Jean-Claude’s heart had become lodged in his throat and he had to swallow hard to clear it so that he could breathe. He’d raised Isabelle as best he could, fostered her independence, delighted in her spirit. She was supposed to carry on being vital and brilliant long after he was gone. She was supposed to plant a sapling on his grave. He was not supposed to be the one charged with escorting her from the stage. Yet who else could she trust? Marie was growing with all the speed and persistence of snakeweed, but she deserved her freedom. Jean-Claude certainly would not trust her care to Major Seelenjäger. Thank the saints that blossom had withered.

“I will,” he said, his voice heavy. “Though I pray that day never comes.”

Aeronaut Gregor was a talented scrimshaw artist, and like all artists his work produced bits of leftover scrap. He was pleased to gift Jean-Claude with a sliver of leviathanbone, which Jean-Claude said he was going to use to make a needle.

As soon as Jean-Claude left his sight, he slipped the leviathanbone sliver into the lock box where the Conquest shard was supposed to be. He didn’t anticipate needing to deploy the misdirection, but his life had been full of things he didn’t anticipate, and it had become his habit to prepare for them anyway.

By noon it was abundantly clear that Keelmate Gephardt was gone, and the men had already started to grumble about ill omens. Isabelle summoned Quill to the chartroom.

“Learned sagax,” she said, invoking the formal tone to keep her own animosity at bay. “One of the crew, Keelmate Ghephardt, has died. The crew require your spiritual guidance.”

Quill adjusted his chasuble. The voluminous drapery made him look like a sail that had been taken aback. “So does the capitaine, though she is unwilling to hear it.”

“I am well aware of what the Temple thinks of me. I am the Breaker’s get, an unnatural creature, an exquisite, handcrafted flaw thrust into the world to corrupt the innocent and weak-minded.” She’d been hearing that since she was too young to know what it meant.

Quill said, “The Temple is old and corrupt, festering with parasites living off the goodwill of ages past, protected by the common man’s need for certainty and fear of the unknown. Yet there is no body, no matter how vast and bloated, that can withstand the ceaseless multiplications of maggots without rupturing.”

“All the more reason to pile it on a barge, shove it out in the deep sky, and burn it.”

Quill’s eyebrows arched. “Assuming you could somehow disentangle the Temple from people’s lives, pull it up rock and root and abolish it forever, what would you replace it with? People still want guidance. They still seek faith in the unknowable and joy in the numinous.”