Getting into position took the better part of the day, and they settled over anxious waves to wait out the night. It had been three days since the infiltration team departed. They had until tomorrow morning to be ready. At the first blush of dawn on the fourth day, Caledonia’s fleet hovered like a cloud a half mile from shore, where the Holster was a dark spot nestled against hills edged in faintest bronze.

In all the stories she’d heard of this place, the town was like a cage. Caledonia had expected it to be like Slipmark, with intimidating gates outside the harbor and a knifelike boundary to its buildings. But as sunrise drew the Holster against gentle hills, Caledonia realized she couldn’t have been further from the truth. There were no gates outside the harbor, and the edges of the city were smudged and indecipherable. This place was sprawling, like a spill of blood in water, spidery fingers stretching in seemingly random directions, all stemming from a dense center.

Caledonia stood on the bow of her ship as the wind drove into her eyes, determined not to move until she had placed every landmark she’d studied on the map. Five towers of black stone stood at intervals around the city, each bearing heavy guns capable of firing over miles. Between them and the harbor, the city crouched low, buildings capped in reflective solar plating that would blind anyone in the harbor as soon as the sun sliced west. The breakers Heron had marked on the map crouched low in the water, marking the edge of the harbor. Just outside of those breakers, a hundred ships sat ready to receive her.

Somewhere inside that city, Lir was watching as dawn slowly withdrew the cover of night to reveal her fleet. The thought left her flushed with satisfaction.

“Hime,” she called. “Launch the flare!”

“Gunners ready.” Pisces shouted to be heard across the deck.

Above, the sky burst with a single red flare. Bloody against the purpling sky. A battle cry.

For a single moment they sailed as if suspended in time.

The Holster was a quietly glimmering jewel in a rough cut of stone, and they were the rumbling storm rushing forward. Then an alarm rose over the town. In response, the harbor, and all those hundred ships outside the breakers, came to life.

Pisces and Hime gathered at Caledonia’s sides. Behind them, the rest of the crew stood with hands twisted together and mouths bent into stern lines, their hearts steely, their eyes pinned to the towers on the hill.

“Think they made it?” Pisces asked.

They made it, Hime answered.

Caledonia only nodded as she pictured Pine and Gloriana, Folly and Tin, Ares, and the rest of her brave crew who’d accepted the mission without protest. Nothing would stop them from completing their task. She knew that the way she knew to trust the ocean beneath her hull.