Read Chapter 23: The Rocket's Red Glare

The Vagabond II answered her helm like a creature born to the wind, and for the first time in a month, Elias allowed himself a breath that wasn't weighed with salt and regret. Racing hull, triple-expansion boilers, canvas cut clean as a blade—Mira’s gift was a knife in his hand, sharp and dangerous and not entirely his own.

He stood at the stern rail, watching the wake unspool white against the grey Channel. Cora climbed up from the chart room, the damaged chronometer cradled in her palms like a wounded bird.

“It’s losing fourteen seconds an hour,” she said. “But it’s steady. Predictable.”

“Predictable is all I need.” Elias turned. “Signal from the lookout?”

“British frigate *Cadmus* off our starboard quarter, flying the private signal. They’ve been trailing us since dawn.”

Permission to approach, then. Elias nodded and Cora passed the glass to the signalman. The *Vagabond II* wore no colours—syndicate registry, neutral papers, a lie stitched into every sheet of sail. The *Cadmus* flew a flag that only a dozen men in the fleet would recognize: Admiral Grey’s private mark, a red kite over a black field.

Within the hour, a pinnace pulled alongside, and a young lieutenant climbed aboard with salt-stained collar and a canvas dispatch tube. The man’s eyes swept the deck, catching on Elias’s scarred hands, lingering a beat too long.

“Captain Thorne. Admiral Grey sends his compliments.” The lieutenant handed over the tube. “And his regrets. He cannot be seen to aid you further.”

Elias broke the seal, unrolled the thin paper. Grey’s hand, cramped and hurried:

*French fleet departs Le Harve in three days for Bastion. Meteor will be tested at sea prior to arrival — likely at midnight, off the Cap de la Hève, under cover of a spring tide. The device is unstable. A single rupture of its casing may render it useless. A twelve-pound bursting shell, double-charged with petard powder, fired at close range, could achieve the effect. Standard naval shot will not suffice. Find what you need, Elias. You have three days.*

Elias read it twice, then handed it to Cora.

“He wants us to crack it like an egg,” she said.

“He wants it destroyed before it reaches Bastion,” Elias corrected. “And he wants us to do it with a round that doesn’t exist in any arsenal we can reach.” He folded the paper, pocketed it. “What do we carry?”

“Six-pounders, new pattern,” Cora said. “Clean barrels, but they’re designed for rake shots and boarding action. Not enough charge to rupture a casing thick enough to survive a meteor’s re-entry.”

“Then we need bigger teeth.” Elias looked at the young lieutenant, still hovering. “Tell the Admiral we acknowledge. Then go.”

The lieutenant saluted, a flicker of something—respect, maybe pity—crossing his face. “Good luck, Captain.”

Elias didn’t answer. He watched the pinnace pull away, then turned to the crew gathered at the forecastle. Sable stood apart, arms crossed, her pale eyes reading the sky. Mira leaned against the mainmast, silk gloved hands folded, watching him with the patience of someone who had already seen the end of this gambit.

“We have three days,” Elias said, loud enough for all of them. “The French convoy is running for Bastion with a weapon that could end the sky war in a single night. Admiral Grey has given us the means to stop it—but not the shot.”

“Meaning we need something that doesn’t exist,” Devlin muttered from the rail.

“Meaning we need to steal it,” Elias said.

A ripple of brittle laughter. Then Sable stepped forward, quiet as falling ash.

“Stealing is the wrong word,” she said. “You need a man who’s already stolen it. There’s an armourer in the neutral docks at Fécamp. No flag, no loyalties—just inventory. He has a store of twelve-pound petard shells, old Imperial stock, double-charged. Not enough to sink a ship, but more than enough to rupture a meteor casing.”

Elias studied her. “I didn’t know you kept contact with black-market suppliers.”

“I keep contact with useful people, Captain.” Sable’s smile didn’t touch her eyes. “It’s why you hired me.”

“Fécamp is two hours east,” Cora said, tapping the chart. “Neutral ground, but it’s crawling with French agents. They’ll have ears in every tavern and eyes in every ship that drops anchor.”

