Though the implications were dire, I found the dropping temperature refreshing. The thunder spoke of the collision of cool and warm and was soon joined by lightning that whitened the grim slices of watery horizon visible down the side streets. Like Tom Doyle and Empire Will, a meeting of opposites would never create calm weather.

When waves started breaking over our bow, I thought again of the old book, of its long-ago adventurer, writing with enviable calm of his first storm at sea. Either he was as nerveless as Breakers, too pride-bound to show his fear, or he took it as a matter of course that a sail might be lost in a gale, or a mast shattered. If danger or chaos was expected, wouldn’t be such a big deal when it happened. It’d be . . . how life went. Didn’t I already see things that way? Maybe not as much as I thought.

The river was visible several blocks ahead in the 100s when a burst of sound blared over the wind noise, like a boat horn. Sniper fire sprayed from above. The first shots near-missed Tom Doyle, in the open passenger seat of his personal speedster. His driver took quick evasive action, all but spilling Doyle before he hunkered down, gazing upward in astonishment as bands of attackers erupted from the window openings along both sides of the street, throwing themselves onto any boats close to the walls, swinging on ropes to drop down on those farther out in the water.

“Stormies!” Breakers yelled, swinging her rifle to aim.

The Stormies were naked and poorly armed, but there seemed to be hundreds of them and they were . . . stoked. Howling, leaping, lashing out with whatever tool, plank, or rod they had as a weapon. Behind the first wave, a second filled the windows and roof lines to rain down a barrage of bricks and sharp bits of old metal and wood, a deluge of lethal junk barely aimed but thick and steady. It kept people ducking and covering instead of firing or beating off the invaders. Denfolk tumbled into the water as the Stormies shoved right and left, vaulting from boat to boat until ganging up in the stern of any power boat towing a raft. And over it all, the horn continued to blare, like a call to battle.

Melville was back far enough to be out of range of both jumpers and junk. Daniel reversed and rushed out of the cabin. “They’re after the supplies!”

Breakers growled in frustration, unable to fire into the tight pack of bodies without risk of hitting one of ours.

“Get the sniper!” I’d spotted him, a surviving Adder, still dropping random fire on the convoy from a rooftop.

Breakers drove his top-knotted head below the parapet and kept it there.

But I’d also seen something else. “Look up there!”