Reyn recalled wishing she wouldn't wake again. Now that she had, she wished to drop dead immediately. If for nothing else, to escape the scolding her rescuer was giving.

"Blustering idiot," Josy snapped. "What were you playing at?"

That the accusation was accompanied by a sniffle and maybe even a relieved sob was stranger to Reyn than anything else. Her surroundings were nonetheless unexpected. Her back lay on sand, the sky above her was dark, and she felt colder than she'd ever felt in Altier Nashal. The stars above were brilliantly bright, and there appeared to be so many. Far removed from the gaslights of cities or the campfires of legions, the cloudless desert sky provided a view of the heavens like few others in the world.

Reyn tried to sit up and immediately regretted the attempt.

A sudden wave of nausea burst in her stomach, nearly forcing her to turn her head and retch out over the sand. Her back felt as if it were on fire, and the rest of her was stiff as a board. She found that her right arm was bound to her chest, held tight by a sling made from the skirt of her bloodstained robe.

"Knock that off," Josy commanded. She was kneeling on Reyn's right and pressed a damp cloth to her forehead. The stolen Jade weapon was slung across her back on a leather strap, the barrel peeking from behind Josy's right shoulder. "Winds take you, you're not healed."

The cloth's coolness helped settle Reyn's nausea, though it didn't erase it completely. Her throat felt dry, and she could still taste blood in her mouth.

Josy guided Reyn to lay back down. "You were shot."

Reyn wanted to say she was aware of that, but her voice seemed to have fled. Speaking was beyond her ability at the moment. Too weak, too tired, and much too disappointed by unwanted consciousness.

"It went through your lung," Josy continued, "and the shot did more damage coming out than going in. I could've shone a light through the hole it made in you."

Reyn moved her unbound hand to touch where she remembered being struck. Josy stopped her.

"I said you're not healed. You were drowning in your own blood by the time I got us through the gate, and I'm not as practiced with restoration as Enfri. I thought I'd lost you there a few times."

Breathing heavily through the nose, Reyn looked down at herself. Her robe was pulled down, and she was bare to the waist. Josy had a hand over Reyn's wound, and a soft light shone from underneath her palm.

"Don't get the wrong idea," Josy grumbled. "I'm not copping a feel. I've been keeping a regenerative spell on you. It's not as good as a healing potion, but it's knitting you back together. You're going to be hungry enough to eat an aurochs by the time I'm done, though, and I had to force your body to start drawing from your own ether stores to fuel the spell. That's just the way regeneration works. You were sweating from ethershock an hour ago, so you must be weak from that on top of everything else."

Panting, Reyn managed to get a word in edgewise. "How far?"

"Not very," Josy said. "If you mean how far we've gone or how far away the Jade soldiers are... Either way, not very." She gestured to the east. "Ley lines are a little bit closer, though. I can actually feel some ether coming back again. Not much, but a little."

Reyn moved in the wrong way and felt a stab of pain. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out.

"Easy," Josy said. She surveyed the area before looking back. When she spoke again, she'd dropped her voice to a low register. "They're close. They've been right on our heels since the gate. I've barely been able to keep ahead of them. I ditched the horses and sent them in another direction— that bought me the time to see to your wound— but they must've figured out what I did. I've been hearing their engines closing in."

"Engines?"

"They're using airships. We can't stay here. We have to keep moving."

Reyn nodded. "The gate... How did you make it?"

"Thank the Glorious Emperor's engineers. A bunch of them were heading into the desert, and blind luck got us to the gate when a whole army of them were heading out to the other side of the tunnel. They had all sorts of wagons with them, and I think they're filled with all they need to start building mooring towers outside the Jade Empire. They gotta be setting up an airship anchorage just inside the desert."

A staging ground for the imminent invasion of the east. The demon was making swift progress in its plans.

Reyn did a check of her ether stores. She was surprised to feel them holding as steadily as they were. Furthermore, her ether felt odd. Almost sickly, as if it roiled with nausea of its own.

