A couple of soldiers are trying to force or unhinge the hatch to the wheelhouse, and another looks speculatively around to its front windows, meditating an attempt to climb in? Saskia has a loyal following among the former asylum inmates; she’s set one of them at the helm, and he has locked and wedged all the hatches, sealing himself in. He stands singing and cackling gaily as we streak in toward the enemy ships, cannonballs splattering all around. Every now and then he seizes hold of the clapper belonging to the brass bell that hangs near the wheel, jangling it and screeching. A ball rips the froth within ten feet of the bow on our side and even Makemin jerks. I see Nardac scramble crabwise from her bed, crawling and keeping the weight off her injured leg, to duck into the mess.

The hatch gives way. The mad helmsman spins, a knife in his hand, his eyes glassy, his mouth a line. He looks back and forth—a thud I can feel in my gut and the boat wallows from side to side.

Makemin shouts, “Bring us around!”

Saskia’s man steers us hard on the enemy. From the window I see Saskia herself darting across the water. The blackbirds are shooting at her. She zig-zags with astounding speed and in the next moment is right alongside them. She whirls around toward the rear of the boat, gesticulating wildly, then suddenly hurtles back toward us in fantastic back and forth curves, her legs pumping. Blackbirds on the deck behind her—sharpshooters’ guns crackle from our upper decks. I see silent bodies drop on the distant enemy ship. Then an eruption in the back of the ship, and a second and third—grenades she’d thrown. She’s halfway back now, and in all the grey and blue and tossing white froth there is a shock of livid red, fire snickering up from the battered rear deck of the enemy ship. Something whips down in a short arc and the collision throws me from my feet—I grab the wall. I scuttle away from the window. Loony at the wheel is jumping up and down hooting and laughing and ringing the bell. I still haven’t heard the forward battery. A rattle on the roof, Saskia drops in through the broken hatch slopping with water, is nearly flung aside as another jolt bats us in a roll to port. She strides haggardly to the helm and peels her man off of it—

“Tell them to get stoking down there!” she rumbles, her voice tired, body sopping.

Another bang—this one hard, I can hear splintering. I cower by the floor, clutching at a pipe in the wall.

Makemin’s face in mine—“Get down to the battery!”