“Come with me,” Isabelle said. She walked from her cabin, through the chartroom, onto the quarterdeck, and the up to the poop. The deck heaved and rolled beneath her feet. The Thunderclap’s great fantail swept away astern. Above, the blue sky deepened as the Solar raced toward the horizon. Far below the fetid Miasma swirled, a green mist atop the witch’s brew that was the lower sky. Far beneath that lay the Galvanosphere, where lighting raced forever through bruised purple clouds. Deepest beyond the sight of mortals awaited the Gloom, the darkness that fell to the center of the world.

Rebecca stepped up beside Isabelle and peered over the rail of the ship. Marie joined them.

“I imagine you’ve been paying too much attention to the ship to pay attention to the sky, but what do you see out there?” Isabelle said, gesturing to the sky with her spark-hand.

“Clouds,” Rebecca said with surreptitious glances that suggested she was trying to guess the right answer. “Some gulls.”

“So if you were lost out here by yourself, how would you find your way home?”

Rebecca looked around again, really looked, and Isabelle could almost feel her shock as she realized for the first time that they were not in sight of land.

“Where’s the city?” she asked breathlessly. She even leaned out over the rail to see if perhaps it had fallen into the Gloom.

“A difficult problem,” Isabelle said, “but one Skyman Enzo might have helped you solve. You see those big gulls with the black beaks and the blue pinions? Those are grapnel gulls. They only live along the Towering Coast, so if you spot one, you know you’re close to Rocher Royale. Also, it’s getting on toward night, so they’ll all be winging back to land.”

Rebecca scanned the sky, then pointed to a flock of gulls and then at the cloud horizon. “That way.”

“If you’d paid attention to what Skyman Enzo was trying to tell you, you might have learned how to find your way home in an empty sky. Instead, you pilfered his earring. Doesn’t seem like the way you’d want to treat people who are doing you a favor.”

Rebecca didn’t do contrition very well, but she did manage to look stuffed. “I’m sorry.”

“An apology isn’t worth the breath it blows in on if you don’t change your habits, and it doesn’t get you off the gallows without penance.”

Rebecca shrank away, her eyes went round, and her face grew pale. “Penance?”

Isabelle knew that look, felt it from the inside like a second skin. Isabelle’s own father, may he suffer in Torment, had tortured her, shadowburned her to within a flicker of death. Someone had likewise abused Rebecca.