Galley Master Harrow was reporting to Ballistic Ennick when Lir arrived on deck. The two men, both still in the full and bristling power of their youth, were cast in the orange glow of deck lights, the night sky flat black behind them. As Bullets filled the main deck in neat rows, those who hadn’t been in the galley shot nervous glances toward the Ballistic. Those who had been watched Lir with a confident kind of curiosity. Whatever was about to happen, it wouldn’t be happening to them.

Lir planted his feet wide and waited.

“Bullet Lir.” Ballistic Ennick’s voice was flat. “Step forward.”

Lir had always viewed the man as a superior, someone so much closer to Aric’s right hand than he’d ever be, but something had changed in the galley. Lir had changed, and in a strange moment of clarity, he saw Ennick for what he was: a Ballistic too afraid of his own power to ever really own it.

“You attacked a fellow Bullet in the galley,” Ballistic Ennick said. “Do you deny the charge?”

Tassos stood in the corner of Lir’s vision. The blood on his cheek flared bright red in the deck lights, a single flame licking up his skin. With dark satisfaction, Lir realized that flame would bloom into an orange scar as it healed. He barely kept a smile from his lips as he answered, “I embrace the charge, sir.”

A quiet disturbance breezed through the rest of the clip. His peers surely thought he’d lost his sail. Maybe he had. He’d never felt so certain, so defiant. Even the Ballistic seemed taken aback. He hesitated before speaking again.

“You will soon embrace more than that.” Ballistic Ennick moved down the line of Bullets. “There is no greater display of weakness than turning on your brothers and sisters, no greater shame than striking your own. And we do not bring shame to the Father. What do we bring him?”

“Glory or death!” the clip shouted in one voice.

“Bullet Lir, have you brought glory to the Father today?”

Lir swallowed a hard lump in his throat. “No.”

“Would you bring him your death instead?”

Lir’s conviction wavered under a knife of fear. They would not kill him for such a small infraction, but they would make him suffer for forgiveness. So that everyone knew exactly how little power he held. He had to make that power grow, or death would be his only option. Lir raised his chin. “I would not.”

“We must have one or the other.” Ballistic Ennick paused theatrically and raised a hand to the moonless sky. “But now is the time of the Nascent Moon. A time for new beginnings. Would you have a new beginning, Bullet Lir?”

“I would.” He could taste the sour shape of those words.

“Then you will be cleansed by the sway of the pendulum.”