"My lady," Reyn rasped. "Please... tell me you didn't."

Josy began pulling up Reyn's robe. She wouldn't look her in the eye. "I'm sorry."

"You gave me oren," Reyn whispered.

"It was that or let you die."

"You should have let me die."

Josy's eyes grew fierce. "That's what you want. Admit it."

Reyn looked away.

"I should've realized it sooner," Josy said, shaking her head. "You'd think if anyone could understand, it'd be me, but I missed it just like everyone else. You want to die."

Unable to look at Josy, Reyn swallowed. "Sometimes... living is no longer an option."

"Who decided that?" Josy asked.

"I..." Reyn sniffed and wiped at her eyes with her unbound hand. "I cannot decide anything else for myself."

"But why would..." Josy tensed her jaw, and the rest of her words came through clenched teeth. "Why choose that?"

Reyn didn't know how to answer. It wasn't a choice. It was a need to stop hurting. To stop everything. There wasn't a reason that Reyn could find. It wasn't reasoned at all. There were so many reasons to live, but the need didn't have anything to do with logic.

She was afraid. So suddenly, it struck her then for the first time how she'd been afraid since that awful night in Rosewater. Afraid of hurting. Afraid of living. Afraid that the need would win, and she'd get what she was looking for.

Reyn didn't want to die, but she didn't want to live like this anymore, either.

An offer to help shoulder one's burdens was something she'd given many times to others. To Pacifica, to Enfri, Krayson, Jin, and Josy. But, she'd never asked it for herself. Reyn understood now, after coming so close to her end, why she gave it so often. It was because it was what she needed for herself so badly.

She forced herself to look at Josy. Speaking was hard— it hurt— and she felt more tired than she ever had before. She couldn't ask for it now. Reyn wanted to, more than she'd ever wanted anything, but she couldn't. Her pain wouldn't allow it.

Josy exhaled and allowed the issue to pass unchallenged. She shifted positions on her knees and got her arms beneath Reyn's back and legs. With a heave, she stood up with Reyn in her arms. The movement caused Reyn to gasp as her half-sealed injuries were jostled, but once she was safely cradled, the pain eased itself away.

"Hold onto me," Josy said as she started trudging through the sand. "There was this handicapped sky woman who managed crossing the desert on foot. I think the two of us should be able to manage it."

Reyn put her unbound arm around Josy's shoulder and buried her face. She stopped herself from pointing out that Enfri had only gone a handful of leagues into the Espalla Dunes while on the run from the black hounds, it had still taken her a number of days, and she wound up dying for a little while somewhere in the midst of it all.

Other things needed to be addressed. "You cannot have enough oren for us both."

Oddly, Josy winced. "See, the thing about that is..."

Reyn pulled back to stare at her beneath a knitted brow.

Josy exhaled heavily. "We have plenty. Enough to get us halfway to Shoto."

"How's that possible?"

"Jin..." Josy swallowed. "Jin gave me her supply before we left. Everything she had."

Reyn frowned. That didn't make any sense at all. "It has been nearly two weeks. Jin struggles to go more than five days without oren, and we spoke to her by sending this afternoon."

"I think she... maybe... doesn't need it anymore."

"How is that possible? Has an assassin ever quit before?"

"No," Josy said. "The empress is the only one I've ever heard of surviving oren withdrawal."

"She had a dragon bond to keep herself alive through that. Her Highness has no such thing."

"Don't underestimate Jin," Josy said firmly. She continued onward, looking straight ahead. "There's no one in the world tougher than she is, and she loves her sky woman more than anyone's loved anything. There's no limit to what she'd do for Enfri, no matter what it could cost her."

"Gods," Reyn murmured under her breath. "Were we all so fortunate."

