Footsteps suddenly pound on the floor outside, and I hear Fione stand up quickly on her cane. Someone slaps their hand on the side of the room’s little wall.

“Get out of the puddle,” Mal’s voice rings. “We’ve found a boat for the bigger one.”

The Lady Terrible is a far cry from the airship we took from Breych—the most obvious being that in the sky, there are no barnacles. The underside of the ship is completely encrusted with the things, the rhythmic gaping of their beaked mouths as the seawater waves lap up on them nigh nauseating.

“I knew the ocean was big,” I say. “But I had no clue it was also godsdamn weird.”

“Extremely weird,” Fione agrees next to me. “The greatest variety of wildlife live in the sea, and by all polymath estimates, we’ve catalogued only thirty percent of them.”

“My favorite are the blood-sucking eelworms,” Malachite offers as he pulls astride us on the gangplank.

Fione nods wisely. “Their jaws are so strong, they can bite down to your bone and suck out your marrow.”

“Okay, please!” I throw my hands up. “Is an entire valkerax horde after us not enough for you people?”

“There are jellyfish,” Lucien says in my ear as he joins us on the ship’s railing, “with tendrils so poisonous, they rot your skin off wherever they touch.”

“Hello to you, too, my piquant ray of sunshine,” I drawl. Lucien’s laugh feels good to hear, soothing some worried ache I’ve had in me since seeing the valkerax corpse. He pulls away from me, and I instantly miss the heat over my shoulder.

“I’ll tell the captain we’re onboard,” he says. “Try not to cause trouble.”

Malachite looks to me immediately. “Duel to the death?”

“Absolutely.”

Lucien’s snort as he walks away is barely audible over the chanting of the sailors as they raise the anchor and adjust the sail. Unlike Helkyrisian airships, which float via aergasel balloons and propel with precise jets, Cavanos ships are very much just ships—blown by the wind, rowed when necessary. They haven’t strayed from their original form in a long time. The invention of white mercury lamps is the only modern touch, and objectively much safer than open oil lamps on a fully wooden boat. The sailors we pass are curt to us, and not much more—they have work to do.

“Cargo ship, by the looks of it.” Malachite jerks his head toward the barrels crowded belowdeck. “Bringing supplies up to the Feralstorm.”

“The Black Archives are on the way.” Fione nods. “And the sea gets more treacherous the farther northwest we go.”

“Giant squids not included,” I add. We put our things by the hammocks we’ll be using to sleep, but Malachite keeps his broadsword and Fione keeps her waterproof book pouch. I keep Father’s unassembled sword in its hemp bag, tracing it lightly.