Anger rose within me. It had been Deal who’d issued the order to commit the monstrous crime of burning the sentient jungles. Although I bore my share of culpability for following that order, I had at least attempted to make amends for my actions. I had quit the Fleet and devoted myself to the preservation of life at all costs. But Deal hadn’t issued so much as an apology. As soon as the ceasefire had been signed, she’d run. And the only statement she’d left had shown no signs of either shame or remorse, just a terse communiqué stating that she had done what she felt was necessary to end the war. My siblings and I had been the instruments of Pelapatarn’s destruction, but we had only been fulfilling the function for which we had been designed; it had been her finger on the trigger. She had been acting under orders, but it had still been her lips that had uttered the order to kill. And the only reason I hadn’t sought retribution against her was that I had heard the rumours, both official and unofficial, that circulated in the weeks and months following her disappearance, saying that she had been mortally wounded and was probably already dead—rumours that had apparently, in light of this new revelation, been entirely inaccurate.

“Alive,” the Fury rumbled, “under my protection, and not in the best of tempers.”

“Why?” the Adalwolf asked. “I mean, how?”

“The details aren’t as important as the fact you almost killed her.” The Fury’s brow furrowed with displeasure. “And it is only by the purest good fortune that she survived.”

“I didn’t know.”

My mind whirled while they argued, but I kept quiet. They would get around to deciding my fate sooner or later, and I felt no great compunction to hasten their eventual decision by speaking out. Instead, I devoted my attention to finding a way out of the situation. I had no doubt at all that they would kill me if the admiral ordered them to. Escape would be my only hope of survival; but if I couldn’t make a run for it, I had to find some other means of evading their weaponry.