Something was approaching from the city’s fore, bearing down on the assembled pirates-something Bellis could not yet see. She saw the armed groups splinter, some turning to face the new threat with terror scrawled all over them. Bellis ran from the room, heading up to the deck to see.

The Grand Easterly was all confusion. The bridges were still guarded by nervous patrols, unclear on their orders, desperately watching the storm of arrows and cannonfire that assaulted the Hoddling. Pirates were leaving the Grand Easterly, running to join their comrades.

Bellis ran to the edge of the deck, past the bridge, hiding in the darkness beside its raised quarters. She was at the level of Armada’s roofs. She tried to make out what was happening in the city.

Firepower was beating down on the Hoddling, and on whatever it contained. The hidden enemy sent out more of their bizarre and murderous thaumaturgic strikes, like fireworks, dissolving the substance of the surrounding vessels and the attacking Armadans. But beyond the nearby vessels, Bellis could see an indistinct second front spreading into the city. She could see undisciplined, chaotic attacks, could hear the irregular staccato of gunfire.

The new attackers grew closer to the tight tangle of boats below her, where most of Garwater’s yeomanry had been waiting to retake the Hoddling. She could see, suddenly, who had launched the second assault, from within the city. The Garwater forces were suddenly hemmed in and stormed by Dry Fall’s vampir.

Bellis peered around, her hand held tight to her mouth, breathing hard. She did not understand what she was seeing-some collapse of trust, some revenge? Mutiny, at the Brucolac’s hand.

She could not keep the vampir in her eyes. They moved like nightmares. Congregating and atomizing and re-forming, moving with feral speed.

They would swing down with terrifying grace in some cul-de-sac where only five or six or seven armed fighters at a time could attack them, and would dispatch the defenders with appalling ferocity, punching horn-hard nails through throats, savaging with their predatory teeth until their chins were sopped with blood, salivating and growling with bloodlust. And then they were gone, bounding over the collapsing bodies and onto some other concrete block or bridge or gun tower or ruin. Rustling like lizards they would disappear from sight.

Bellis could not tell how many there were. Wherever she looked, there seemed to be fighting, but she could only ever see Garwater’s troops clearly.

Uther Doul, she realized, had turned his attention to the vampir. She saw him shoving people out of his way and sprinting back onto the Grand Easterly ’s deck, to stare down onto the zones of battle. He spun and screamed orders, directed reinforcements toward the various combats. Then he hurled himself toward the rear of an ancient war trimaran by the Grand Easterly ’s side, lumpen with brick housing, where through a thicket of ragged washing Bellis glimpsed a brutal melee.