Bitterlich knew better than to make a spectacle of his prowess. A victory would show him to be a wild animal, defeat a whipped cur, either a chance to be used as evidence against him in the court of “Is he human?” So had it been since he’d first come into his sorcery.

He waved his men down. “Gentlemen, I remind you that you should never allow yourself to be baited into a fight.”

“Not like Jean-Claude,” Marie said, who switched back to ignoring Bitterlich as sharply as she’d interrogated him.

Jean-Claude grunted. “Has anyone ever told you sass is unbecoming in an apprentice?”

“You have,” Marie said. “Twelve times in the last week. Once at breakfast on Saint Julia’s Day at the Hanged Gull—”

“I didn’t ask for an accounting,” Jean-Claude said.

“Ahoy the deck!” came a shout from above, high up in the crow’s nest. The lookout waved a bright-yellow flag toward the stern.

“Sails!” he shouted. “Sails astern!”

Bitterlich’s ears pricked up. They had been expecting pursuit, and this far from the trade routes there wasn’t much other reason for anyone to be here. He bounded to the quarterdeck and up to the poop, shifting his eyes to those of a gyrfalcon and sweeping the horizon.

“What do you see?” Marie scampered up beside him more readily than her elderly instructors.

“Dark sails,” he said. “A sloop of war. They fly no flag. Please let Capitaine Isabelle know I’ve gone to have a look.”

He climbed the railing to the port side of the great fantail rudder. Far below, the tips of the turvy masts swirled the upper airs of the Miasma. Bitterlich knew he could fly. He had no doubt in his abilities, but even so the sheer scale of the drop made his stomach clench. Only the ingrained habits and long practice kept him moving out past that frontier. He launched himself high, pulled on the form of a galvatross, and took wing toward the following vessel.

Relief filled Isabelle’s breast when Bitterlich lighted on the deck, safe returned from his scouting. She resisted the urge to trot out there and greet him personally, the better to avoid any awkward silences or painful smiles. She’d hoped her absurd longing would have started to fade by now. Maybe tomorrow.

You betray yourself when you let him make a fool of you, sneered her chorus, dripping contempt into her veins. The ghosts were never far away anymore, and even when she could filter them out they rattled her skull like rain on the rooftops and the wind banging open shutters. She had learned not to jump at the noises or twitch at the candle shadows flicking at the edge of sight.