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the Lancasters.”
    Creedy gave him a smile that contained more artifice than agreement. “Yes, sir.”
    “Well,” Grimm said. “It seems we need to return home. A bit earlier than we’d planned, but that’s all right.”
    “Set course for Spire Albion, sir?”
    “We’re in the mist, XO,” Grimm replied. “We can’t take our bearings until we get back up into open sky. Where Itasca is doubtless hunting for us.”
    A low, groaning tone rumbled through the cabin’s portal. After several seconds it rose higher and higher and higher, into a kind of distorted whistle, and then faded away.
    Creedy stared out the portal and licked his lips. “Sir, was that . . . ?”
    “Mistmaw,” Grimm replied quietly. “Yes.”
    “Um. Isn’t that a danger to the ship, sir?”
    “Swallow us whole,” Grimm agreed. “They aren’t usually aggressive this time of year.”
    “Usually?”
    Grimm shrugged. “If it decides to come eat us, we can’t stop it, XO. Our popguns will only make it angry.”
    “The beasts are that big?”
    Grimm found himself smiling. “They’re that big.” He inhaled and exhaled slowly. “And they’re attracted to powered webbing.”
    Creedy glanced out the portal again. “Perhaps we should cut power to the web and reel it in, sir.”
    “I think that would be very wise, XO,” Grimm said. “Though I expect Journeyman cut power to the web within a moment after we pulled out of the dive. Unfurl the sails. We’ll spend the night moving with the wind, come up sometime tomorrow, and trust that Itasca won’t be sitting there waiting for us.”
    Creedy nodded. Once again the strange, long call of the sounding mistmaw vibrated through the cabin. “Sir? What do we do about that?”
    “The only thing we can, XO,” Grimm said. “We stay very, very quiet.” He nodded a dismissal to Creedy and said, “Raise sail. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we get back to Spire Albion.”

Chapter 3
    Spire Albion, Habble Morning, Tagwynn Vattery
    B ridget sat in the dim vaults of the vattery, back in the shadowy corner where the cracked old vat had been removed. She wedged her back against the corner and held her knees up close to her chest. She was cold, of course. The chamber was always cold. She noticed only when she paused to think about it: She’d lived too much of her life in this room for it to be truly uncomfortable.
    “Bridget?” called her father’s deep voice from the entrance of the chamber. “Bridget, are you back here? It’s time.”
    Bridget hugged herself harder and pushed a little farther back into the corner. The rows and rows of vats scattered the sound of his voice, sending it bouncing around the chamber. She leaned her head against the cold, reassuring solidity of the cinderstone wall and closed her eyes.
    This was her home.
    She didn’t want to leave her home.
    Her father’s voice, gentle and deep, came again. “Take a few more moments, child. And then I want you to come out, please.”
    She didn’t answer him. She heard his gentle sigh. She heard the doors to the chambers shut, leaving her with the quietly gurgling vats and the faint glow of a few scattered secondhand lumin crystals.
    It wasn’t fair. She was perfectly happy doing exactly what she’d done ever since she was a small child. And it was a good and necessary duty. Her father’s vats provided the finest meats in all of Habble Morning, after all. Without someone to tend them, people would starve. Or at least eat inferior meat, she supposed. Personally, she took pride in her craft. She’d rather starve—to death, if necessary—than eat that ridiculous rubbery chum that Camden’s Vattery produced.
    It was ridiculous. Her family wasn’t one of the High Houses, except in a fussy technical sense. She and her father were the only remaining members of the Tagwynn line, for goodness’ sake, and it wasn’t as though they were running out buying new ethersilk outfits every other week. Or at all. They lived no