Radeon was stowing everything he owned into the hidden folds of his cloak, each pocket swallowing a hard little weight that might keep him breathing later.
When he was checking the remaining energy in the spirit stones in his cloak, it was feeling like he was staring at an ember buried in snow.
One bad gust, one careless moment, and it would be going out, and so would his chances.
'Five minutes. Enough,' he thought.
He was huddling in with the crowd, shoulders bowed, face slack in borrowed injury.
Then he was slipping into invisibility, and the air around him was snapping tight.
A blast of wind was tearing through the line.
People were stumbling, crying out, hands were clawing for balance as the deck was lurching under sudden force.
Captain Todd's crew was steadying them easily because the ship was holding still.
Yet their heads were turning, searching for the source they could not see.
Radeon was reaching the flight array while everyone else was looking anywhere but down.
No one was guarding it. Not this time.
One pull was enough, and he was taking eighteen middle grade stones with quick, careful hands.
He was climbing up along the sail rigging, breath thin and fingers numb, keeping his weight light so the ropes were not singing under him.
When he was high enough, he was sending another gust across the deck, meant to muddle the moment and smear the blame into the chaos.
No one was suspecting him. Every eye was being drawn upward, to the sky that was swelling with judgment.
Radeon was knowing the cloak was not the only thing demanding time.
The tribulation would be falling soon, and it was not a nascent embryo's tantrum.
It was sitting at Spirit Transfiguration, the fifth realm, and the air was already tasting of metal and storm.
The thunder's reach was stretching out a hundred miles, give or take, the clean radius of an artifact that had been built to kill what the world had no right to hold.
Radeon was jumping into another ship, one he had been eyeing earlier.
It had been almost empty while the combatants had been throwing themselves into the Grand Plum Sword Array, and the crew had been more interested in watching than tending their own deck.
Men were standing slack jawed at the rail, hands idle on coils of rope, faces lit by distant flashes as if the sky was putting on a play for them alone.
Radeon was changing first into Sail Knife, the old man, all stoop and harmless creak.
He was drifting among them like he belonged there, then he was knocking down one of the younger crewmen.
Not the youngest but close, the sort of rank that was easy to lose among sky sailors.
Radeon dragged him into a cabin and shut the door on the noise outside.
He stripped the boy of his clothes with quick, practiced hands and pulled them on himself.
Then he was taking up a broom, head lowered, and he was walking out again like a man with chores and no questions.
He was moving straight for the flight array, sitting in plain sight because no one was believing a thief would dare steal while the heavens were screaming.
He hauled more this time. Fifty-eight spirit stones in total, because this ship was larger and demanded more energy.
Each stone lay cold against his palm, every one a stolen heartbeat of power that had not been his and now was.
When he finished, he slipped back to the cabin where the young man lay.
The boy still sprawled where he had fallen, stirring but not waking.
Radeon dressed him again, careful and quick, leaving him looking as if he had only taken a bad stumble in rough weather.
Then he turned to the blood ruby and began to etch the array, line by line with his single arm.
'Battlefield's full of blood and vitality. Can't waste it if I want out of this realm. I need everything I can take.'
A risky play was forming in his head. He had been playing safe so far. Too safe.
Now it was all or nothing. Sieges were not common, and chances like this did not come twice.
If he was going to steal a foundation strong enough to start something that mattered, it was going to be here, while everyone else was staring at the sky and calling it fate.
The etching had been done. He was brushing copper ink into the runes he had cut, slow and precise, watching the lines drink it in.
A pig intestine pouch was hanging between his lips while he was squeezing, the warm slick pressure pulsing against his teeth.
The taste had been brutally bitter when it seeped onto his tongue, but he had not been caring.
He was painting the stump of his missing arm with the remaining glue, then he was setting the crystal and stick in place, binding it tight until it was holding.
It was not a real limb, not even close, but it was weight and leverage.
It was a hand shaped lie that might buy him one honest moment when the crystal began doing its job.
When he was stepping out of the room, his invisibility had been off.
Faces were turning. Crewmen were giving him questioning glances, brows pinching as their minds tried to place him among their own.
He was not giving them time. He was breaking into a run and jumping hard at the bow, throwing himself into open air.
The last thing he was hearing was the sharp intake of breath behind him, a line of gasps chasing his fall.
This time he was needing a face and a body no one could catch, not on sight and not in memory. The baldness of an old man. The smooth skin of the young.
Then he was mashing traits from all three faces he had worn until the result was coming out wrong, more chimeric than human, a thing the eye slid off because it did not want to settle on it.