The first blush of orange blossoms appeared against the brilliant blue sky as the towering barge came into view. Caledonia felt an answering spike of adrenaline in her blood. The barge stretched a quarter mile in each direction, its long platform deck covered in baleflowers reaching for the morning sun with their mouths open wide like baby birds.

Caledonia turned to Pisces. “Looks like trouble,” she said, invoking the words their fallen friend Redtooth had said so often. “Trouble” was code for a fight, for an opportunity, for a chance to strike back instead of turn tail and run.

One side of Pisces’s mouth tipped up at the memory of their friend. “There’ll be more on the other side,” she warned.

“I hope so,” Caledonia said, offering her sister a mischievous smile before sliding down the ladder to the command deck. “Drive us in, Nettle!” Caledonia called, striding onto the bridge. “Harwell, alert the Blade and Piston that we’re sailing for gold.”

Harwell’s voice rose softly from his station at the radio. It had taken some convincing for Caledonia to go along with using the thing, but it turned out coordinating with ships was a lot easier if you could just talk to them. The Blades had set up a system that allowed them to communicate on open frequencies without broadcasting their plans to their targets. “Gold” was code for driving in together and hitting the target like a spear.

“Amina’s silencers are ready for a test run, Captain,” Pisces reported from the hatchway. “As long as Nettle can get us close enough to launch them.”

“I’ll get you close enough to spit on that barge if you want,” Nettle said, never shifting her eyes from the searoad ahead. She’d grown an entire foot and every part of her body had stretched thin but for her cheeks, which were as round as the scrolling scars upon them.

“Shouting distance will do,” Pisces responded with a smile.

“Ready for gold, Captain,” Harwell announced.

“Good. Engines to full!”

Caledonia’s eyes landed on the furious orange of the baleflowers ahead. Above, two purple flares unfurled spidery petals, signaling to whoever was near that the barge was under attack. They would have a few precious moments to prepare before Caledonia and her flagships were within range. All she had to do was be faster than the rest of Decker’s fleet.

Pisces leaned in close and whispered, “Lir won’t like us taking down his brothers.”

Anger pooled in Caledonia’s gut, leaving her mind with a cool kind of clarity as the seas rushed by. “If Lir didn’t want us coming after his brothers,” she said, savoring the dark edge of her rage, “he should have left ours alone.”

CHAPTER TWO