“I’ll manage.” Isabelle opened her pouch to retrieve a potion. She just needed a little space in her head. She ought to still have plenty of time left on her current dose of medicine, but perhaps overextending her sorcery had burned through it faster than normal.

Her fingers found no phials. She opened her eyes and spread the mouth of the pouch. Empty. Fear howled like winter through her chest. “Where’s the medicine?”

“I used it up.” Marie said. She was a silk-clad dancer, out of place in this dank tunnel. “When you jumped into the keel, it was like that thing in your head got loose. You started babbling, by the time I got you down here you were raving, trying to fight me. I didn’t know what to do, so I started pouring potions down your throat. It took everything you had in your pouch to drown the rat.”

“All of it?” That should have rendered Isabelle comatose for at least a day.

“I’m not a mathlogician, but I can count to three.” Marie held up three empty bottles. “And you’re still seeing things.” As she moved, her body seemed to break up, like a deck of cards being shuffled into a new configuration.

Isabelle’s heart ached almost as much as her head. Minute by minute the world became more scrambled, past getting tangled with present, other lives with her own, until the potion beat it back again. If the medicine stopped working, her consciousness would dissolve, her identity melting into formless sludge without even a name to give it shape.

Let go, rumbled the chorus. There is no dishonor in putting away pride and accepting your place in the grand lineage.

“I will not bring up the rear of your parade,” Isabelle said. They all wanted a bite of her, to attach themselves to her identity so that her notion of “me” included them, along with all their grudges, ambitions, and the blood on their hands.

Marie said, “I’ll tell Vrain about the key.”

“He won’t listen to you,” Isabelle said. “I need to speak to him.”

Marie put a hand on her sleeve. “The only thing you should be doing right now is figuring out how to get this thing out of your head.”

“I’m the capitaine,” Isabelle said.

“But should you be?” Marie asked.

Marie’s words punched like a musket ball through Isabelle’s heart. Had she not asked Jean-Claude to tell her when it was time to step down? Did she not owe Marie the same respect?

Isabelle’s vision shifted again and she found herself on the floor of the senate in Om. A consul with great blue crest feathers and a flowing red toga was dragged before her in chains.

He glowered up at Isabelle. “This is an outrage. If my legion is lost, it is only because I followed the orders you gave me.”