Josy's expression fell. "I didn't say it was a good thing. I'm worried what we'll find when we get back. I'm scared Jin will be keeled over dead because she took her devotion too far. The royal assassins need oren. It's part of us. I'm worried Jin wants to spare Enfri from always having to think about oren supplies to the detriment of everything else she's doing, and that'll be the final straw before Jin can't go any further. I don't know what would be left of her even if she survives the withdrawals."

"That is ridiculous," Reyn said. "Her Majesty would do everything she could to secure oren for her. She has been."

"That's just it," Josy said. "How much of Enfri's fealty to Maya comes from her wanting to save Jin? How many kingdoms— Althandor included— have tipped on their heads because of it? It's the one thing no one wants to face. Like it or not, the world took a swan dive off a spire the moment those two met."

"I think you are worrying too much," Reyn cautioned. "You are speaking as if they are acting as madwomen. They are more sensible than that."

"Have you ever stopped to wonder how the rest of the world sees them?" Josy asked. "Ever wonder if they're right? Are Jin and Enfri any less broken than we are?" Josy closed her eyes. "Sometimes, I think those two are more damaged than any of us."

"I though I was supposed to be the depressive one."

Josy snorted. "Yeah, thought I'd give you a break from it. Maybe give you a shot at taking my spot as the cheery comic relief."

Reyn giggled before promptly silencing herself. Somewhere between her lightheadedness and being carried like a maiden in a fairy tail, her reserved nature wasn't doing its job. She cleared her throat in a futile attempt to conceal the outburst.

There was a smile lurking on Josy's face, but it began to fade. "I'm sorry, Legs. If I saw another way to keep you from bleeding out, I'd have taken it. The oren makes your blood stay where it belongs, it makes your ether go further, but you're stuck taking it forever. Or, until Enfri can give you a dragon bond."

Reyn pulled an anxious face. "I suspect bonds are not an option for shifters. Proteurim were created using dragons. Shifter abilities derive from a dragon's polymorphic nature. If Enfri tried to bind two such malleable imprints, I fear it would work too well."

Josy wrinkled her nose. "How do you mean?"

"I would prefer not to tempt Fate," Reyn said. "They already say it is like becoming one soul. Perhaps the bonding would... bond more. Mind and heart. The individuals lost and two copies of a new gestalt identity continuing on."

"Ah," Josy said quietly. "Yeah, I see what you mean. Like what happens after transmutational healing. No telling who or what comes out the other side."

I've meant to say for some time now," Reyn said, leaning her head against Josy's shoulder. "You are a more observant person than I ever gave you credit for."

Josy blushed. "And you're smarter than I thought. I mean, I already had you pegged as smart, but you're really smart."

"Perhaps," Reyn said weakly.

"Doesn't take you long to come up with new spells or new ways to use old ones. That's pretty amazing."

"Magic makes sense to me," Reyn said, her voice distant. "It always has, since I was young. Runes follow their rules. Their only real limit is the one writing them."

"That master of yours you've mentioned, the one who designed your necklace, he must've been something else."

Reyn bit her lip. She wasn't certain why, but it felt important for her to tell the truth now. To Josy, if to no one else. Reyn had never told anyone everything there was to know about her. Since Ham's death, there was no one in the world who truly knew who Reyn of Rosewater really was. Not even Pacifica.

If she was anything, Reyn was secrets. Perhaps that wasn't the strength that Reyn had always believed it to be.

"I..." she began hesitantly. "I never had a master."

Josy squinted at her.

"My cell in the Courtesans," Reyn continued, "they believed what they were told. They saw no reason to question. Ham led us, and that was enough for them." Reyn hesitated, but now that the secret was coming out, she didn't dare try stopping it again. "We always thought the Imperial Diamond was a mere treasure. Just a big rock. Then I saw them, the diagrams made of the sigils upon it. I realized it was no mere stone. I knew it was a weapon. I had Ham send Nataan to Irdruin to learn what he could of such things from the theurallurgic engineers there. I sent Maxime and Gaspard to infiltrate the Sanguine Tower and uncover all the blood runners knew of it. I... I sent Ham to steal the Imperial Diamond from the Lady Tarlen's gala."

