Santher worked for the rest of the day. He didn’t even stop to eat. The monkeys worked tirelessly too, but ever since the conversation with Santher, Emma had been feeling restless, so she excused herself and went down to the dining hall for dinner.

She found Herbie sitting alone at a table.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“You’re fixing up the Markab. You should be happy.”

She sat down. “I told Santher about my mom and dad,” she said.

“What?”

“I know. It’s crazy. But his parents died because of the Queen. And even though he’s not talking about the rebellion all the time like Laika, when he heard that the Pyxis transmission happened, he got really excited too. And when he told me, I…” Herbie was giving her a terrible scowl. She tried not to quail when she said, “I felt like I owed him the truth.”

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“He’s not going to tell anyone.”

“He might!”

She wasn’t hungry, so between looking out the window and twiddling her spoon in her soup, she explained everything that Santher had told her about the Pyxis. Herbie listened, half interested, half fuming.

“So basically,” he said, “by starting the Pyxis, you set a galactic war in motion.”

“It wasn’t my fault my parents were pirates and didn’t tell me about it,” Emma said.

“You didn’t have to tell Santher the truth just to get this information,” Herbie said. “There are other ways you could have found out.”

“Yeah, like my parents?”

Herbie sat back and blew the air from his cheeks. “Okay, the bottom line is that the Pyxis is putting everyone in danger.”

“Yeah,” Emma said. “But if it’s that important, why didn’t my parents just destroy it?”

“Laika said it’s protected by some enchantment or something.”

“Wait…you’ve been talking to Laika about this?”

“No!” he said quickly. “She’s been talking about it. In fact, everyone’s been talking about it ever since they saw the notices on Delphinus. And there’s something else I learned. It turns out…” He blushed. “Well, it turns out that before she was a pirate, your mom was a princess.”

Emma got a shock. Her mom was a princess? She should have been used to it by now—hearing wildly improbable things about her parents. But it stung to think that the whole galaxy knew more about her mom than she did. “A princess,” she said.

“Yeah, I was going to tell you—”

“What kind of princess?”

“Uh…a princess from Virgo. She was next in line for the throne.”

“She was the Queen’s daughter?”

“Not exactly,” Herbie said, looking uncomfortable now. “She was her niece or something. Apparently Virgo queens aren’t allowed to have children.”

“So…that means…I’m a princess too?” Emma couldn’t help grinning.

“I don’t think you should go around—”

She cut him off. “That’s ‘Her Royal Highness’ to you.”

Herbie gave her a massive roll of the eyes. “Will Her Royal Highness Emma Brightstoke Garton of Monkey Butt please sign in for a reality check?”

“Okay, what?”

“What I was going to say,” he went on, “is that this might be good news. I’ve been thinking about it, and I know the navy has your mom, but now that we know she’s a princess, it makes me think it’s not going to be that easy for the Queen to execute her again. She’s probably going to have to bring her to trial. And everybody will want to hear where she was all this time. But we won’t let it get that far. Once the Markab’s finished, we’re going to find her. And until then, she has a good chance of staying alive. Laika said she was a badass. Remember how she fought with the kidnappers?”

Emma nodded, hoping frantically that Herbie was right. “I know,” she said. “But we don’t know where she is.” And anything could happen, she thought.

“We’ll find her,” he said.

“The Markab’s almost finished,” she said. “You should come and see.”

A few hours later, as she and Santher were sanding the wood panels on the Markab’s new railing, they heard a monkey’s angry squawk and turned to see Herbie coming down one of the aisles.

“Sorry!” he said, his hands in the air. “You came around the corner really fast. I didn’t see you…. ”

The monkey gave an indignant hoot and marched off.

Herbie approached the Markab. “Hi,” he said a bit defensively.

“Check it out!” Emma stood on the new deck and motioned proudly to the boat. Herbie’s eyes roamed over the work they had done. “Isn’t it cool?” she said. “It’s like a real boat now.”

“It was always a real boat.” Herbie sniffed. “Are you sure it’s seaworthy?”

Emma stared at him. He wasn’t usually this grouchy.

“Sure, she’s seaworthy!” Santher exclaimed brightly, his head popping over the railing. “I work on the Argh; I’ve got plenty of experience with—”

“The Markab is a different kind of boat than the Argh,” Herbie said.

“Sure, but—”

Herbie ignored Santher and wandered critically around the boat. Emma leapt down and went after him.

“You’re not mad at Santher, are you?” she asked.

Herbie spun on her. “No. I just want to make sure that the Markab won’t sink when it hits the water.”

When Herbie had done a full circle around the boat, he stopped and crossed his arms.

“So what do you think?” Emma asked.

“I suppose they didn’t have any better materials than this old wood?”

Santher came down from the deck with a smile. “Well, actually,” he said, “this is the best wood on the seas. I chose it for that reason, but I also figured that since the navy was coming after you and all, you’d want a new look for the boat, you know…. ” He motioned to the hull. Now instead of sleek, white, industrial fiberglass, it was a rough-hewn dark-brown wood.

“I personally prefer the way it used to look,” Herbie said.

