“Or the best thief ever?” Bitterlich said, releasing his hold on her. Her eyes were full of tears, but she was no longer frenzied.

That stung her. “I am the best thief ever.”

“Hard to do if yer dead,” Djordji said.

Rebecca hugged herself and looked away. She walked in circles, growling and clenching her fists. Bitterlich got the impression that these theatrics were for the benefit of the audience, and the real battle was something much harder and simpler deep inside.

The ship turned, and from the decks above thumped the sound of running feet, and the sudden roar of cannon fire.

Djordji stood up from the crate he’d inhabited and pressed his battered old hat down hard on his head. “The Skaladin arrives. Time to join the fight.”

“In a moment.” For now, Bitterlich’s duty was right here. By the standards of Öberholz, Rebecca had made an excellent and noteworthy first kill, a powerful and dangerous predator in a forbidding location. It was the sort of thing from which one could coin a new surname: Rebecca Ghostfire. Yet none of that would matter if she couldn’t accept the transformation.

“How”—Rebecca shook her hands as if trying to get water off them—“How am I supposed to do anything like this?”

“The same way you always have,” Bitterlich said, allowing his own tension to unwind; those words were of someone who meant to live. “Only with more panache.”

CHAPTER

Twelve

A tremendous blast jolted Isabelle awake, not from sleep but from some greater absence. That was a cannon shot. It wasn’t the first blast she’d heard or felt, just the first one she could give a shape and a name to. She had been far away. The world shook and smoke filled the space around her.

“Where am I?” she croaked. Her head felt stuffed with hot coals.

Marie hovered over her. “Bilge hold. Somebody blew holes in the keel. You jumped into the machine and healed one of the chambers.”

“I did?” Isabelle tried to call up this memory, but nothing came. The last thing she remembered was Sireen. “La reine?”

“I think somebody took over her bloodhollow, killed the keelmaster and his mate, and set charges on the keel.”

Isabelle sat up on the cot where Marie had apparently laid her. The movement threatened to shatter her skull. “You can’t hijack a bloodhollow.”

“You can’t bring someone back from being a bloodhollow either,” Marie said, “but you did it for me. Besides, either someone stole la reine’s bloodhollow, or Sireen just tried to kill us all. Which do you think is more likely?”

“Where is she?” Isabelle asked.