Above him the Thunderclap descended, but more slowly now. Coughing, wheezing men in the bilge hold heaved a steady stream of crates and sacks out the back like a drunk voiding his belly in the sewer: anything to lighten the load.

Gasping for breath, Bitterlich scooped the air and swung the terrified aeronaut through the aft bilge hatch.

“Make way!” Bitterlich shouted, and got a lungful of stink for his troubles.

The aeronauts at the hatch gawped in fright and scattered, spilling things they meant to be getting rid of anyway. Bitterlich tucked himself through the hole, dropping his passenger on the deck. He drew on his erstepelz as he tumbled along the gangway. He used the last of his momentum to roll to his feet, adjusting the tilt of his hat by pure reflex. The ship still shuddered, but it seemed to have stopped sinking. No telling how long that would last.

“Gentlemen,” he coughed. “Where is the capitaine?”

“Don’t know,” gasped one man.

“Keel run,” wheezed another.

“Who in Torment cares?” added a third.

One out of three wasn’t bad, under the circumstances. Bitterlich scrambled up the nearest companionway. The whole ship was canted forward and to starboard, and all the angles were wrong. He considered turning into a bat, but he didn’t want to spread Miasma through his Seelengewölbe any more than he already had. Saints only knew what kind of havoc it might wreak … or possibly just reek.

Up just one level, he nearly plowed into a slender shadow coming the other way. He dodged around the figure, heading for the keel run, but a bony hand yanked him from the ladder.

“This way, Major. Ye be needed,” Jackhand Djordji said.

Bitterlich yanked away. “I have to find Isabelle.”

“She’s busy saving the ship. Come on.” Djordji pointed into the fog murk.

A bloodcurdling shriek of terror burst from the fog. That sounded like a child. Bitterlich bolted after Djordji, through a bulkhead into the center hold. Two men lay on the floor, gasping in the tainted air. Alchemical lanterns danced from hooks in the ceiling, their light making monsters of the vapors.

Twirling in the air in the center of the chamber were Rebecca, and a ghostfire wyrm.

The beast blurred past his head flying by means that resembled neither bird nor aerofish, but rather as if it were sliding along some rail that existed only for its benefit. Its serpentine body was as big around as a man’s thigh and more than thrice Bitterlich’s arm span long. It glittered with shimmering scales of aquamarine, tourmaline, and topaz. A row of spines ran down each of its flanks like the serrated teeth of a saw, and it had a great dorsal mane of silvery hair. Its snakelike head had four sapphire eyes and great back-sweeping horns the color of mother-of-pearl. Threads of a cold, blue-white fire leaked from between its razor teeth.