Impératrice Sireen had lent her forestlike throne room at le Ville Céleste to the occasion and watched the proceedings from atop her throne, playing the arbiter of protocol but not currently asserting herself as the giver of law. For the time being, this was Isabelle’s show.

She’d donned her naval capitaine’s uniform, a burgundy jacket with silver trim, and a single loop of crimson braid that marked her as a sorcerer in l’Empire’s military service, and stepped smartly into the arena to present her case to these ambassadors of ill will.

As support, she brought along Major Bitterlich, her friend and protector. He was dapper as always in his marine uniform, his feline eyes half-lidded, his cravat just so, a sheathed longsword in his hand. He surveyed the Fenice as a streetwise tomcat might evaluate a group of pigeons: fun to play with if too wormy to eat.

She also brought the newly minted Lord Chancellor Thibaut, borrowed from l’impératrice in a firm acknowledgment of her favor. He bore a white specimen box.

To the Fenice, Isabelle said, “You sought to end the line of the Maximi. That has been accomplished. My sister, Brunela, was the last to carry their memories. She tried to hand her memories down to me, but as many can attest, I crushed her vitera before it could implant them in my brain.”

Isabelle’s right arm, amputated just below the shoulder, had been replaced with her spark-arm, a manifestation of her unique l’Étincelle sorcery. It was a ghostly limb, made up of swirling pink and purple sparks and filled with luminescent clouds of lavender and rose. With it, she gestured to the white specimen box in which was displayed the crushed and desiccated body of an insect-like creature about the size of a plum. “There is nothing left of my ancestors.”

This was not entirely true. Brunela’s attempted usurpation of her skull had left Isabelle with the spiteful echoes of her past lives, an ancestral chorus. For the last three months a gibbering mob of other people’s memories whispered in her ears, shouted from the shadows, and occasionally bled through to stain her vision with bits of the past that weren’t really there. It was like having a whole troupe of ghostly actors stepping from behind the curtain to deliver random lines from a hundred different plays.

Don Pyros, the Fenice leader, was tall and broad, with a great crest of red-and-gold feathers that shimmered like flames under the harsh alchemical lights. His companions were similarly beplumed, though in shades of green and blue. How many lives had they lived, and what memories of their ancestors did they carry down the ages? Had any of their forebears actually witnessed the Great Betrayal that began this cascade of vengeance?

Don Pyros looked unconvinced. “Let me see your hair.”