Eventually the grakyl got the message. Like a ship passing out of a squall, the war suddenly ended. The surviving beasts swooped and cartwheeled away.

Horus’s broken arm was in a crude sling made from his own cloak, but he’d regained enough of his rattled senses to man his post again. The skymaster patted Jake on the shoulder, thanking him, and took over.

Relieved of duty, Jake ran and leaped off the steps. He reached Pindor and Bach’uuk in time to see them grab Marika’s arms and haul the girl over the rail.

The four friends all slumped to the deck.

“Don’t do that again,” Pindor scolded her.

Marika elbowed him. “I’m not planning on it!”

* * *

A half hour later, it was hard to say that any battle had taken place. The corpses of the beasts were tossed overboard, the injured taken down below, and the decks washed clean. Only a few stains and the snapped balloon tether gave any indication of the bloody fight.

During the cleanup, Jake and his friends had returned to their spots at the front of the boat. But the crew’s attitude toward them had changed. Sailors nodded and waved. Fresh water was brought to them, along with platters of something that looked like cheese but was sweeter and chewier.

Even Nefertiti spent time with Kady on the middeck, examining her sword. The two talked with much gesturing. Jake caught glimpses of a smile on the princess’s lips.

Pindor sat cross-legged next to Jake, his chin resting on his knuckles as he watched the two girls.

Standing a step away, Bach’uuk dug a broken claw from the railing. Jake pictured again the grakyl leering down at him before being ripped away by an aerial hook.

Bach’uuk came over and squatted beside Jake and Marika, then placed the claw on the deck. “Not a grakyl.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“None had swords. Just claws.” Bach’uuk stared at Jake with his sharp blue eyes and nudged the broken bit he’d dug out. “And teeth.”

Marika scooted closer. “He’s right. None of them had any weapons. And these beasts certainly didn’t look exactly like the grakyl back home.”

“They looked like them to me.”

Marika shook her head. “Did you not see how gnarled their limbs were? Also their heads were too small, their ears too long. These attackers looked both smaller and more beastlike.”

Jake remembered those yellow eyes locking on to his, shining with bloodlust and hunger—and nothing else. Back in Calypsos, the grakyl’s eyes and faces had shone with a vicious intelligence, nearly humanlike. He’d seen none of that here. The attack on the windriders had been savage, ill planned.

Marika offered an explanation. “Maybe the grakyl started out as these beasts. Maybe the Skull King was sniffing around these lands and discovered them. Then Kalverum Rex took their forms and changed them, twisted them with his bloodstone alchemies, forged their flesh into his monstrous army.”

Jake’s stomach churned sickeningly. “If these beasts aren’t grakyl, then what are they?”