Josy came to a stop and looked down at Reyn in her arms. "What are you saying?"

"I was not Ham's student," Reyn whispered. "He was mine. He was not the leader of the Rosewater Courtesan cell. I was."

"You?" Josy asked.

Her hands were shaking as Reyn pulled the whalebone amulet from underneath her collar. She held it in front of her, staring at the faint lines tracing across the surface. "I was seven years old when I made this. It made sense. I assumed all scriveners could do such things, because it made so much sense. I could imagine and light fractal sigils so easily, I never suspected no one else had ever done so."

Reyn looked at her amulet, tracing a finger across its lines, for a long moment before she was able to find the courage to look up at Josy. What she found surprised her, but she supposed there was no reason it should have.

The duchess smirked, as she always did. "You really got more going on for you than just the legs."

She bent at the waist, bringing their faces close. Reyn's eyes went wide with sudden fright; she recognized that look in someone's eyes. There was no doubt that Reyn was about to be kissed, and kissed well. Reyn hung on tight and prepared to receive it.

They were bathed in harsh, damning light. Neither had noticed the approaching hum of airships until they were fixed within the electrical spotlights of the lead vessel. Reyn looked up and counted four of them through the blinding white glare, but there may have been more.

A cry sounded from above. "Balsa!"

Josy crouched down, shielding Reyn with her body. Bone plates formed over her back to make a solid barrier against the bombardment. The explosions of Jade weaponry burst painfully in Reyn's ears, and clouds of sand shot up all around them. She could feel the multitude of impacts against Josy's hasty osteoform.

"Ha!" Josy laughed. "Too far out to penetrate. Not as deadly at that range, are they?"

There was another order spoken in the Tongue of Jade. "Daepo!"

"Haven't heard that one yet," Josy muttered.

"I have!" Reyn clung to Josy as panic swelled to consume every inch of her. "My lady, run!"

Josy didn't waste a moment to question why. She pivoted on her feet and ran in a startling burst of speed. But Josy ran in the wrong direction. Towards the west. Towards the airships!

The thunder that followed the order for the Jade siege engines was many times louder than anything that came before. The surrounding dunes erupted in titanic geysers of sand that showered them with debris. Lead shots larger than a person's head rained down on them, faster than sight could follow.

The Jade Empire's siege engines, the ones Ji Min called daepo, they were the same as the handheld weaponry. Only, many times larger and far more destructive.

Josy's chosen direction was what saved them from instant death. Her course took them closer to the airships, underneath the lowest angle the daepo could aim. Their shots hurtled over Reyn and Josy's heads to slam ineffectively into the ground behind them.

Reyn felt the tremors from the impacts all around them, even through Josy's body. The duchess didn't stumble. She kept her feet and continued running.

"What is your plan?" Reyn squawked.

"Working on it!"

Reyn looked ahead of them. The airships were little more than silhouettes against the tableau of stars in the desert sky. Pools of blackness in the vague form of sailing ships at sea. The differences between nautical and aerial vessels were few, and most airships were capable of setting down in water if necessary. The bottom keels were flat rather than tapered, and instead of masts reaching into the sky, they branched off to the sides like wings. Massive, canvas sails hung on either side of the airships, and a constant cloud of steam poured out from brass exhaust pipes running down the length of wooden hulls. Spinning rotor propellers hung beside the airships on steel struts to bear them aloft, aided by theurallurgic artifices on the top deck that appeared like rotating gyros.

The Jade vessels were quieter than the ones Reyn was familiar with. They didn't fill the air with the roar of their rotors and steam engines as the Sky Corps did. They were larger, broader, bristling with batteries of daepo and platforms for soldiers bearing ballistic weaponry. Their decks were lit by electrical lanterns. Protected by thick and impenetrable armored hulls. These were machines built for a different purpose than the mercantile fleets of Nadia. These were warships.

