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I thought about this.

It was tempting.

But then all at once, I felt sick.

“Sure, we do that, right? We go to the Hordelands and bang-a-rang and boom-a-doom their hives into powder and goblin-bits. But who’s to say those canny karks don’t get their paws on it and learn to use it, too? We ruin their hives, and they return the favor with our cities. Or let’s say we get lucky and exterminate the lot of them with this horrid, stinking powder. Who do we use it on next? Look, I know you want them all dead; they killed your friends, they wrecked Gallardia, they make cattle of us, and now they’ve killed you. I don’t fault you a mouse-whisker for wanting to burn them all with this shyte. But I’m telling you, if we bring this nasty business east, every beautiful thing, every expression of … genius … of the divine that’s in us … every wonder that an artist or builder or sculptor makes will one day be banged into ashes by some stupid jilnaedu with this unearned bit of godfuckery and a spark.”

Galva in my mind didn’t say anything.

But I still felt I had to press my point.

“And that’s assuming your queen doesn’t use it to get the throne back first. Are you ready to see Ispanthia blown to shyte? War is already awful, but can you imagine it if everybody has this? This? That’s not the world I want for my niece. Or for anyone. Fuck this stuff. May Erydon be buried under ash and may this nastiness be lost forever, or a thousand years at least.”

I looked to her for a response, but she just lay there, looking a bit less real, a bit more doll-like.

I’d only been convincing myself, after all.

With some effort, for the barrels were as heavy as beer, I pitched them off the cloud-ship one by one and listened as they crashed. When the third one was off, I felt the cloud-ship rise just that little bit.

That made me wonder how much longer the sathium would keep us aloft.

Suddenly, I did want to live.

I wanted to find out if Fulvir was just full of karkwater for saying he was my da. He probably was—full of karkwater, I mean, and wasn’t my da—but he sure knew how to get in my head about it, didn’t he?

Mostly, though, I wanted to see Norrigal.

Or Deadlegs.

I didn’t care what I called her, I just wanted to be near her warmth and her craft and her sass and her scent.

But how?

Could I steer this great red skyfish?

Yah, I thought I could. The levers in the fore of the ship pulled great rudders to move left or right, and the bottles of gas could be made to burn hotter for both thrust and steering; I’d watched the pilots when first we sailed to Erydon, hadn’t I?

So where to go?

Cut across the Thralls here, where they might be wider, or go north and risk deeper snow?

Of course, it was spring by now. It would likely still be snowy where we’d tried to cross, but less so. Maybe the killing blizzards were done.

But I had no idea how long the sathium would keep us aloft. Maybe it would last longer with the south-north wind behind us?

But if not, would it be better to go down in the mountains or in the Giantlands?

“What, and be a slave again? Balls and a pizzle-slap to that,” I said and started pulling levers until I had the nose of the skyfish pointed east.

It was at that moment that I felt the impulse to suck on the half stone around my chest, the one Norrigal had given me.

I did so, and it calmed me, like a tit in a babe’s mouth.

But it did more than that.

Once it was warmed up, it jerked against my chest, then rose.

Weakly, gently.