“Then we drop anchor quiet,” Elias said. “Sable, you’ll come with me. We deal directly, no middlemen. Cora, you stay with the ship. If we don’t return by dawn, assume the deal’s gone wrong and set course for the deep lanes.”

Mira unfolded herself from the mast, drifting closer. “And if the French see you? You have a distinctive face, Captain. Some would call it infamous.”

Elias turned to her. “Then perhaps you should remain aboard and avoid the risk.”

Mira’s smile sharpened. “I’m not a risk-averse creature, Elias. And the syndicate has interests in Fécamp as well. I may be able to smooth a path.”

“That’s exactly what worries me.”

He left her with that, descending into the boat that would carry him and Sable to the docks. The *Vagabond II* hove to in the lee of an abandoned lighthouse, and the two of them rowed through the grey dawn toward the town’s broken wharfs. The smell of coal smoke and rotting fish thickened as they approached. Fécamp was a hollowed-out skull of a port—once proud, now picked clean by war.

Sable guided him through a maze of alleys, past shuttered shops and sailors with hollow eyes, until they reached a warehouse built into the sea wall. Its iron doors bore no mark, no name. Sable knocked twice, paused, then knocked once more.

A slot slid open. A voice, gravelly with age and suspicion. “The tide is wrong.”

“The tide is always wrong when you’re drowning,” Sable replied.

A long moment. Then the door swung inward, revealing a corridor lit by a single guttering lantern. The woman who stood there was thin as a rope, her face crosshatched with old scars and new silences. Her eyes passed over Sable and settled on Elias.

“Captain Thorne,” she said. “I wondered when the sea would spit you out.”

Elias didn’t flinch. “You have something I need. Twelve-pound petard shells. Imperial stock.”

“I have many things,” the woman said, stepping aside to let them in. “The question is whether you can afford them.”

The warehouse interior was a cathedral of weapons—racks of rifles, stacked crates of shot, coils of chain and rows of shells gleaming under coal-dust light. The woman led them to a steel table where a single shell rested, its casing dull bronze, stamped with an Imperial eagle that had been filed off and restamped with a neutral mark.

“Double-charged,” she said. “Cut the fuze to three seconds and you’ll breach a metre of iron. Two of these on a meteor casing, placed at the seams—you’ll have yourself a very expensive firework.”

Elias picked up the shell, felt its weight. “I need six.”

“I have six.” The woman’s eyes flicked to Sable, then back to him. “But they don’t come cheap. What do you have to trade?”

“Gold,” Sable said.

“Gold changes hands a thousand times a day. I deal in favour, Captain Thorne.” The woman leaned forward, scarred hands flat on the table. “The French have a fortress at the Cap de la Hève. Low walls, high towers, and a captain who likes to think himself unassailable. I have a passenger who needs safe passage through those gates. You carry them in, I call the shells yours.”

Elias’s jaw tightened. “I’m not a smuggler of people.”

“No,” the woman agreed. “You’re a smuggler of weapons. A privateer. A man who burned his own ship to save his crew.” She straightened, something ancient and knowing in her gaze. “You’re all the things a man might be forgiven for. But you’re also a man who needs six shells in the next three days, and I am the only hand that holds them.”

Sable watched him, unreadable.

Elias looked at the shell in his hands, at the grim cathedral of death surrounding him, and knew he had no choice.

“Where is your passenger?” he asked.

The woman smiled, and it was not a pleasant thing.

“They’re already aboard your ship, Captain,” she said. “They were awaiting you in the lock when you arrived. I trust you’ll treat them with the courtesy of the sea.”

The words dropped into Elias’s chest like cold water.

He turned and walked fast out of the warehouse, Sable at his heels. Back through the alleys, back to the wharf, where the boat still bobbed among the rubbish. But the figure standing at the dock’s end, cloaked against the dawn wind, was not one of his crew.

The cloak fell back, and Elias stopped cold.

Amelia.

His navigator, lost off the coast of Brittany three months past—presumed drowned, mourned, set to memory. Her hair was shorter now, shot through with grey, and her skin held the map of a prison’s pallor. But the eyes were the same—sharp, too sharp, measuring him even now.

She smiled, and it didn’t reach those eyes.

“Hello, Elias,” she said. “I hear you need a navigator.”