The aeronauts were now engaged day and night with clearing the ship of ice. Their boots thumped along the hull, the wood groaned, and the crack of shearing rime had become a constant refrain. The ship tossed in turbulent skies, straining the keel braces and the rigging.

He’d lost track of the days he’d been cooped up in this stygian icebox. They blended together in a mismatched pastiche of fitful sleep, ratlike skulking, constant hunger, and worry. He’d taken to rereading his message to Ivar every few minutes on the notion that the pirate probably only checked in on his eye occasionally. After all, the things he needed to know from Jean-Claude were not things Jean-Claude was in a position to see just yet.

Either that, or Jean-Claude was completely wrong about the eye and its function.

And where in all the endless sky was Isabelle? He prayed she had found the Conquest shard and was on her way north. For his part he must distract and delay Hasdrubal and Travers, but his chances for that were few and slim. There were any number of ways he could sabotage the Potencia, but he had a strict moral objection to the downing of any ship he happened to be on.

Jean-Claude was staring at his missive again when vision faded from his clockwork eye to be replaced with a view from somewhere else. At last, a response! The double vision with his ordinary eye made him dizzy. The sensation of the metal orb being physically inside someone else’s head was uncanny.

Before his bifurcated vision hovered a sheet of paper covered in writing. It remained directly before his left eye no matter which way he turned his head, as if someone had stuck the thing to his spectacles. He squeezed his right eye shut to stop the world from reeling and read the message written there, in a large sloppy hand:

Monsieur Jean-Claude:

I bid you recall I saved you from plummeting to your death, tended your wounds, and even replaced your missing eye with an improvement the likes of which would bring a king’s ransom. A measure of gratitude would be in order.

I have indeed received a request to down a particular airship, and I am interested in hearing your argument against the proposition.

Jean-Claude had time to read the message twice before it disappeared and his own vision returned … if he could consider it his own. If Ivar could turn it off whenever he liked, it made that much of him Ivar’s puppet, and that he would not stand. It was too useful to get rid of just now, but when the time came, he’d either find a way to wrest control of the artifact from Ivar or dig it out with a spoon.

Fortunately, Jean-Claude had already worked out and written down what he wanted to say. He held up another piece of paper: