The Skysong

High above the Thornwall Reach, Wren Thornweave and Captain Ash Blackwind ride out a storm that seems to be steering itself. Waiting in its calm heart is an Armada warship, and a living ship that opens her ramp for Wren alone.

The Skysong sets her own heading, and a dark vessel answers her lights with a tether that does her no harm. When the Armada demands Wren's return, Ash has to decide whose orders this ship now follows.

Wren finds her own name on a document Ash never mentioned, and Otto Cogsworth's sealed cargo turns out to be more than paperwork. Then something large stirs in the clouds at the edge of Sylvan waters.

An Armada compliance vessel hails Wren by name and demands an inspection. As the Skysong hides her cargo in her own heartwood, an old mentor offers Wren a way home, and the ship signals someone none of them controls.

The Skysong refuses to be dimmed, and her glow draws the unflagged vessel that has shadowed them from the start. A gap between two warring fleets offers a way out, until a three-word cipher reaches Ash from his dying family.

A seizure order arrives in Fenrik Rootbinder's name, and a dark ship closes without a word. Ash and Wren wager over the helm while the Skysong makes it plain she has already chosen her crew.

Rootbinder's formation closes in, and he calls Wren by the name only a Sylvan mentor would know. The Skysong turns herself toward danger, and Wren has to decide what she owes the people who raised her.

Supplies are short, the parcel in the hold has cracked, and the dark vessel returns on an intercept course. To keep the Skysong, the crew needs an argument for what she is, and for what they are to her.