The slave was bringing her fleet? What sense did that make? No. She wasn’t a slave, just a captive. She needed to get done with this auction … interrogation. She reached for her flask, her phial, to slake her thirst and drive the ghost stain away, but it was not on her hip. She looked around for Marie, but the girl was gone.

No. She was just hiding in the crowd. This wasn’t real. Isabelle was capitaine of the Thunderclap, not a meat merchant.

Isabelle dragged her attention back to the slave girl. She had questions to ask. All lined up. “You came to ensure that the Thunderclap went down. What were you supposed to do after you’d made sure of our demise?”

“We were to rendezvous with Hasdrubal and receive further instructions.”

Isabelle’s mind felt bloated and swollen like an impacted bowel. Sweat rolled down the line of her jaw to dangle from her chin. The sky roiled, brown turning to black as a dust storm approached. It would bury the market.

“Thing two,” Isabelle said. “I want your chartstones.” More precious than gold were such stones, and she could not begin to guess how a slave had come to possess them.

The slave stiffened. “But … I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

“Lies,” she said, rising from the barrel where she’d been watching the auction. It was the pale girl’s turn to be bid on. That wouldn’t usually be a problem, but Forenzio’s buyer was here, and she was just his kind of meat. Isabelle couldn’t let her go or the stones would fall into Forenzio’s clutches. Unfortunately, Isabelle couldn’t hope to outbid Forenzio’s buyer, but killing the slave before she was bought only meant paying a fine to the previous owner at slaughterhouse prices.

She pulled her maidenblade—the razor edge was made for cutting throats—and stepped forward quickly before either of the burly slaveholders had time to react.

She grabbed the girl by her tawny hair. “This won’t hurt much.”

Like a kick from a mule, a fishwife barreled into Isabelle and bore her to the deck.

“Isabelle,” she said in a voice too flat for such a heavy blow. “Look at me.”

“I’ll see you in Torment,” she snarled, and stabbed, but the other woman twisted her wrist and took the blade away.

The rest of the market erupted with shouts. Men rushed in from all sides, to grasp and pin.

“Look at me!” said the wench. She had eyes the color of moons in a face whiter than pearl.

“Marie,” Isabelle choked, grasping for a thread of the present. She couldn’t see the Thunderclap, couldn’t make out the cabin. Even Marie’s face refused to stick.

“Help,” she whispered.