Josy appeared unable to contain herself. Even as she charged the airships, her eyes were wide with awe and begrudging respect for the Jade Empire's war machines. "Well, shit!"

Reyn concurred with the sentiment wholeheartedly.

"Hold on, Legs. We're boarding them!"

Reyn concurred a lot less with that one. She held on tighter to Josy's neck as the arm around her back dropped away. It came back with a pair of vials held in Josy's hand, each filled with a different liquid. One a brackish blue, the other a translucent green. Josy popped the corks of both with a flick of her thumb and downed them in a single gulp before tossing the empty vials aside. Oren and invested vex flooded into Josy, replenishing her stores as it fortified them.

There were large and profound questions Reyn had as to how exactly Josy meant to board vessels fifty paces or more above the ground. Before she could ask, Reyn felt her stomach lurch and nearly drop to the sand.

Sand that, distressingly, was falling further and further away from them.

Echoes of fire essence hammered against Reyn's awareness. Flames burst from Josy's feet, propelling her upwards at terrifying velocity, and Reyn was carried along for the ride.

This is worse! Reyn thought in a nauseas panic. A thousand times worse than flying with Krayson! Worse worse worse! Stop now, please!

The flames cut out, and Reyn was astonished at just how much worse things could get. They arced up and over the lead airship. The trajectory of Josy's flight was taking them down onto the very center of the top deck. As they fell the final ten paces, Josy unslung her stolen weapon and aimed it one-handed at a shrouded Gray Lotus officer who appeared to be the most important man on the crew.

"Sod off, arseface!" Josy screamed.

The shot took the man in the chest, bowling him backwards and toppling him over the deck railing.

Josy's feet hit the deck, and she tucked into a roll. She let go of Reyn, depositing her unharmed on the wooden planks, before springing back to her feet. Her gauntlets came onto her hands, and Josy pounded her knuckles together as she sized up the crowd of Jade soldiers in brown uniforms rushing towards her.

Reyn could do little besides lie in a painful heap as flintlock weapons aimed at Josy from every direction. A second Gray Lotus officer, perhaps equivalent to a knight-lieutenant, separated from his men to stand five paces in front of Josy with a look of profound confidence about him. He brandished his sword at her.

"You are surrounded," he said in heavily accented Althandi. "You see our numbers! Surrender!"

Josy's grin was feral. "All I see are dead men."

Reyn scrambled out of the way as a fusillade of weapon fire answered Josy's defiance. She covered her head with her single unbound arm and stumbled in an awkward, crouching run as she sought out the nearest semblance of cover. Her chest burned terribly and sent stabs of pain lancing through her, but it was either suffer that or suffer far worse.

A man hurtled past Reyn and smashed into a crowd of his comrades. The whole group was bowled off their feet. Shouts and screams assaulted Reyn from all directions, as did the unceasing blasts from Jade weapons.

Reyn shot a quick look behind her. Josy had already assumed her full-body osteoform, and the officer who'd demanded her surrender had the upper half of his torso driven down through the deck planks. His subordinates appeared lost when no one was left to give them orders. Their discipline fled the instant their leadership fell, and their tactics were nonexistent.

They were little more than panicking chickens trapped with a fox.

Reyn came around the helm near the stern. The wheel was manned by a frightened young man who goggled at the carnage ahead of him. He spared Reyn a glance before turning back to where Josy was pitching his crewmates overboard when she wasn't crushing them with her fists.

"Do not mind me," Reyn muttered to the boy. She crouched with her back to the helm, using it as cover.

The helmsman ducked just as a severed arm— on fire— flew over his head. He looked at Reyn, looked back towards Josy, then turned on his heels and ran from his post. Reyn watched incredulously as the boy dove overboard without a moment's hesitation.

"Hey, Legs!"

Reyn peeked her head over the helm. Josy was in the midst of tearing through a solid thirty soldiers, most of whom were more intent on fleeing from her monstrous osteoform than fighting. Despite it all, Reyn felt a measure if irritation bubbling up from inside her. "Sod off, arseface?"

