Caravanserai Incident — Massawa
— an excerpt —
Irwin expected to find the caravan where their cargo was being stored, but the camels had moved.
The clerk at the port office gave him directions with casual certainty. Left at the spice tents. Past the tether lines. Second storage lane beyond the wells.
Ten minutes later, Irwin was lost.
The deeper he wandered into the caravanserai, the more the port seemed to rearrange itself around him. Canvas walls shifted in the heat haze. Camels groaned beneath stacked cargo. Men shouted in languages he did not understand while the smell of livestock, sweat, saltwater, and charcoal pressed against him like physical weight.
Finally, he found the correct caravan markings.
Their trunks sat beneath stretched canvas, apparently untouched.
Then he noticed the knots.
The ropes securing Katherine’s household crates had been retied—looser and clumsier than the tight professional lashings used aboard the Malwa.
Irwin frowned.
He pulled back the canvas.
Nothing appeared stolen.
But someone had searched the contents.
A brass lamp Katherine had packed facing left now faced right. Folded linens had been disturbed and restacked unevenly. A jewelry case sat slightly ajar.
"Someone’s been through these," he muttered.
A chill prickled the back of his neck despite the heat.
He scanned the caravanserai instinctively—the merchant tents, kneeling camels, stacked cargo, shadowed gaps between wagons. Anyone could have done it.
But thieves stole valuables.
This had not been theft.
Someone had been looking for something specific.
And apparently had not found it.
Trying to steady himself, Irwin opened his ledger and checked the shipment inventory again.
The farming tools.
The saws.
The axes.
The spades Wilfred had insisted they bring from London.
He searched the stacks twice before the realization finally struck him.
The equipment had never been loaded onto the Malwa.
It had been shipped separately.
On the Victoria.
The ship now resting at the bottom of the Red Sea.
Irwin gripped the edge of a crate as the full weight of the mistake settled onto him.
They were traveling into the highlands to build a plantation.
And they had no tools to clear the land.
He turned to leave.
The heat rising from the packed earth distorted the air ahead of him. Familiar landmarks dissolved into shimmering mirage. Every passage between the cargo lanes looked identical.
The claustrophobia arrived suddenly.
Cold.
Sharp.
Total.
Irwin rounded a stack of crates too quickly and slammed directly into something solid.
He stumbled backward.
"I’m terribly sorr—"
The apology died in his throat.
The man standing before him was enormous.
Dust coated the warrior’s bare forearms and shield. His spear tip hovered inches from Irwin’s chest before Irwin even realized it had moved.
The warrior barked something in Tigrinya.
Irwin raised his hands immediately.
"I’m lost," he said. "I’m leaving."
The spear did not lower.
Panic surged through him.
He stepped backward—
—and collided with someone else.
A hand clamped onto his shoulder with terrifying ease.
Irwin looked up slowly.
The man behind him wore crimson robes layered over chainmail that flashed beneath the fabric whenever he moved. Rings glinted across heavy fingers. His beard was thick. His expression utterly calm.
Not angry.
Not excited.
Worse.
Bored.
The warrior with the spear froze instantly.
Irwin understood the hierarchy immediately.
This man did not merely command violence.
He inhabited it.
The giant studied him briefly, as though evaluating whether Irwin represented a genuine inconvenience.
Apparently deciding he did not, the man spoke a single low command to his guard.
Then he shoved Irwin aside.
Not violently.
Casually.
Like moving furniture from a walkway.
Irwin hit the dirt hard enough to lose his breath.
By the time he looked up again, the crimson-robed giant and his retinue were already disappearing through the haze of the caravan lanes without once looking back.
To them, he had never existed at all.