Antonia was already well out the First Mate's cabin, Luc not a step behind her. As Thomas ordered her aloft, she grabbed Luc's shoulder, her fingers digging hard into the flesh as he looked up to her wide-eyed. "Get below deck," she hissed, the warning the boy heard in her voice brooking no argument at all, and he gave her none.

"Jax told me a place," he said swiftly and, though Antonia didn't understand Luc's meaning at all, the boy bolted for the stairs down and that, really, was all the rogue cared to see. She dashed to the rigging, hauling herself aloft as she made for the crow's nest.

She never made it.

Several yards above the deck, Antonia screamed in sudden agony, losing her grip as she clutched her head. White hot daggers were being nailed through her skull, small crimson rivulets slowly dribbling from her ears and her nose as she fell, only just snatching a rope with one desperate hand before she hurtled to the deck below. The rogue swung there for a moment, blinking the worst of the torturous pain away though she still wasn't sure she wouldn't heave her dinner on a hapless head below. Stunned, she managed to swing herself upward, hooking one leg and then another over the rigging, completely unaware she was bleeding - and then she heard it.

No, not the excruciating cacophony that, once its initial assault near crippled and killed her had passed, was fading to something like a manageable agony. It was Thomas' voice. Thomas' voice, [i]countermanding his own damn order![/i]

[i]Merde.[/i] Heedless, Antonia swung herself to the aftcastle, scrambling to stand beside Thomas who stood, still and silent, transfixed by the false sunrise of the burning ship ahead of them. An ugly suspicion wormed its way to the light of day in her mind, dark and terrifying. The intensity, the light in Thomas' fiery copper gaze - she knew that look, and knew it very, [i]very[/i] well. Seeing that gaze turned anywhere but to her, was a torment unlike any other. Before he could raise a hand to stop her - if he even so much as noticed her presence - the rogue snatched the looking glass from his hand, heart pounding in her throat as she unfolded its sections swiftly and lifted it to her eye.

Antonia could see them by the eerie red-orange glow of the flames still busy devouring the corpse of the [i]Crimson Feather[/i]. They writhed and twisted in the waves like a nest of water vipers, spiny fins and talon-tipped, webbed claws occasionally breaking the surface. [i]Dear sweet God in Heaven... [/i] Not even the bastards who manned the [i]Feather[/i] deserved to die like this. She heard Nicolette's cry, snapping her from the horror into action. Antonia snapped the looking glass shut, rolling it into her palm as she cocked her arm back and let fly with a fist at Thomas' head. 

The rogue didn't skip a beat as she leapt the banister of the aftcastle to the main deck, praying to a good and mighty God above, and all His blessed loa, that what she was doing would buy them just a little time to get the iron ready at the least. Antonia was swift and sure, running a gauntlet of the crew that had been readying the cannons, cuffing every last damn one soundly in the head or shoulders. 

[i]"GET TO![/i]" she shouted as she sprinted down the line toward the First Mate, [i]"You heard your captain! Snap to, and make ready the iron, you worthless dogs!"[/i]