Isabelle recoiled from this sudden agony. She jerked away from Sigsimondo. Her spirit self, half merged with his, rent and tore, like peeling off tar that had burned onto her skin.

No. She must not panic. Grief must not be shunned. It must be answered with compassion.

She reclaimed her grieving ancestor before his ghost shard slipped away. He needed what she had always claimed to give.

Mercy, she said and reached out again. You pain is my pain. Tell me of your son.

“My boy,” he wailed. “My beautiful son. He was quick and wise, a butterfly child. If only his feathers had come in. Damn those who did this to him.”

Isabelle took in his grief and his rage. It hurt like burning a hole through her heart. Yet as his pain resolved she found she could grip the memory’s substance, shape and pull and untangle it. She drew the ghost out, not as a wire, but as a many-colored pigment.

The joy of discovery kindled in Isabelle’s heart. Too long had it been since she had felt that particular elation, but pigment she knew what to do with. She drew it inward like inviting a guest into her home, into the center of her being. Behind the façade of the outward-looking present, above the neat but crowded workshop of logic and reason lay the studio of her memory, a canvas with no edges and immense depth. Like a great slow river the hues and shadows of her life flowed and mixed, the paint never quite drying, the past never quite settled.

Into this living stream she guided her grieving ancestor, blending him into the edges of her life. It was like sculpting with color, emotion, and belief. Bitterlich had admonished Rebecca to take her time drawing in the ghostfire wyrm lest she be saddled with some aberration of her powers, and Isabelle took that advice to heart.

As she developed her study, she was Sigsimondo, administrator of the Leccisi District, and father of Mateo, his poor lost child. It took some time to figure out how to work Sigsimondo’s grief into Isabelle’s life, but it turned out that it belonged with her own memory of the moment her father had turned Marie into a bloodhollow. Sigsimondo’s love of his child was reflected in Jean-Claude’s love of Isabelle. Such pride. Such joy. Such terror. She knew Jean-Claude cared for her, but she had never been able to imagine precisely how that felt until now.

She brushed in Sigsimondo’s knowledge of administration, some techniques that would help her friend Valérie’s business, and his language … she realized she was thinking in the Vecci tongue.