“No, but I helped you once,” Jean-Claude said. “I couldn’t save your partner, but I found out what happened to him, and I helped bring down his killer.”

Sedgwick’s coin stopped dancing. When he answered, his voice was a bit strangled. “Am I supposed to be happy to be reminded?”

“No, but right now Capitaine Isabelle, who is the closest thing I have to a daughter, is in much the same fix as you were in. She doesn’t know what happened to me. She probably thinks I’m dead. All I want is for you to let her know I’m alive. Surely that’s not too much.”

Sedgwick’s mouth tightened just enough to let Jean-Claude know he’d found a soft spot.

“What’s to stop your Isabelle from coming after me, looking for you?”

“Tell her I’ve gone hunting the missing trinket,” Jean-Claude said. “If Travers wants it, he’s going to have to help me find it.”

A look of disbelief washed over Sedgwick’s face. “You think you’re going to use le Comte de Travers? I would almost pay to see that. Almost.”

“Please? I can’t stand to leave Isabelle wondering if I’m alive or dead.”

Sedgwick frowned and rubbed his palms together. At last he said, “Aye. I’ll get word to her, not that she’s required to believe me, mind.”

Jean-Claude handed over his much-battered and abused hat. “Give her this. She’ll recognize it.”

Sedgwick took the hapless headgear and rolled it over in his hands. “You have my word.”

CHAPTER

Sixteen

Joubert’s Folly was as ugly a hunk of rock as had ever been hung in the sky. The skyland was the shape of a crescent, and wobbled like a vast coin just spinning to a stop. Its two curved arms, tipped with sturdy forts, embraced a sizable harbor.

The base ran out a harbor pilot to bring the Thunderclap in. Dockworkers tied it off to a short flexible pier so it could remain steady and level throughout the skyland’s precession.

The depot was laid out in a ring around the sky harbor. All the wood-framed buildings had canted walls and, as it turned out, a nearly tubular inner construction to keep them stable on the ever-tilting surface. It was a place where an unlucky pedestrian really might end up walking uphill both ways.

Bitterlich had given his report to Malgiers to read to Impervia and briefed Vrain on what he’d learned from his search of the sloop and interrogation of its crew. Then he oversaw the provisioning of the prisoners. He separated out the native Skaladin from their foreign replacements and held them in separate groups. He let none of them see what had become of their capitaine as he installed her, under guard, in the base’s stockade.