The companionway above him was choked with smoke. Aeronauts with wet blankets swatted at the fire, but it pushed them back. Men came coughing, stumbling back out of the hole, hands burned and eyes blind from the smoke. Jean-Claude shoved his way through the press of bodies and joined a knot of men racing toward the stern. Through the gun loops, he saw cinders falling toward the turvy sails. Beyond the bottom hatches, the Gloom yawned and beckoned to him. It would be so much easier just to fall.

Halfway down the turvy run, two marines stepped in front of the panicked mob and started shoving aeronauts back toward the fire, whipping them with swords, their faces red with rage.

“Get back. Back to work, or we all burn.”

Jean-Claude, in the middle of the pack, got low and shoved, driving forward so the press of bodies simply could not stop. They broke over the marines like a wave and forced them back. The first marine shrieked as he stepped back over a turvy hatch and his foot came down into thin air. The second lurched to the side and came at Jean-Claude with a cutlass. Jean-Claude surged inside the blow, stabbed the man in the gut with his stolen knife, and relieved him of his cutlass when he fell.

He ran to the aft companionway, climbed the ladder past the hold and the orlop deck to the lower gun deck. The whole place was bedlam, with men shouting and shoving to no purpose Jean-Claude could see. He climbed again, but the hatchway to the upper gun deck was closed and locked. He was trapped. Forward lay the crew cabins. Aft was the officers’ stores.

Blowing like a winded bull, he bashed his way into the stores and tore down the stack of chests covering the windows. He flung the window open with a thought to reaching the gallery and Dok, but he had no rope or harness, and the ship bobbed and rolled. The fantail rudder swung, the copper mesh stretched between long spars bending the aetherkeels’ aura. Smoke billowed from the side of the ship, and enemies hunted the decks for him.

He faced into the ship, sat down on the sill, and reached for the lintel. He focused his one eye on his grip and pulled himself out and up until only his toes were still on the sill. The wind tugged at his coat and the ship shuddered over a ridge of turbulence. His feet skittered like water in a hot greased skillet. Every muscle he had clenched tight. He must move, but the only muscle that let go was the one in his bladder.

He stared at his hand and the space around it. The side of the ship was covered in fretwork, a processional scene of clayborn descending into Torment while the Savior received the saintborn in Paradise.