“…and I don’t think the look is quite there yet,” Santher was prattling on. “I really think we need to go for a full disguise, so I’ve been talking to the monkeys and we’ve come up with a plan.” He turned and gave a loud whistle. In the distance, a few monkeys hooted in response. Moments later, a dozen monkeys came down the aisle, carrying two large but light and shapely objects made of wood.

“What are those?” Herbie asked.

“Wing masts,” Santher said with a grin. “Dragon wings.”

Herbie’s expression went neutral. “Dragon wings?” he asked.

“Yeah, like they have on a dragon-of-war,” Santher said. “I know what you’re thinking: how can a ship fly? But I tell you, if a big, old galleon like the Argh can fly, then a little spit like the Markab will have no problem at all.” Santher patted Herbie on the back. “We’ve got it worked out. We’ve got the wing masts, the propeller system, and the sails. We’re going all out here. I know it’ll just be a baby dragon-of-war, but she’ll be pretty fierce anyway. I was even thinking of a dragon carapace for the hull. It’s really not that hard to do. And do you know how the Draconi ships set their sails?”

Herbie shook his head.

“They do this incredible thing with triangular sails. I could sketch it. Come here, I’ll show you.”

Herbie and Emma followed Santher to the worktable.

Herbie turned to Emma. “Laika wanted me to tell you that we’re probably going to reach Cygnus tomorrow.”

“I thought it was in two days!”

“Don’t worry,” Santher said. “She’ll be ready by tomorrow, even if we have to work all night.” He and Herbie exchanged a look. “We could use an extra pair of hands. Do you feel like joining us?”

Herbie glanced at Emma. “Well, I guess I could,” he said. “Just for a while.”

After showing him the sails, Santher put Herbie to work immediately, and while Emma coughed up a “Ragnar” and Herbie shot her a scowl, she couldn’t seem to wipe the huge grin from her face.

It took another whole day of hard sailing before the Argh found itself at the cusp of the star Albireo on Cygnus. The ship had made excellent time with storm winds behind them.

They were still a few hours from the vostok bridge when one of the eagles returned with a warning cry that signaled a navy fleet ahead. Just to be absolutely sure, they sent the eagle back out with Nelson, the spyglass, attached to its collar. Nelson returned to report that a navy fleet had taken up position in front of the bridge to Albireo and was inspecting every vessel that wanted to pass through.

Lovesey was troubled. The Queen’s navy had no reason to put up such a blockade at the edge of a quiet star like this one. And this was a whole fleet! He turned the Argh hard to starboard and sailed in a wide arc to avoid the navy’s detection, heading back up the Strand to the section where it split off to a connecting Strand toward Lyra and one of its smaller stars.

It took another two days of sailing to reach Lyra. Yet to everyone’s dismay, the Strands around Sulafat were heavily patrolled by navy ships as well.

“Is she posting fleets in every vostok zone in the galaxy?” Lovesey cried.

Over the next week, the Argh cut a crazy course across the Strands. The Queen’s navy was everywhere. The Argh was forced to avoid Lyra completely, dipping instead into Hercules, then sailing through Corona Borealis, and then being routed upward into Boötes waters before hitting a long stretch of Strand outside Alcaid, which would take them to the relatively quieter Strands of Ursa Major.

It took nearly a week before they reached the Strand to Ursa Major, and by then their food and water supplies had run dangerously low. Because they couldn’t dock on any systems, they were unable to stock up on the necessities. The captain ordered water rations, and the crew was served two meals a day—breakfast and supper, which were always the same: a bowl of porridge and a slice of dried sausage.

Emma felt a gnawing anxiety—this was all happening because of her, and the crew suspected as much. Santher assured her that he hadn’t told anyone about her mother being Halifax Brightstoke. The Argh always avoided the navy when it could. But Emma heard people talking and felt their stares at her back in the dining hall. The Arghs knew there was something unusual about her. Maybe, like Santher, they had already guessed who she was—she arrived shortly after the first Pyxis transmission in twelve years. And she did look like the notorious Halifax Brightstoke. Now that the navy was everywhere, the Arghs were fairly certain that the Queen had posted ships all over the galaxy to catch Emma. What would they do if they found out that she was on the Argh?

By the time they reached Ursa Major, the crew was disappointed again. There were simply too many navy ships at the port zone of Alcaid, the tail star, and Lovesey was worried that the navy would soon surround them.

Unfortunately, they were in a bad position. To one side of them was Draco—an unfriendly, dangerous system that was patrolled by the mighty Draconi fleets. Although Draco was loyal to the Queen, it was also an independent system. When unwelcome ships sailed down its Strands, they had a habit of getting sunk.

On the other side of them were the sweeping Strands of Leo. Going there would risk drawing the attention of some of Lovesey’s worst enemies, captains of the Leo navy who would give anything to capture the Argh and return the precious ship to King Cor Leonis. They couldn’t go back the way they’d come. The Argh had no choice but to head off down a great connector Strand that led to Cepheus, a very remote system.

The journey was going to be a long one, and there was doubt that they could even make it that far before running out of food and water, but Lovesey and Nisba took careful inventory of the cargo hold and determined that they stood a good chance of reaching Cepheus without losing anyone to starvation or misery—as long as they stuck to their rations. So the Argh headed off before more time was wasted.