Ulrich agreed with Valdris and walked away with Airam at his side.
Whatever mess the harbor left behind was no longer his concern. Valdris would spend the coming days shaping the wreckage into a story everyone could swallow: dead soldiers, a burned ship, a commander come home short an arm's worth of men. Ulrich had traded his silence for that same silence in return, and beyond the terms of the trade, he found he had nothing left to spend on caring how the man managed it.
Hiddlestone had woken around them. Lantern flames bobbed behind shutters up and down the harbor road, and voices carried out of doorways as townsfolk gathered toward the smoke and the ringing steel still drifting up from the docks. Ulrich kept to the far side of the street, Airam beside him, putting distance between themselves and the knots of onlookers craning toward the water.
