But no one paid me any mind. Tolya took a running leap and vaulted over the railing. I screamed as we plummeted toward the icy water, bracing for the impact. Instead, we were scooped up by what could only have been a Squaller wind and deposited on the attacking schooner’s deck with a bone-jarring thud. Tamar and Mal followed, with Sturmhond close behind.

“Give the signal,” Sturmhond shouted, springing to his feet.

A piercing whistle blew.

“Privyet,” he called to a crewman I didn’t recognize, “how many do we have?”

“Eight men down,” replied Privyet. “Four remaining on the whaler. Cargo on its way up.”

“Saints,” Sturmhond swore. He looked back to the whaler, struggling with himself. “Musketeers!” he shouted to the men on the schooner’s maintop. “Lend them cover!”

The musketeers began firing their rifles down onto the deck of the whaler. Tolya tossed Mal a rifle, then slung another over his back. He leapt into the rigging and began to climb. Tamar drew a pistol from her hip. I was still sprawled on the deck in an undignified tangle, my hands held useless in irons.

“Sea whip is secured, kapitan!” shouted Privyet.

Two more of Sturmhond’s men hurdled over the whaler’s railing and flew through the air, arms pinwheeling wildly, to crash in a heap on the schooner’s deck. One was bleeding badly from a wound to his arm.

Then it came again, the boom of thunder.

“He’s up!” called Tamar.

Blackness tumbled toward us, engulfing the schooner, blotting out everything in its path.

“Free me!” I pleaded. “Let me help!”

Sturmhond threw Tamar the keys and shouted, “Do it!”

Tamar reached for my wrists, fumbling with the key as darkness rolled over us.

We were blind. I heard someone scream. Then the lock clicked free. The irons fell from my wrists and hit the deck with a dull clang.

I raised my hands, and light blazed through the dark, pushing the blackness back over the whaler. A cheer went up from Sturmhond’s crew, but it withered on their lips as another sound filled the air—a grating shriek, piercing in its wrongness, the creak of a door swinging open, a door that should have remained forever shut. The wound in my shoulder gave a sharp throb. Nichevo’ya.

I turned to Sturmhond. “We have to get out of here,” I said. “Now.”

He hesitated, battling himself. Two of his men were still aboard the whaler. His expression hardened. “Topmen make sail!” he shouted. “Squallers due east!”

I saw a row of sailors standing by the masts raise their arms and heard a whump as the canvas above us swelled with a hard-driving wind. Just how many Grisha did the privateer have in his crew?

But the Darkling’s Squallers had arranged themselves on the whaler’s deck and were sending their own winds to buffet us. The schooner rocked unsteadily.

“Portside guns!” roared Sturmhond. “Rolling broadside. On my signal!”

I heard two shrill whistle blasts. A deafening boom shook the ship, then another and another, as the schooner’s guns opened up a gaping hole in the whaler’s hull. A panicked shout went up from the Darkling’s ship. Sturmhond’s Squallers seized the advantage, and the schooner surged free.