When the fit finally passed, Jean-Claude relayed what he’d learned from Czensos and said, “I’ll talk to Impervia and Isabelle, see if they know anything more about the reliquary.”

By the time Jean-Claude was done, Djordji was already back on his pipe. “I puts the harbormaster on alert, and has a word with some fishermen I know.”

“And by fishermen you mean smugglers,” Jean-Claude said. Dodging excise officers and evading the port authority was the sport and livelihood of all the fisherfolk along the Towering Coast. It was amazing the sorts of things that fishermen pulled up in their nets. Not just aerofish, crackbacks, and reef krakens, but plenty of things that had no business in the open sky: bales of dragonweed, rum, rare spices, a cornucopia of “shipwrecked cargo,” and the occasional fugitive.

Jean-Claude said, “So you think Czensos has it right and Hasdrubal will bolt?”

Djordji shrugged. “If he scarpers, we has to catch him now. If he doesn’t, Impervia catches him later.”

Jean-Claude allowed the logic of that. To Marie he said, “You take Rebecca and get Spiderfingers to sign off on her indenture.”

Marie’s porcelain-doll face could not change expression, but her answer was very careful, “I’ve never met Spiderfingers.”

Jean-Claude grunted. He’d been training Marie for months how to talk her way through trouble and out the other side. She didn’t take to it like she did to fighting.

He said, “Then it’s time you did. She’s a thief, used to be a good one, till she got caught and the city guard lopped off her right hand. She lost her nerve after that, opened up the orphanage. She’s not likely to become violent, and she’s very susceptible to bribes.”

“Didn’t you promise to do this?” Marie asked.

“Yes, and I am using one of the tools at my disposal, to wit, one apprentice. As much as you might like it to be otherwise, being a bodyguard involves much more talking than stabbing. You know the dance steps. Now you need to trust the music.”

CHAPTER

Two

Isabelle had all but lost count of the number of times she’d stood before some judicial body that considered her an existential threat. This time it was a triumvirate of Fenice sorcerers, each clad in colorful feathers and iridescent scales that gave them armor as light as down but stronger than steel. The Fenice of the Vecci city-states had a blood feud against Isabelle’s sire’s family that stretched back hundreds of years to the Maximi, Fenice twins who had all but conquered the world. Isabelle had arranged this tribunal to bring that vendetta to an end.

At least this time l’Empire Céleste was on Isabelle’s side.