Displaying her like this was probably meant to show the people that the foul scourge of Lady Vice was going to face the Queen’s justice. Well, from their smiles and well-wishes, it seemed they preferred her free and tweaking the noses of authority and the Hesperians.

In fact, it looked like the whole situation wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d thought when they’d arrested her on The Morrigan. The rest of the crew had already had their hearings. The authorities had decided she needed a separate trial, maybe because of her odd status, being a woman and, according to FitzRoy’s insane accusations, the ringleader. She’d heard through prisoners in adjoining cells that the judge had only sentenced the others to a day in the stocks.

That was nothing.

So it seemed the whole matter of the arrest was just the Navy’s way of making an example of them. Poor Blackwood, did he know that or was he sitting smugly at home somewhere imagining that she was soon to hang?

Still, there was the puzzle of just what on earth FitzRoy had done that day. What was that mad business with pretending he’d been captured and held by her?

She shook her head. Unfathomable, that was what it was. And it didn’t change what she now had to do.

In the week since her arrest, she’d attempted to get an audience with the Queen. She’d shown her drake and crown pin, but the bastards had taken it away, believing she’d stolen it.

So, of course, she’d tested every inch of her cell, but the damn thing was solid. With no tools, the iron bars were impossible for her to break. Although she used her coat cuffs as barriers between her hands and the metal, her fingers had slipped onto it. They’d burned in white-hot pain, leaving blisters.

Even her fae charm hadn’t helped—she’d pretended to be ill, thinking to trick the guards into rushing into her cell, where she’d overpower them and run. They looked at her writhing on the floor, their brows creased. Wringing their hands, they told her they’d been instructed by the Captain to, under no circumstances, open her cell door.

That had to be Blackwood. The prick.

Which left only this course. She was going to have to get out of this the old-fashioned way and prove her innocence.