Fione pauses thoughtfully. “Calculate the angle of approach? If you haven’t already.”

“Do that, then. The port’s on the west side. But it’ll be dark.”

Malachite and I look at each other, and I mouth dark? Fione seems to understand, though, pulling out her brass seeing tube and peering at the island as she says, “Aye aye, captain.”

Between hauling stiff, salt-stained rope over and over, I see the captain walk up to Lucien. She says something, he nods. The raucous excitement of the crew is infectious—whispers and murmurs between grunting about what the Archives look like.

“I’ve heard they make you strip down and get sprayed before you step foot on land,” a sailor says.

“Oh yeah? I heard they’re blind as bats from all the reading. Every. Single. One.”

“Ach, well, if they cannae see, that means more fancy books for me!”

The laughter shatters the quiet of the ocean, bouncing off the black-stone cliffs as we approach. I look up at Fione, at the helm with the captain. Where are they leading us? A port’s supposed to be in calm water, but the ship is bobbing worse than ever. We could just anchor out by the beach and ride the dinghy in—that would be far easier than navigating such rough water so close to land. After all, who knows what kind of rocks are just under the surface? The sailors seem equally confused, glancing around nervously at one another and the looming cliffs above as the cool shade envelops us.

And then we see it.

The island is far bigger up close, and the cliffs far taller than I originally thought. But beneath one cliff, there’s a gap. A gap between the ocean and the land, the cliff sticking out and hanging over, leaving a perfect height for the Lady Terrible to slide under. The sailors and I watch in awe as the helmsman takes us into the gap, the masts almost skimming the rock, flirting with the danger of snapping in two. Every heave of the ocean below us feels twice as dire now, and some of the sailors clasp their hands and start praying to the New God. Others watch overboard as the water turns from choppy blue to an incredibly clear turquoise color, milky hordes of shrimp and kelp-babies floating on the surface. Essentially, it’s a cave with a sea for a floor. And we sail along it, carefully and quietly, every single one of us is on edge that something will scrape against something and capsize us for good.

But the reef formations under the water are surprisingly scarce, and the deeper we go, the darker it gets, until there’s nothing but black. The only light comes from the water, refracted turquoise and up to us by the sun. I look over to Lucien, his proud face illuminated from beneath by the eerie light as he stares silently into the nothingness.