“Your obedience is laudable. It has cost you all your support in the senate and given me just cause to have you executed,” Isabelle replied, but she was not Isabelle but rather someone older, stronger. This was the voice of Primus Maximus, her first ancestor.

“I am loyal to the republic!” shouted the consul.

“Loyal is not the same as useful,” Isabelle said.

Marie gave her a shake. “Isabelle, you’re raving. You have to stand down.”

Isabelle’s vision faded, but Primus’s message was clear and undeniable. She lived only because she proved useful to la reine.

“And then what?” Isabelle’s words were hot and bitter. “I am de rien, remember: of nothing. No family. No power. No name. Capitaine is all I have. I can do this. I have to do this.”

She spun, wrenching free of Marie’s grip, and climbed the companionway to the gun deck. Powder monkeys raced up and down the ladder from the magazine carrying buckets of charges for the cannon. The gun smoke burned Isabelle’s eyes. A blue-scaled dragon girl sped by. Another hallucination. Up and up she climbed to the main deck, with Marie close behind.

A cold wind slapped her face as she oriented herself in the battle. The Thunderclap sailed one pistol shot to starboard of the Skaladin brig and half a mast below. Ballast barrels in the Thunderclap’s bilge hold had been rolled to larboard, tilting the ship just that extra bit so the elevated guns could gouge the brig from below, like a great cat disemboweling its prey.

“Capitaine on deck!” shouted the boatswain, though how he’d even noticed her in the chaos remained a mystery. Blood clotted the sand on the deck, holes pierced the bulwarks, and several sails were shredded. One of the ship’s shadowpults had been smashed, its shattered mirror smeared with the blood of the Sanguinaire who had been trapped within.

Aeronauts swarmed in the rigging, braving a fearful hail of enemy fire to cut down ruined sails and replace severed stays, repairing the ship almost as fast as it was damaged.

A volley from the brig rained down, ball and shot whizzing through the tops. Most of it missed entirely, but one cannonball struck the deck close enough to Isabelle that her bowels near turned to water.

She clambered to the quarterdeck and joined Vrain in the dubious shelter of a sniper’s bastion and said, “Report.”

Vrain saluted and said, “They came after us when we were floundering, didn’t know we’d recovered. We sent up surrender flags, then pounced when they got into spitting range. If we’d had a bit more lift, we might have boarded, but she climbs faster than we do. Even so, we’ve just about got her sticks off.”