Leo realized then that Ambrosine and her Misarro were staring at Sera, the way everyone stared at Sera.

“She’s not Saifa,” Leo began, almost wearily, but then he remembered Sera could speak Pelagan now. Probably Kaolish too.

Ambrosine held up a hand. “Explanations can wait,” she said. “We must be off at once.”

Wherever Rahel’s guard was, Leo didn’t know—the decks were streaked with blood and smoke poured out of the hole where the mast had once stood. Destruction lay in the wake of where it fell across the ship, splintered wood and crushed golden rails. There were more Misarros, all with gold disks sewn into their collars, which Leo took to mean they were in the service of Ambrosine.

They crossed the deck to a large plank-like footbridge, that extended from a huge galleon, two cannons on its deck still pointing at the ruined mast.

Once aboard, Ambrosine shouted orders, her voice like the crack of a whip, and the footbridge was raised as the ship was readied to set sail. She turned to Leo and Sera as a servant in a blue tunic hurried up with a tray of ice-cold cucumber water. Ambrosine waved her off.

“I heard my grandson had been taken along with a companion,” she said, looking Sera up and down. “Aren’t you magnificent.”

“Thanks for saving us,” Leo said, but the words felt clumsy, inept. Ambrosine wasn’t at all like he’d pictured her. He’d imagined someone matronly, with a hunched back and horrific taste in footwear. Not this sleek woman in an expertly tailored suit with her own contingent of fierce warriors.

He hoped he wouldn’t be expected to call her “Grandmother.” That would be altogether too strange.

She looked at him and he was once again seized by the bizarre sensation of seeing his eyes in someone else’s head. Ambrosine had his curls too, black like his except for the bits of gray. But her chin was squarer, her cheekbones more pronounced, and her nose was slightly beaked.

“You are my blood,” she said. “Of course I would come for you. I wish the circumstances of our meeting were different. But once I read in the papers that the Triumvirate had taken a young Byrne in Arbaz . . . I knew.”

“Knew what?” Leo asked.

“I knew that my daughter’s children had returned to Pelago at last,” Ambrosine said. “But where is your sister?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said honestly. “She could still be in Arbaz. We made friends with a sailor, though, so she might be coming to Ithilia. She was there when Sera and I were taken. This is Sera, by the way.”

Something about his grandmother made him feel like everything he said was just a little bit stupid, as if her presence scrambled his thoughts.