Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)

Locke had left Jabril, Mumchance and Mumchance’s mate - along with the death-lanterns, he supposed - to guard the stern. He and Jean hurried forward, through the strangeness of air suddenly free from arrows, past the mounds of dead and wounded. Scholar Treganne stumped past, her false leg loud against the desk, single-handedly dragging Rask behind her. At the waist, Utgar stood, using a hook to pull up the main-deck cargo-hatch grating. A leather satchel was at his feet; Locke presumed he was on some business for the captain and ignored him.

They found Drakasha and Delmastro at the bow, with about twenty surviving Orchids staring at twice their number of Sovereigns across the way. Ezri hugged Jean fiercely; she looked as though she’d been through a great deal of blood but not yet lost any of her own. Up here the Orchid seemed to have no deck; only a surface layer of dead and nearly dead. Blood drained off the sides in streams.

‘Not me,’ shouted Rodanov.

‘Here,’ yelled Utgar at the Orchid’s waist. ‘Here, Drakasha!’

Locke turned to see Utgar holding a grey sphere, perhaps eight inches in diameter, with a curiously greasy surface. He cradled it in his left hand, holding it over the open cargo hatch, and his right hand clutched something sticking out of the top of the sphere.

‘Utgar,’ said Drakasha, ‘what the hell do you think you’re—’

‘Don’t make a fucking move, right? Or you know what I’ll do with this thing.’

‘Gods above,’ whispered Ezri, ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘What the hell is that?’ Locke asked.

‘Bad news,’ she said. ‘Fucking awful news. That’s a shipbane sphere.’