Caledonia stepped forward and pulled her sister into her arms, hugging her tightly. At first, Pisces seemed primed to resist, but then she returned the hug, wrapping her long arms around Caledonia’s shoulders.

“I’m so sorry I got caught,” Pisces murmured.

“Pi!” Caledonia cried, pulling away and taking the girl’s face in her hands. “You kept them alive. That’s what matters.”

“I was trying to be you,” she said, voice harsh. “I was furious with you for leaving us and I was trying to do what I thought you would do and it got us caught.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never seen you pull back from a fight. Not once. It never occurred to me that you would do something like that, but back there at the whirl, that’s exactly what you did. You didn’t turn and engage, you ran.”

“Because it was the right thing to do,” Caledonia answered, guarded.

Pisces’s mouth flattened. “I’ve blamed you for all of this. For getting caught, for losing more girls, for leaving me behind.” She paused to pull Caledonia’s hands away from her face. “I don’t want to keep blaming you.”

“I understand why you do.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t justified,” Pisces snapped. “But there are more important things between us than injury and blame.”

“What are you saying?” Caledonia held perfectly still. If she moved, she was convinced she’d destroy whatever was happening between them right now.

“I need to know you aren’t going to leave me like that again.”

“I’m not,” Caledonia promised, feeling dizzy from hunger and hope all at once. “I won’t. I—Pi, I don’t want to lose you again.”

“Caledonia,” Pisces said with a sigh. “That’s what you don’t understand. You will always fail to lose me.”

“Thank you.” They were the most precious words Caledonia had ever heard. If she had any water to spare, she’d have cried with relief.

“Cliffs!” The excited call rang throughout the ship. “Cliffs!”

“There’s never any time, is there?” Pisces nodded, tucking her smile away for later. “Let’s go.”

White cliffs broke against the blue sky, and the entire ship released a sigh of relief. All except Caledonia. Getting here was only the first hurdle. It was what came next—getting inside Cloudbreak, and then getting her entire crew fed and watered—that worried her. That was going to require as much strategic thinking as any battle.

“Keep a steady course, Nettle,” she called. “Remember this is a Bullet ship.”

Soon, the archipelago of metal islands guarding the port of Lower Cloudbreak came into view, their jagged edges pointing out of the water like deadly icebergs. Beyond them, the wharf of Lower Cloudbreak nestled against chalky cliffs, at the top of which the market town of Cloudbreak perched in a mountainous nest. The only way in or out was by treacherous rope lifts.