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!”

I know I’m looking at him as though he’d asked me my favorite dance, but I go, scrambling down the steps and the boat that had been so steadily solid yaws freakishly under me. Panicked faces and the leers of the madmen screeching imprecations from the deck. Silichieh’s head and shoulders plunged into the gun truss or whatever it is—an X-shaped brace with a gun at each extremity and a pivot thing in the middle and that’s what seems to need work at the moment. He pulls his head out to switch tools, sees me, and tells me to hand him this and that. The ship jerks violently to the side as though it weighed nothing and I hear his head knock on the metal. He curses. I help him work. Suddenly he snaps the compartment closed and races past me.

“Help!” he says, his breath fast, his eyes glassy.