The keelmaster lay dead on the deck in a pool of his own blood. His throat had been cut. Down the narrow aisle one of the keelmates slumped against the wall gurgling and clutching at a hole in his chest, and beyond him a figure in plain white robes.

Shock nearly stopped Isabelle’s heart at the sight of Sireen’s bloodhollow walking amongst the carnage.

“Madame?” she said, bewildered.

“Close enough,” said the bloodhollow, in a voice that resembled Sireen’s not at all. She raised a pistol at Isabelle.

Marie shoved Isabelle aside just as the bloodhollow fired. The bullet whistled by. Marie leapt at the bloodhollow before she could retreat or reload. The ship tilted, slamming everyone against the wall.

Isabelle lunged for the keel. It hardly mattered who the imposter was if the ship fell from the sky. She slapped her spark-hand on the shattered tube, summoned her l’Étincelle, and leapt into the metal.

Isabelle had never inhabited a machine this big before. She stretched herself through the bronze. She could feel the tin in the alloy like she’d bitten it with her teeth. The copper hummed like a harp in the wind. Flowing through the glass was like swimming through taffy. As she grew to fill the keel, she felt the ship’s cradle strain and groan against her skin. The ship started to roll.

Isabelle felt the rips in the skin of the aether tanks like wounds in her own flesh, and in the central core of the machine the delicate reverberation helix had been cracked.

One thing at a time. She slithered to the vapor-tight bulkhead between one section and the next. The control mechanism for isolating the compartment had come free, but she shoved it back in its groove, slammed it shut, and sealed it. The ship could survive with just one chamber, if she could repair the rent and the coil. If the aether tanks didn’t bleed out first.

She forced her attention to the jagged metal lips of the first chamber’s breach. She could mold metal like clay, but even shifting tiny amounts exhausted her, and this was an order of magnitude greater than anything she’d ever attempted. She imagined the ragged edges to be her fingers and interlaced them. She had no muscles to try here, no lungs to burn or heart to burst, but her mind howled with the effort just the same. Her soul burned, but the metal moved. The bronze bent, softened like butter in the sun. Oh so slowly it flowed together, and she dared force it no faster lest she thin out the surface and have it rupture. The edges of the metal touched and she willed them to join, drawing heat from every square centimeter of the skin to weld this bit in place.