Jean-Claude clambered up the stair. The ship shuddered and he fell, banging his cheek on the step. A massive hand hoisted him up. Long Thom hauled him the rest of the way onto the poop deck and shipped him into the gunwale of the escape boat. Ensign de Henault stood at the other end, his russet skin pale and sweaty, spinning the valve to charge the keel and shouting orders in sailorese. Long Thom and three more aeronauts hammered away the chocks and shoved the crib toward the rail.

The Thunderclap shuddered and tilted the opposite way. The crib groaned to a halt. Its aetherkeel couldn’t lift it while it was still in the lee of the Thunderclap.

“On board, ya lubbers!” Dok shouted, alighting amidships on the launch. He couldn’t speak and fly at the same time. The aeronauts piled into the boat, and Dok sang a high, clear note. At his call, a catapult of wind kicked the launch from the ship and out into clear space.

Jean-Claude yelped, hanging on to the rail with one hand and his hat with the other. He floated, weightless, dizzy, and disoriented.

The boat leapt up and smashed him into the gunwale, knocking the breath from his body. De Henault shouted at the aeronauts and there was a great deal of scrambling about as they unshipped the sweeps—long featherlike oars that unfolded to scoop the air when pulled and folded flat to slice it when swept forward again. The boat heaved forward and rose, climbing out of the turbulence around the Thunderclap.

Jean-Claude managed to get himself turned right side up and turned around, just in time to see the Thunderclap fall, drifting downward like a leaf fallen from a tree, until the Miasma reached up to engulf it.

CHAPTER

Eleven

“Retreat is strategy,” insisted Dame Falconé, pacing Isabelle down the stair. “There’s nothing to be gained here!”

“Shut up!” Isabelle didn’t care if the canary-colored Fenice was real or not. This was her ship, her crew. She threw herself down the ladder, caromed off the wall, and plowed through a gang of aeronauts coming up. The keel run ran the length of the ship down the center of the lower gun deck. Its walls were thickest oak, armored outside with alchemical steel and inside with copper to keep sparks at bay. Nothing short of the destruction of the ship could crack it from the outside, which meant this catastrophe had come from within.

Marie caught up to Isabelle just as she half floated and half bounced through the doorway. The aetherkeel filled the long chamber, four bronze-and-glass tubes fitted with dozens of pressure-regulating pipes and lode coils. Every pressure chamber down the length of the shaft had been breached, the bulkheads bypassed. Hypervolatile aether sprayed and screamed from the gaps, coating the whole room in a thick layer of frost.