He kept his gaze on the move, trying to track everyone out of his one good eye. His vision had improved such that his left eye could tell blurs apart, but faces still looked like mud. He supposed he should count himself lucky Hasdrubal’s swipe hadn’t taken his head off.

An aeronaut in Travers’s brown-and-black livery opened a cabin door. Ivar stepped through, and Jean-Claude was compelled to follow.

Le Comte de Travers stood poised, an ivory-tipped cane in each spidery hand, in the center of the wide cabin. He was tall and skinny, as if a scrawny youth had been stretched into an adult without any adding any extra mass. Like most Sanguinaires, he dressed in white, with accents of bone and silver the better to show off his bloodshadow. He wore a white domino mask such as had not been in fashion for a generation and sported buckteeth that gave him more than a passing resemblance to a rabbit.

“Let us see your wares, merchant,” he said in a voice so nasal that there was a notable echo from the recesses of his sinuses.

Ivar ignored the slight to his station, and gestured Jean-Claude forward. “As promised, monsieur. His name is Jean-Claude, formerly of the—”

“His kind do not have names,” Travers snapped. “A dog does not possess a name, but merely learns to respond to a noise its master makes. The clayborn must be treated the same way. Remember, the Breaker made the clayborn in mockery of the saintborn. It is only by the Builder’s boundless generosity that they are given the chance to serve us and thereby earn their souls. Even then, their primal and irresistible instinct is to challenge and corrupt, and claim for themselves the trappings of personhood. This must never be permitted.”

Jean-Claude looked at Ivar. “Are you telling me this inbred mole rat is the best—”

Travers’s bloodshadow stabbed through Jean-Claude’s shadow. Pain crashed through him as if every nerve were drenched in acid. He would have screamed and collapsed with the agony except that the bloodshadow also held him paralyzed. With no place else to retreat his consciousness collapsed in on itself and the world went dark around the edges.

As if from a great distance, Ivar said, “I would appreciate it if you don’t kill him until after you’ve paid for him.”

Travers sniffed and his bloodshadow withdrew. Jean-Claude collapsed like a rag doll, too enervated to even catch himself when his face hit the floor.

One of Travers’s men approached Ivar with a clinking sack. Ivar glowered at him and snapped his fingers. One of the pirates who’d dragged Jean-Claude in stepped forward, snatched the sack, and began counting the coin inside.

“You had best be going,” Travers said while the pirate was still counting.