Jean-Claude watched them leave the room and he waited until they’d shut the door, then ever so carefully jiggered the latch back into place. He hurried back into his harness. He had to shake new ice off his own ropes. He dreaded the ascent to the poop deck, but at least he didn’t have to look back or down. He hoisted himself onto the rail and then up the side.

The Bittergale loomed above him, the wall of the vortex nearly straight up, and its roar had become a thing to menace the Builder himself. It sounded like all the Halls of Torment let loose, endless streams of shriven souls sent shrieking into the sky.

Jean-Claude could only stare in awe. What fools they were, what arrogant nits clinging to the short hairs of the world. This wonder stood as a warning against the folly of mortalkind, and they sought to challenge it.

“Hit the deck!” shouted a lookout.

Jean-Claude threw himself flat behind a bulwark.

The storm must have noticed them, for it flung out a long whip of ice and snow to crack against their ship. The sky to port grew suddenly dark. A swarm of hailstones the size of lemons blasted the Potencia like grapeshot, sweeping unlucky aeronauts from the deck and the rigging. The Bittergale tore even their dying screams away. The barrage snapped lines and shredded them.

Yet somehow through the scream came another song, low and thrumming. It did not oppose the wind but danced with it, turning and twisting, looping and curling until the wind swooped and rose, leaping over the ship and diving below, leaving no more than a stiff breeze to fill the wounded sails.

Down on the main deck, Dok had been chained to the mainmast. Hasdrubal and Travers’s helmsman stood over him while he sang. Once he had the melody going, he gave the music its own hook and took a breath to speak, “I can’t keep this up overlong. If you wants to live through this you has to steer as I say.”

“What are we steering toward?” the helmsman asked.

“The Gray Runners. There!” He pointed his bound hands into the whiteout haze.

Through the thickening sheets of snow loomed a vast dark shape. Like a mountain in the fog, it tumbled in the shearing wind.

“There be our escorts, lads. Seems we don’t die today,” Dok’s voice filled with a joy that transcended his captivity. “Run hard abreast her, ride her vortex, but don’t let her cut your wind.”

The helmsman shouted orders to the boatswain, who passed them on to the crew. Aeronauts ran every which way, scuttling through the rigging like ants from a kicked nest. Jean-Claude hurried below lest he be noticed.