"Hilarious," Josy said flatly. She grabbed a Jade soldier by the leg and used him as a blunt instrument against the man next to him. "Look, I got this airship locked down. Think you can take down one or two of the others?"

"And how do you suggest I do that?"

"You're the criminal mastermind. Figure it out!"

"Ohh," Reyn growled, indignant.

She nearly pitched onto her side as the airship shuddered. Two of the other airships maneuvered alongside and above their vessel, and their broadside daepo unleashed a storm on them. The deck ripped apart, and two of the six lift gyros were shattered into fragments. They fired on their own airship for the chance of killing Josy and Reyn.

"Legs!"

Reyn held onto the wheel, her eyes dancing between the various gauges and dials surrounding her. It was all in Tongue of Jade! She couldn't tell the altimeter from the boiler pressure. "We are losing altitude. I think."

"You think?" Josy grabbed two men, slammed their heads together, and tossed them aside.

"I'm trying!" Reyn craned her neck from side to side, taking in the positions of the airships to both port and starboard. The fourth vessel was coming about dead ahead, picking up velocity, diving towards them at ramming speed. "We cannot stay here!"

"Can't run, either!"

A soldier aimed his weapon at the back of Josy's head at point-blank range and fired. It jostled Josy's skull a little. She turned around to glare at him from behind her bone mask. The man dropped his weapon and fled. Josy stomped down on the deck planks, bringing up the other end beneath his feet. The hapless soldier went airborne, and his trajectory took him through one of the rotors. Josy cringed. "Anytime now, Legs!"

Reyn threw her head back and screamed in frustration before seizing the helm wheel with her good hand. She put her entire body behind cranking it as far left as it would go. The airship listed steeply to the port side, spilling bodies and flailing crewmen over the railing. With two gyros gone, the airship was already dangerously close to sinking, and Reyn's reckless maneuvering sent it close to capsizing. Doing so in midair would be considerably worse than at sea.

"You gorgeous genius!" Josy crowed. "Hit the throttle. Full steam ahead!"

And how in the embrace of hellfire do I do that? Reyn wanted to shout, but Josy seemed to think things were going according to plan. It wouldn't be polite for Reyn to say she had no idea what she was doing.

Among the helm controls were a pair of brass levers connected by a wooden handle. Something about it gave off the sense of being important, so Reyn threw her weight against it and slammed it as far forward as the mechanism would allow.

The airship shook so violently that it would surely come apart at the seams. Reyn unbalanced and nearly toppled backwards as the airship tilted back and blasted upward. The only thing that saved her from falling over the stern railing was grabbing onto the wheel and hanging on for dear life. Her legs dangled behind her as the airship climbed for altitude as fast as its tortured steam engines could take it. Distantly, Reyn heard Josy whooping with exhilaration.

Their velocity came to a sudden, jarring halt. Breaking timbers and shearing metal howled throughout the sky. Reyn's "piloting" took their vessel right into the keel of the port-side enemy ship. Debris and screaming crewmen fell past where Reyn clung to the helm, and she was vaguely aware of secondary explosions ripping apart the bow somewhere overhead.

Josy slammed into the deck beside Reyn. Gravity didn't pull her downwards, but towards the deck.

"Duchess," Reyn gasped in wonder. She could just barely feel the echoes of gravity essence emanating from Josy's feet.

"You should see what Maya can do with it. That was great work, Legs. Let's get another."

Hanging on for dear life with nothing but the tenuous grip of a single hand between her and a hundred pace plummet, Reyn nodded vigorously. Somewhere in all that nonsense, she'd lost her left shoe, and she wasn't in the mood to go after it.

Josy took her around the waist and leaped away from their rapidly disintegrating airship. An explosion sounded behind them, and both their commandeered vessel and the one Reyn rammed it into were consumed. What remained of them slammed into the side of a sand dune.

