Goose and Sam’s expressions transformed into ones of disbelief as the hat fell in pieces from Cordelia’s head.

She felt her face grow smooth as the hat, along with the last of the barnacles, fell to the deck. She kicked the remains of the tricorn overboard, sending them splashing into the sea.

‘Cor!’

‘It is you!’

Sam and Goose bounded forward, enveloping Cordelia in a hug so tight she could barely breathe.

‘Is Father with you?’ she asked, voice muffled. She broke out of the hug to peer anxiously into the sea around the sinking ship.

‘He’s safe, back on St Freerest,’ Sam assured her.

‘You looked so … craggy!’ Goose touched Cordelia’s cheek with a tentative finger.

Sam grinned. ‘Quite a scary pirate you make!’

‘It’s the hats – some kind of barnacle,’ Cordelia began explaining. But she quickly became distracted; the sweet in her mouth was turning horribly bitter. With her memories returning like birds in a great murmuration, a recollection of something bad also darted into her mind. Guilt twisted her stomach. London. All that trouble!

She spat the sweet out, but it had left a nasty taste in her mouth.

‘Scruples!’ said Sam, smiling. ‘I had them in my pocket! Who’d have thought somefing so small would defeat the dreaded Troublemakers?’

Scattered on the deck around them, Troublemakers lay clawing at their tongues and wailing. Smokestack had plunged his head into a barrel, and self-pitying moans were bubbling up through the water. Only Shelly was unaffected, sucking a sweet as she peered curiously at her crew mates.

Their hats had all fallen off in the chaos, and Cordelia saw her friends’ eyes widen as they realized the Troublemakers were children.

‘There’s a lot to explain,’ she said. Then, no longer able to stand the horrid taste on her tongue, she burst out, ‘I should never have made that Mind-Changing Tricorn for the king! It’s my fault things went wrong!’

The acrid taste of bitter truths was still on her tongue, so she went on: ‘I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway! And the king was going to declare Making free for all, but then I made that Meddling hat and changed too much of his mind! I ruined everything!’

The tears that spilled down Cordelia’s cheeks were so full of remorse that the nasty taste in her mouth faded away.

Goose handed her his handkerchief stoically.

‘And the Troublemakers have done bad things too,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s complicated –’

‘But they’re not the ones who did the really bad things!’ Goose interrupted. ‘It wasn’t the Troublemakers ransacking ships and burning them – it was Admiral Ransom!’

Sam and Goose told her how the Invincible had ambushed the Splendora and the British navy had plundered the ship. Goose’s eyes flashed with anger as he recounted how Ignatius had obeyed the admiral’s violent orders.

Cordelia was appalled. Admiral Ransom, hero to swooning youths all over the country, upright champion of the British navy, was nothing more than a treacherous thief in a shiny-buttoned suit.

‘The Duchess was right,’ Cordelia muttered ruefully. ‘Sometimes the most dangerous pirates don’t even look like pirates at all: they come in disguise, dressed as respectable gentlemen.’

Sam’s foot was suddenly seized by Vinegar Jim, who was writhing on the deck.

‘How do I stop it tasting so horrible?’ he wailed.

‘Ya start by saying yer sorry fer the fings ya did!’ Sam instructed, shaking her ankle free. ‘Like kidnapping Cordelia?’

Jim subsided into mutters, in which the word sorry could be frequently heard. Only Thorn lay quiet, clenched on the deck, her mouth a stubborn line as the other Troublemakers’ repentant cries of sorry rumbled around them.

‘I’m sorrier than them all,’ Cordelia whispered. ‘How can I ever make amends?’

‘We’ll find a way ta fix it,’ Sam said, patting her on the back.

Cordelia nodded; she needed to put it right.

‘We have to send word to London about the admiral!’ she declared. ‘Even if it gives away where I am. We should set a course for St Freerest, so we can –’

‘Oh no we shouldn’t,’ Thorn Lawless growled, squinting up at them. She was still clearly suffering from the effects of the Scruple. ‘We’re not going to risk getting captured. Next thing we know, we’ll be dragged back to Miss Prim.’

‘I said I’m never going back, remember?’ Never added, unfurling himself painfully. ‘That’s the whole point of my name.’

‘But it’s the right thing to do!’ said Cordelia.

Thorn shrugged. ‘I don’t care about doing the right thing.’

Uttering this sentence seemed to cause the pirate queen’s mouth to sour. She grimaced, spat on the deck and dragged herself over to the wheel.

‘Troublemakers, back to the island!’ she ordered.

Cordelia wanted to wrest the ship’s wheel away from Thorn. But she knew better than to challenge the pirate queen when her mouth was already a twist of bitterness as she scowled at the horizon. Instead, Cordelia led Sam and Goose along to the bow, and explained everything she had learned over the past few days to her increasingly astonished friends.

By the time they had sailed through the skull into the turquoise bay of Soulhaven, Goose and Sam knew the whole strange history of the Troublemakers and the truth about Prudence Oglethorne. They’d even made tentative friends with Shelly.

