But too late, gravity had him, a graceful dive and Zee went down through the gel and came up again coated in flame, the Burn sticking to him everywhere as if it smelled Oriati flesh and hated it, and it burnt even underwater, it fed on the air in his clothes. He screamed soundlessly because the fire was eating all the air that came out of him. He screamed with his face tipped back to the sky, and the Burn went down his throat.

With a sob of shame Abdumasi fell backward off the rail and fled into the burning mess of his war-dromon’s deck. He was too scared to die like that, and fuck the griots who’d blame him for not jumping, they weren’t staring down into that hell, were they?

“You’ll never take me alive!” he wailed, trying to think. He couldn’t see anyone else up on deck who might be convinced to kill him—and anyway they loved him too much, the poor fools, they believed in him. There was no time for poison. He could hang himself. Or he could fall on his sword, if he could aim it right—

Or he could die in combat, like a proper champion.

Abdumasi raised up his head and looked for the enemy.

Tall redsailed Falcrest frigates circled the burning slick of Oriati meat and charcoaled mast. They looked like bloody gulls, lazy on the wind, greedy for carnage.

Abdu held out his rapier and apologized to it. “Well, Kindalana, you were right. It was a trap. I love you, I’m sorry, and please give Tau my apologies.”

So much for his plan to help liberate Aurdwynn. So much for Baru Cormorant, the great hope of the people. So much for the seed of immortality growing in Abdu’s back. It would never carry his soul down through millennia.

He’d sold his body to that hidden power for nothing.

Oh, it wasn’t fair! Of course the world could be cruel, but couldn’t it at least be equitable in its cruelty? If you gave up your soul, if you abandoned those you loved to secure a greater freedom, weren’t you owed a reward?

“Sir!” someone roared—the renegade jackal soldier, Prepare-Captain Minubo of the House Burun. “Mister Abd, sir, they’re coming aboard!”

She stood by the stern rail, pointing with her sword into the inferno—and there through the fire came a Masquerade frigate. It had an abstract human body as its figurehead, carved of facets and planes, the body a wedge, the eyes two candle-flames. The smoke parted around a complexity of ropes and sails that Abdumasi couldn’t comprehend: mystic geometries of canvas and hemp, receding into the smog.

“You’ll never take me alive?” Abdumasi said, hopefully.

And he raised up his rapier Kindalana, named, because of its keen point and difficult grip, after his ex-wife.