Similce leaned into the chartroom. “Capitaine, they’re almost on us. They’re going to cross our stern.”

And rake us to bits. Isabelle’s pulse kicked up double time. She turned the knob on her timepiece and set the race hand running.

To Similce, she said, “Ten minutes to insertion.” Their window for success had never been wide, but every thump of turbulence, every cannon shot or punctured sail only narrowed it further.

Similce cursed in fluent sailorese and hurried below to give instructions to the gunners. Travers’s sloops came in staggered and stacked, one high and two low. Their gun ports opened. The frigate sweeping in behind them sported a quartet of shadowpults. When they got in range they’d cast bloodshadows strong enough to peel the Saint Asne like an orange. The little brig would have no chance against any one of them, much less all four.

“Major Bitterlich! The top sloop!” Isabelle shouted. “Get it to turn.” She hated sending him unescorted out of the range of covering fire, but she couldn’t afford to be bracketed above and below.

He snapped a smart salute, gave her a heart-fluttering wink, and leapt over the side.

Eight minutes. Isabelle’s heart rattled like a snare drum and her mouth was desert dry.

The forward sloop crossed into firing range, close enough that Isabelle could see the buttons on the officers’ coats.

“Hard a larboard!” Similce shouted, spinning the wheel and turning the ship to protect her vulnerable stern.

Isabelle clutched the rail and mourned the loss of speed, of ticking seconds they could not retrieve.

The sloop opened fire. It guns spat fire and smoke. Cannonballs whizzed by. Most missed entirely, but a few smacked the boards twixt tops and turvy. The Saint Asne answered with double-loaded chain shot into the sloop’s rigging, snapping lines and rending sails. The ship shook, slowed again by its own cannonade.

The frigate’s shadowpults threw open their shutters.

“Hit the deck!” roared the boatswain. Isabelle ducked into the shadow of a bulwark as a great crimson shadow licked over the ship.

Explosions rippled along the Saint Asne’s port side as Similce set off the smoke pots. Thick, black, oily krakensmoke boiled up over the ship’s bulwarks, fouling the shadowpults’ grasping beams.

The bloodshadows tore at the smoke, punching through like the crimson rays of a bloody dawn. Malgiers, amidships, with a dozen lesser lanterns at his back, strove to keep them from creeping onto the deck, but it was like trying to hold back a river with a teacup. A crimson bloodshadow beam ravaged the topsails. Cloth and rope frayed and faded toward shadow. Topsmen fell like swatted flies, paralyzed and unable to scream.

At the stern, Marie braced a twist gun in a gun loop. The bloodshadow washed over her, scrabbling futilely to find a shadow that wasn’t there.