“You are most welcome. You were correct to point out that it would have done your mission no good to have them chasing you through the deep sky.”

Isabelle’s pulse thrummed in anticipation of her mission, of being aloft on a skyship again. Excitement kept one step ahead of her dread of fouling it all up.

She had been commissioned especially to lead an expedition to the top of the world. At the first glimmering of spring, when the Solar’s light spilled into the Twilight Latitudes after months of darkness, she would sail north and challenge the Bittergale—a lethal tumult of tumbling stonebergs and a constant cyclone of hailstones the size and speed of cannonballs, an impossible, impassable barrier that chewed up ships and spat out flinders even more surely than a great fetch.

Yet beyond it, if she could clear the way, was the wreck of the Conquest, fabled flagship of Secundus Maximus’s lost armada, and its legendary pay chest: the treasure of a century in coin and plunder. It was enough to make a pirate weep.

Of more interest to Isabelle and value to l’Empire was the Craton Auroborea on which the Conquest had crashed. If her guide was to be believed, it was a lush, green land ripe for exploration and colonization.

“Are you ready to sail?” Sireen asked. Her tone was casual and friendly, but the question was definitely in the official-business category.

Isabelle’s conscience curdled. Was she ready? More to the point, was she able? She’d been wrestling with it for months. She had trained for this role, helped plan the expedition, recruited for it, and outfitted it with every tool it would need to get the job done. She was certainly as prepared as she was ever going to be.

She’d also be responsible for the lives of over four hundred men, attempting a dangerous passage into the unknown whilst seeing and hearing things. Yes, the potions had the chorus under control … except when they didn’t.

Yet to stand down meant she would lose everything. The Célestial Parlement had already stripped her of her noble title. She had no right to own or inherit land. They’d done everything they possibly could to render her a legal nonperson. She’d even lost her family name. Making Isabelle a naval capitaine had been Sireen’s way of getting around those restrictions while technically abiding the decision of her nobles.

Was it not better to sacrifice one life than risk disaster for many? Was it moral for her to proceed without telling Sireen about the voices in her head?

She will discard you like an old rag, her chorus whispered. You will be confined, erased.