Frost covered the skin of the keel even as her join heated to its blending point, each edge oozing into its mate. At last it held. She pushed the heat away. No more aether leaked. Was there any left in the tank?

The ship shook her in her cradle, slamming her against the struts. Was the descent slowing? She could not tell. Her mind grew numb and prickly around the edges. Her strength waned.

Like crawling upstream in a river of mud she oozed herself around to access the reverberation module, the thing that organized the aether and made it hyperbuoyant. She was cold, her thoughts sluggish. Like a diver too long underwater she yearned to return to the warmth of her own flesh.

Not yet. She crawled inside the reverberation helix and slithered along a spiral of alchemical glass. What was it supposed to feel like? She’d seen one before but never inhabited it.

She couldn’t feel her shape anymore. Couldn’t feel the ship shaking. She needed to breathe but she had no lungs.

How to make the helix work? The glass was chipped and cracked. She plucked the helix like she might a harp string.

She felt a chord, and a discord, a note gone astray. She plucked again. Followed the vibration down the shaft until it hit rough edges and sprayed away in cacophony. She drew her attention into the flaw. It was so small. She was so cold. That tiny crack. She could not remember … There was something she needed to do. The flaw. Fix the flaw. Stretch the glass. Weld it. Make it sing. So cold. Sing. Can’t breathe. Sing. Sing …

Jean-Claude’s soul collapsed as, in the distance, the Thunderclap fell from the sky.

“Isabelle!” he cried in helpless horror. All color bled away, leaving his vision gray and all his thoughts turned to smoke.

Down and down the ship fell, plunging toward the Miasma. He reached out for it, as if it were a leaf at arm’s reach and not a warship far away.

Two Skaladin ships, a sloop and a brig, tacked to intercept the launch.

“Get the sail up,” de Henault snapped, “unless you fancy being skinned for some Skaladin’s boot leather.”

The grim-faced aeronauts set to work. They, too, had lost their mates and their home, and they moved with the silent, relentless determination of bier bearers, erecting the small boat’s mast, two shafts lashed together for tops and turvy, two spars for triangular sails: above and below.

“Can you get us away?” Jean-Claude asked Dok.

“A boat this size, aye,” Dok said. “We runs circles around them.”

“Just get us to Joubert’s Folly,” de Henault said.

A yowl and screech from the back of the boat made Jean-Claude jump.

“Hey,” yelped Aeronaut First Class Duval, who was working the tiller. A gray blur shot past his legs and squeezed between two crates, where it remained, growling ominously.