One turn was a rotation of the Craton Massif, a little more than a third of a year. That would be just about the time that Lael had arrived in Rocher Royale to make his play for the throne and brought Hasdrubal with him.

“And where were you before that?” Bitterlich asked. It was generally harder for people to stick to a lie if they had to present the bits out of order.

“In Malbis,” he said. “I was a journeyman shipwright.”

The shipyards at Malbis were not the biggest in l’Empire, but they were the most convenient to Rocher Royale, being just a hundred kilometers up the coast.

“And what happened after you were kidnapped?” Bitterlich said.

“Worked on the ship,” he said. “Ribs were broken, staves needed replacing. It was hard work, see. I never got paid.”

“Did the Skaladin ever say how the ship got to be in such bad shape?”

Sinclair shook his head as if shuffling his thoughts. “It’s not easy to understand their chattering,” he said. “But I think they lost a war.”

The answer stirred Bitterlich’s thoughts. One of the reasons the Tyranny of Skaladin was not more of a threat to the Risen Kingdoms was that they spent so much time fighting amongst themselves. A goodly number of the bandit armies, pirate fleets, and smugglers that troubled the civilized world were outcasts, refugees from those internecine struggles.

Bitterlich applied this logic to Hasdrubal. If there were outcast warships, there might also be outcast spies. Perhaps Hasdrubal had suddenly found himself out in the cold. That would explain why he had been reduced to recruiting these slavers. Perhaps the Skaladin capitaine could be inspired to provide a more definitive version of events.

“Where was the ship when you were making these repairs?” Bitterlich asked.

“She were laid up at l’Île Tromelin,” Sinclair said. “Least that’s what the bloodhollow called it. Bare rock, really, nothing more there than a flock of hook gulls.”

“There was a bloodhollow on board? Whose?”

Sinclair shivered. “Don’t know. I don’t want nothing to do with glass ghosts. Don’t want ’em to make me one.”

“An understandable fear,” Bitterlich said. The bloodhollow certainly wasn’t aboard now. “What about when the ship left l’Île Tromelin? What was their plan?”

“The capitaine said we were going to finish the mission. Don’t know what mission. Kept my head down and just worked on the ship.”

“Where did you get supplies to work on the ship?” Bitterlich asked. It sounded as if they’d been laid up for a long time in the middle of nowhere.

“There was a barge that came in every week or so out of Malbis. Shore smuggler. He brought supplies. ‘Compliments of the comte,’ he said.”