The last run begins on a ship that shouldn't still be whole. Hans Serra crouches on the starboard deck of the Hallowed Brine, one boot braced against the ruined rail while the other hammers the splintered planking. The sky above the northern plain is a bruise—storm-black with the rim of a thousand spell-lights. Boards of ice cling to the hull like slow teeth. Behind him, the gash where the mast took a torpedo still smokes; ahead, a line of skycraft arcs into formation, their hulls lit with the sigils of Orders. Blue for Azure Hall, green for the Galeweavers, crimson for the Blade Conclave. They look like a city in flight, a city that wants the thing beat into his hands. "Come on," Hans says to the boarding hook that snarls toward him, and then he moves. He drives the tip of his sword into the rope, kicks, slides—anything that keeps the hook from taking his arm. A man's shouted prayer ricochets across the snow plain. Someone cries his name with a kind of righteous glee. Up above, a volley of lantern-casters throw spell-lights; the snow answers by cracking into a thousand mirrors. For a moment the whole world is stained glass. Hans's sword snaps. Metal gives like old bones. One long curl of steel tumbles into the gale and disappears. He tastes iron and smoke, and thinks, absurdly, of the nap he never got. "You going to hand it over