Something had burst through the ship’s hull, somewhere in its lowest quarters, and scored a tunnel up through the metal. As the engine had spun and lashed the deck with the stub of the Ctenophore ’s cable, things had emerged from the hidden decks, attacking those on the bridge and in the boilers and engine rooms, tearing the ship apart.

Things that were hard to describe-there were reports of chattering teeth like razored slabs, vast corpsy eyes.

The deck of the Grand Easterly was almost empty, only crossed occasionally by some running servant or bureaucrat. The yeomanry guarded its entrance points, where the bridges rose to it from below-they could not allow such chaos to spread to the flagship. The crowds gathered as close as they could get to the violence, on roofs and balconies, towerblocks, thronging the vessels that surrounded the Hoddling. They surged forward like waves. Aerostats came near the gusting updraft from the fire.

Forgotten in her room at the Grand Easterly ’s rear, Bellis watched in horror as the crisis took shape.

Johannes is gone,she thought, staring at the shattered ruins of the winch engine.

He was gone-and she had no words for the weird, muted shock and loss she felt.

She looked down on the trawlers that abutted the Hoddling. Their decks thronged with injured, terrified men and women being dragged to safety from the flames.

On one of them, Bellis saw Uther Doul. He shouted, moving sparely, his eyes darting ceaselessly.

The fire on the Hoddling was abating, though the Armadans had not put it out.

Bellis gripped the windowsill. She could see shadows moving through the windows of the factory ship. She could see things within.

Armed pirates were arriving from all over the city. They took up positions, checking their weaponry and massing by the bridges leading to the Hoddling.

Something streaked from the factory ship’s smoke-fouled bridge: a jet of disturbance that buckled the air as it lanced out. It struck the wooden mast of a schooner just beyond the Hoddling.

Agitated particles coiled around the mast and soaked into it, and then Bellis let out an astonished sound. The mast was melting as if it were wax, the great pillar of wood bending like a snake, its substance oozing over itself as it spat and drooled downward, spitting in and out of existence, leaving an effervescence in the air-a blistered reality through which Bellis caught glimpses of a void. Folds of denaturing wood slid like toxic sludge over the crowded deck.

Uther Doul was pointing with his sword, directing a group of cactacae to bring their rivebows to bear on the Hoddling ’s windows, when a chorus of cries rose away from the factory ship, out of Bellis’ sight. She saw the men and women below shift their attention, watched an expression of horror and astonishment pass through them like a virus.