Before she could learn anything or catch any words, though, the door to the empress’s cabin burst wide. A man rushed in, dressed as a sailor in Marstoki green. He spotted Safi and Vaness, and for two heartbeats, he simply stared.

False. The word fretted down Safi’s spine, her Truthwitchery tingling. A warning that what she saw was a lie. That duplicity now gaped at her while he lifted a single hand.

“Look out!” Safi tried to grab for the empress, tried to yank them both down for cover. But she was too slow. The sailor had pulled the trigger on his pistol.

It fired with a crack!

The shot never connected. It halted midair, a spinning ball of iron mere inches from the empress’s face.

Then a blade cut through the attacker’s back and a bloodied steel tip erupted from his belly. A singing slice that severed spine and organ and skin.

The sword ripped back. The body fell. The leader of Vaness’s personal guards appeared, dressed in black from head to toe, his blade dripping with blood.

The Adder High. “Assassin.” He offered the word so calmly. “You know what to do, Your Majesty.”

Without another word, he was gone.

The iron shot finally dropped from the air. It clattered to the floor and rolled, the sound lost to a sudden roaring of voices outside.

“Come,” was all Vaness said. Then, as if she feared Safi might not listen, she tightened the iron belt at Safi’s waist and yanked her toward the door with her magic.

Safi had no choice but to hurry after, despite the swelling horror in her throat. Despite the questions flinging across her mind.

They reached the assassin. Vaness slowed long enough to glance down. She sniffed dismissively, lifting her black skirts, and stepped across his corpse. Her feet tracked blood on the other side.

Safi, meanwhile, made sure to step around.

She also made sure not to look at the man’s dead eyes. Blue and staring straight at the caulked ceiling.

Outside, chaos had taken hold, yet Vaness faced it all without emotion. A flick of her hands and the iron shackles at her wrists melted outward into four thin walls that encased her and Safi. A shield. The empress then cut left across the deck. Voices hollered in Marstoki, all of them muffled and tinny.

Yet fully understandable. A second assassin was thought to be on board, and the Adders and the crew had to find him.

“Faster,” Vaness commanded Safi, and the belt towed harder.

“Where are we going?” Safi shouted back. She saw nothing inside this shield save the perfect, clear sky above.

Soon enough Safi had an answer. They reached the warship’s launch gig, stored astern and suspended for easy release into the waves. Vaness melted her front shield into a set of steps, which she immediately ascended.

Then they were in the swinging boat, iron spreading around the gig’s edges. Walls to keep them safe. But no roof, no protection against the voice now roaring, “He’s belowdecks!”

Vaness met Safi’s eyes. “Hold on,” she warned. Then her hands rose, chains clanked, and the gig lurched.

They dropped to the waves. Safi almost toppled off her seat, and spindrift sprayed in—followed by a sticky, salty breeze as Safi righted herself. It was all so calm, so quiet down here. Her knees bounced—how could it be so serene when violence ruled nearby?

The calm was a lie, for a single breath later, a burst of brilliant light stormed above the shields, glittery with glass and power. The boat flew back, tipping dangerously.

Last of all came the thunder. Violent. Scalding. Alive.

The ship had blown up.

Flames charged against the shield, yet the empress held the onslaught at bay. Paper-thin, the shields spread, coating the entire gig. Protecting Vaness and Safi against raging heat and cuffing the hell-fires to a muted roar.

Blood dripped from the empress’s nose, and her muscles quaked. A sign she could not hold her shield against the madness forever.

So Safi snatched up the oars from the gig’s belly. Not once did she consider if this was what she should do—just as she would not consider swimming when trapped beneath a tide. There were oars and a shore to aim for, so she acted.

Seeing what Safi intended, Vaness formed two holes in the shield for the oars. Smoke and heat gushed in.

Safi ignored it, even as her fingers burned and as her lungs filled with salty smoke.

Stroke after stroke, she carried Vaness and herself away from death, until at last the gig thunked against dark gravel. Until at last, the empress allowed her iron shield to fall. It coiled back into decorative shackles at her wrists, giving Safi a full view of the black flames burning before them.

Seafire.

Its dark thirst could not be slaked. Wind could not snuff it out. Water only fanned its resinous flames all the higher.

Safi scooped her arms around the flagging empress and dragged them both into the soft waves. She felt no relief at having survived this attack. No heady satisfaction surged through her because she’d made it to shore. She felt only a growing emptiness. A gathering dark. For this was her life now. Not boredom and lectures, but hell-flames and assassins. Massacres and endless flight.

And no one could save her from it but herself.

I could run right now, she thought, eyeing the long shoreline—the mangroves and palm trees beyond. The empress wouldn’t even notice. Probably wouldn’t care either.

If Safi aimed southwest, she would eventually reach the Pirate Republic of Saldonica. The only civilization—if it could be called that—and the only place to find a ship out of here. Yet she was almost certain that she could not survive in that cesspool of humanity alone.