“Rebecca?” Isabelle asked when she could draw breath again. “What happened to you?” Or was this another hallucination? The potion seemed to be working, for now, though all her perceptions seemed underwater. She glanced at Marie, who returned a hand sign of “Seelenjäger.”

“I fought a flying snake thing,” Rebecca said. “I won. I think.”

Isabelle examined her cabin girl more closely, all glittering scales in pale greens and blues. She must be some noble’s by-blow abandoned in Rocher Royale’s gutters.

“So tell me how you defeated this snake thing,” Isabelle said.

Rebecca looked at her hands as if just reminded of their existence. “I was down in the hold when the keel blew, and the whole thing fell out of the sky…”

Isabelle listened intently to her account of the disaster, how she’d hung on to the stanchions while the ship fell. How she’d just about choked to death in the Miasma, how she’d been helping shift weight overboard when the ghostfire wyrm—Rebecca finally recalled the name—slithered through the turvy hatch and attacked her. Her excitement grew as she recounted her epic battle with the beast, and how Bitterlich had shown her how to beat it.

“… and finally I got to the end of the string and it was gone,” she said breathlessly, “and here I am.” She tapped the blunt tips of her horn buds and grimaced. “Like this, and Bitterlich says I can’t ever turn back.” This last came out as a plea.

Isabelle felt Rebecca’s pain all the more keenly because there was no antidote for it. There was only the truth, which, like small doses of poison, might help her build up a tolerance for her new reality.

To her surprise it was Marie who spoke. “Djordji tells me you are the best thief he’s ever seen, and I bow to his wisdom. You are even more amazing now. The fear you feel is the fear of the unknown. You were living in the present when the future ambushed you and caught you unawares. It is natural to retreat, assess the situation, then learn and grow from it.”

Rebecca’s expression betrayed a certain amount of doubt about this prospect.

Isabelle said, “You know what I’m going to say, yes?”

This earned a twelve-year-old’s eye roll. “Break it down logically. But it’s sorcery.”

“So it is,” Isabelle allowed. “But that’s not quite what I meant. Tell me what precisely you are afraid of.”

Rebecca opened her palms, which sent a shimmer of color running every which way across her skin, displaying the answer in its most obvious form.

The drumbeat of her own troubles tested Isabelle’s patience, but Rebecca needed her here and now.

“Are you afraid you’re going to hurt someone?” Isabelle asked.