Baru lashed the Prince and poor fainted Iraji facedown to the dining table with a coil of stowage rope. Now she just had to mount the casks for buoyancy—but how? “Eyelets,” she shouted, tearing through the closet. She couldn’t find a way to lash the barrels to the table. “Have you any eyelets?”

“Do you keep eyelets in your sunroom?”

“I don’t have a fucking sunroom! I live in an armory!”

“There’s your problem,” Tau said, philosophically, “too many swords, not enough sun.”

Baru grabbed all the rope and spare khanga fabric she could find, shoved the khangas under the two Oriati as cushioning, looped the ropes around the casks, ran them under the table and around Tau-indi and Iraji and then back up. She grinned as she worked. The thrill of the fight, the frigid water, the crisp satisfaction of working with her hands—she felt like a fisher on the hunt, like a smooth graceful creature.

“What happens now?”

“Now,” Baru said, “I’m going to flood the room.”

Like all hive-glass, the stern windows were made of small glass panes set into a steel lattice. That steel could be a fatal cage. But the windows had been built to swing open in sections, so the passengers could take air on a nice day, or run out fishing lines. If she opened those two frames …

“They swing outward,” Tau-indi called. “Is that a problem?”

Shit! They did swing outward! The water outside would press them shut. She would need to equalize the pressure, inside and out, before she could open them.

She put up her cloth-wrapped fists and began to punch out the glass.

Cheetah had now tilted past thirty degrees, the sunroom entirely underwater and flooding quickly. When Baru broke the first cell, a stream of seawater pushed her down onto her back. Roaring, she struggled up against the current and broke another, another, ruining the expensive work of some Rathpont glassblower and his nervous apprentices, battering out Cheetah’s stately view. Water rushed in, cold and sharp as winter sky, up to Baru’s waist, her navel, her breasts and armpits. She hissed against the cold. Iraji moaned on the table, bound next to the Prince.

“Wake him up,” Baru snapped, “wake him up, he’s got to hold his breath.”

Tau-indi began to whisper fiercely into Iraji’s ear. The boy’s eyes snapped open, wide with fear. Baru, too, felt a curious nonspecific fear: something was wrong. Something in her blindness. What? Was it the Prince?

She turned to look.

Behind the Prince, up the slope of the sinking sunroom, water wept around the door.

Oh fuck. The ship above them had flooded. Only the door held back the deluge.

“Get ready!” Baru shouted. “Take your breath!”