Cordelia had not wanted to risk being made to walk the plank out to sea, but when the anchor was dropped in the bay, she took her chance to begin a mutiny.

‘Listen, Troublemakers!’ she cried, climbing up the rigging so she could see them all clearly. ‘I need to make amends!’

She was met with a sea of blank stares.

‘A mends?’ Annie repeated. ‘What’s a mends?’

‘It means making things better,’ Goose explained. ‘Mending things.’

‘Aah … mends,’ Billy said, nodding wisely.

Thorn stood with folded arms, shaking her head. But Cordelia would not be beaten so easily. She knew what she needed to do. Even if it meant being arrested. Even if it meant being locked up in Traitors’ Tower.

‘I broke the law and I got Making completely banned in Britain. I need to go and face the consequences of what I did, and try to make things better,’ she said. ‘It’s not enough to just send word about the admiral. I need to go back home myself and try my hardest to set things right.’

Thorn opened her mouth to argue, but a noise of objection was already coming from someone else.

‘Errr … Cordelia …’ Goose began. ‘I don’t think you realize how bad things are in London.’

Cordelia turned to her friends. They wore expressions like wet clothes hung on a washing line in the rain: dreary and hopeless.

‘How bad is it?’ she asked.

‘There were ships bringing news,’ Sam said. ‘With Sir Piers officially the prime minister –’

‘He’s locked up the Guildhall and taken all the Makers’ ingredients,’ cut in Goose. ‘He’s even shut the chocolate houses –’

‘Fings are bad,’ added Sam.

‘They’re even worse than you realize,’ Cordelia whispered. ‘Sir Piers has a terrible power in his hands.’

Her eyes were drawn to Shelly, the girl who used to sing with magic before Sir Piers drained it from her.

That man was in charge now.

Cordelia remembered the words he had uttered at Speakers’ Corner.

I have found the key to make Britain sensible again.

Those words made horrible sense now: he was going to make Britain sensible by getting rid of all magic – permanently.

And Cordelia’s own actions had made him prime minister. He was now in possession of the key to the cage that contained Witloof’s scream. He had his hands on an extremely dangerous weapon.

‘He has the power to drain the magic out of people,’ she explained. ‘It’s probably only a matter of time before Sir Piers starts draining magic from the Makers. He wants to make everyone sensible forever!’

As Goose and Sam gasped, Cordelia’s eyes met Thorn’s.

‘Please let me go,’ she begged. ‘Sir Piers has got to be stopped before it’s too late. And we’re the only people who know what he’s capable of.’

‘If my father’s in charge, it’s – it’s nothing but foolish stupidity for you to go back,’ Thorn hissed. ‘Look what he did to Shelly!’

‘He wants to do that to everyone,’ Cordelia replied. ‘He’s got to be stopped.’

‘You’re ridiculous,’ Thorn sneered. ‘No magic is strong enough to fight the power he has now.’

‘It takes magic to change the world,’ Cordelia said, determined to make Thorn see. ‘And we are the best magical ingredients we have. Our most powerful magic isn’t found in feathers or ribbons or petals or stones: it’s in our hearts! I need to take my magic to London and use it to make things better. Please! I’ve got to try!’

Shelly shuffled across the deck to stand beside Cordelia, Sam and Goose.

‘Come back here, Shelly!’ Thorn barked.

‘I think she agrees with them,’ Never said quietly.

Faces turned like sunflowers to Cordelia. Some of the other Troublemakers were wavering.

‘I’m the captain, and it’s up to me to keep you safe!’ Thorn declared, striding across the deck to place herself opposite Cordelia, with the Troublemakers caught between them. ‘If we let this Hatmaker off the island, she’ll blab, and we’ll get caught by the admiral!’

Cordelia opened her mouth to argue, but Thorn shouted over her. ‘Besides, why should we care what happens to people back home?’

She held up her hands, shining with the pearly scars from the Malwood cane. Her crew’s expressions turned dark as the scars flashed in the sun.

‘Never forget – this is how they punished us for Making!’ Thorn cried. ‘We owe them nothing except revenge!’

The Troublemakers agitated, like thunder’s opening rumbles.

‘AND –’ Thorn grinned bitterly across at Cordelia, Sam and Goose – ‘now we’ve captured three Makers to be our teachers!’

The Troublemakers roared triumphantly.

‘No!’ Cordelia cried.

But her voice was drowned in the storm of feet pounding across the deck. Thorn’s eyes were triumphant as every Troublemaker rushed over to her side.

‘Let’s go ashore to make our own magic!’ Thorn roared, and her crew cheered again.

Cordelia, Sam and Goose could only watch as the pirates surged away in a howling pack to the dinghy. The pirate queen drew her cutlass and pointed to it.

‘Go ashore, you three,’ she ordered. ‘I’ll be watching you, so don’t try to sneak off the island. There’ll be no mutiny while I’m captain.’