," I said, grimacing as I raised the two steel dock spikes I still held from the fight. "The salt-magic in the deep brine acts as a catalytic accelerant. It will crack the cast iron and blow the six-foot granite foundation straight outward into the low-tide shelf."

"And if the pressure cylinder doesn't direct the blast outward?" he asked, stepping beside me.

"Then we get liquefied across the back wall," I said. "Still beats turning into a milky-eyed rogue."

I jammed the first dock spike into the teeth of the emergency pressure release gear, locking the internal vents shut.

"I need your reach," I said, pointing to the rusted secondary lever at the top of the assembly. "Lever two needs to be forced completely downward to lock the silver feed into the compression tank. Lever four opens the brine intake."

The lever was rusted solid, encrusted with decades of dried salt and boiler scale.

Lorcuin stepped in close. His chest pressed against my back as he reached upward, his large hands closing over the iron bar. The heat of his body burned straight through my waterlogged coat, an electric jolt that made my pulse race against my ribs.

"On three," he muttered, his breath warm against my ear.

"One," I counted, bracing my foot against the masonry. "Two. Pull!"

Lorcuin let out a low, guttural roar from his chest. The veins in his forearms swelled against his skin as his alpha strength engaged. The rusted iron shrieked in protest. Metal groaned, paint chipped away in red flakes, and with a violent crack, the lever snapped down into the locked position.

Instantly, the pipes began to scream.

The purple silver distillate surged directly into the sealed iron cylinder. The metal walls of the tank grew scorching hot, turning the water around our chests into a boiling froth.

"Now lever four!" I yelled, pulling my second spike to clear the salt-intake jam.

Lorcuin grabbed the lower wheel, throwing his entire weight into the turn. The valve spun three rotations before sticking.

"It’s seized!" he shouted over the deafening roar of the pressurized steam.

"Hold the rim!"

I slid my steel spike into the spoke of the wheel, using it as a fulcrum. Lorcuin grabbed the other side. Together, our hands overlapped on the cold steel.

The mate bond flared again, white-hot and blinding.

Our strength aligned with terrifying precision. The biological resonance surged through our muscles, doubling the torque. We wrenched the wheel downward together.

The brass spindle sheared free. The valve slammed open.

Cold, highly concentrated deep-sea brine rushed from the upper reservoir into the superheated silver chamber.

The reaction was immediate.

Inside the iron cylinder, a sound like a muffled thunderclap erupted. The cast-iron housing swelled, glowing with a faint, violet luminescence as the volatile chemicals ignited under hydraulic compression. Deep cracks raced across the metal face like spiderwebs.

"Get down!" I screamed.

Lorcuin didn't just get down. He spun, throwing his large frame entirely over mine, slamming us both beneath the surface of the black water and pinning me against the floor stones.

The world shattered.

The detonation blew with the force of a naval cannon.

The shockwave tore through the water, hammering my eardrums with concussive pressure. Even beneath the surface, the flash was blindingly bright—a violent flare of purple and gold that illuminated the submerged chamber like daylight.

Above us, tons of six-foot granite blocks and rusted cast iron blew outward into the night.

A massive vacuum pulled through the breach.

The millions of gallons of water trapped in the cannery cellar rushed toward the open hole with catastrophic speed. The current grabbed us both, tearing our grip from the floor stones.

We were dragged into the roaring vortex.

I swallowed a lungful of foam, tumbled head over heels through the jagged gap in the wall, and felt the sharp bite of broken stone tear through the sleeve of my coat.

Then the ceiling was gone.

The suffocating cellar was gone.

We were airborne for half a second before crashing violently onto the wet gravel and kelp beds of the low-tide shelf.

I skidded ten feet across the freezing mud, coughing violently and spitting out mouthfuls of salty grit.

The cold Atlantic wind hit my drenched skin like a slap of reality.

I rolled onto my back, gasping for air, staring up at the dark, open sky. Clouds swept across the pale crescent moon. The sharp, clean scent of open ocean flooded my nostrils, clearing the foul stench of sulfur and burning copper from my lungs.

Beside me, Lorcuin pushed himself up onto his knees.

His coat was shredded at the shoulder, a deep gash bleeding dark red down his bicep where a flying shard of iron had grazed him. He looked like hell—drenched in black muck, bleeding, hair wild—but his chest rose and fell with steady, powerful breaths.

He looked over at me, his gray eyes catching the moonlight.

"That was your plan?" he asked, coughing out a mouthful of brine.

"We’re alive, aren't we?" I wheezed, sitting up and wincing as my bruised ribs protested.

"You blew up a four-story building."

"I blew up the basement," I corrected, checking the inner pocket of my coat.

My fingers touched the cold, heavy shape of Elder Breccan’s iron courier token and the brass cylinder containing Garbhan's harbor map. Both were still secure against my ribs.

I glanced at the cheap twenty-dollar digital watch buckled to my left wrist under my leather bracer. The cracked face read 4:38 AM.

Fifty-two minutes until the mid-tide surge. Fifty-two minutes until Garbhan’s main stills in the upper harbor were scheduled to flood the entire bay with whatever distillate was left in the primary vats.

"We have fifty minutes," I said, pushing myself up onto my feet. My knees wobbled, but the cold mud grounded me.

Lorcuin rose beside me, towering in the coastal fog. He gripped the hilt of his heir-blade, testing the edge.

Behind us, the base of the shuttered cannery was a smoking ruin. Water poured from the shattered breach in a continuous waterfall, draining the flooded pens into the harbor mudflats.

"Look," Lorcuin said quietly, his voice dropping into the low, deadly register of an alpha on the hunt.

He pointed through the drifting mist toward the head of Slipway Seven, two hundred yards north along the shoreline.

Three red chemical flares hissed into the night sky, casting a bloody glare across the dark water.

Underneath the glow of the flares, a dozen wolves in dark slickers were fanning out across the tidal flats, blocking the stone stairs leading up to the high wharves.

At the front of the line stood a hulking brute with a scarred throat and two notched cleavers sheathed across his chest.

Torcall. Garbhan’s personal enforcer and the most lethal butcher in the Fuar-Chuan pack.

Judging by the blockade, he had heard the blast. He clearly wasn't waiting for the tide to drown us—he had brought the entire perimeter guard down to the mud to finish the job with steel.

"They're sealing the beach," I said, tightening the wet strap of my coat.

"Good," Lorcuin said, stepping out onto the wet rocks, the heir-blade gleaming in the flare light. "I was getting tired of swimming."

I reached down to my right boot, drawing my heavy backup skinning knife from the leather sheath. The balanced steel settled cold and familiar in my palm.

"His left ear is worth four hundred sovereigns," I muttered.

"Keep the coin," Lorcuin replied, matching my stride across the low-tide stones. "I'm taking his head."