There was little time for Reyn to think about any of that. She wasn't ashamed to admit to screaming her head off as she and Josy rocketed on fire and gravity essences across the sky to land amidst the crew of a different airship.

They touched down near the ship's helm. Josy swatted the helmsmen away from the wheel and picked up the captain in both hands to hold him overhead. She roared as she flung him at his aviators.

Reyn went at once to the controls. Now that she had a minimum of experience, she felt like she was getting somewhere with figuring out how to fly these things. If the brass and wood lever was the throttle, and the wheel controlled the rudder, then...

"Aha!" Reyn shouted in triumph. She spun a crank she believed to control the vessel's pitch.

The airship fishtailed out of control. Crewmen cried out as they hung onto anything they could to avoid being flung into the sky.

"Calm down, Legs! You'll throw us off along with them, going on like that."

"So, that's the rudder," Reyn mumbled. "Not like a sailing ship, then. Wheel is... banking? Then this must be pitch!"

Ahead, the horizon rose into view. Men at the bow started to float above the deck as their airship took a steep nosedive. They should've really considered using harnesses like Aleesh aviators.

"You're insane, Legs!"

"Sorry!" Reyn corrected her error. Pushing the control forward made the airship pitch down. Good to know. She yanked back on the control and sent the ship skywards once again. By this point, there were only a handful of crewmen that hadn't been tossed overboard by her wildly inept attempts at controlling the vessel. The remainder stumbled about, many heaving their last meal onto the deck. It seemed like the People of Jade were as fond of flying as Reyn was.

Josy vaulted the helm and dropped onto the main deck. What remained of the topside crew offered little in the way of resistance. The last of them was taken care of by the time Reyn manage to level the airship out.

The fourth airship was far below and behind them, and Reyn could tell from the compass that she'd miraculously put them on an eastward course by pure, dumb luck. If her observations were getting at all better, she also had a marginally good idea of which of these dratted gauges was supposed to be the altimeter. If she was right, the vessel stabilized at seven hundred paces above sea level. She wasn't sure how far that put them above the local terrain, but there was no chance in Hell of her looking over the side to get a look. From what she could see, it was plenty high enough.

Josy stood on top of a hatch leading to the lower decks. The hatch shuddered as men trapped belowdecks tried forcing it open. With the bulk of Josy's osteoform weighing down on them, they wouldn't be coming up anytime soon. "You realize what this means?" Josy asked.

"Do tell," Reyn asked wearily.

"We just commandeered a vessel belonging to a foreign power in unclaimed airspace."

Reyn raised an eyebrow.

Josy pumped a fist in the air. "We're now officially sky pirates!"

Reyn sighed.

"Argh!"

Reyn sighed harder. She gently started pushing the brass and wood handle forward, increasing their airspeed. If she were to put coin on it, she'd bet that one of the airship's engineers would soon start meddling with the steam engines and put a stop to Reyn and Josy's short career in piracy. Until then, Reyn thought it best to get as much distance between them and the Jade Empire as she could.

Meanwhile, the last airship continued to follow. It wasn't any faster than theirs, so there was little threat from it at the moment. Not unless those daepo could be mounted on the bow to fire forward. Even then, it was extreme range, and the Jade Empire's gunners didn't strike Reyn as the highest caliber of marksmen.

"Have a course in mind, Legs?" Josy asked. "Hate to say it, but I doubt we'll make it back to Shan Alee."

Reyn felt a dreadful weight in her stomach, one that had little to do with flying. Far ahead of the airship's bowsprit, she spotted a change on the horizon. The sun was rising. In the light of dawn, she saw irregular shapes rising from the landscape. As sunlight fell on the ruined city, Reyn began to appreciate how far one could see when this high up. The Imperial City of the old empire must've been many leagues away, but Reyn could see the vast metropolis appearing out of the vast wasteland of the Espalla Dunes.

"I fear, my lady," Reyn said, "that Shan Alee is exactly where we are headed."