Ivar didn’t budge, though his time shadows flickered to different parts of the room, such that Travers’s men got twitchy trying to follow their movements.

The counting pirate gave Ivar a nod. He poured the coins into the bag and departed with his companion.

Ivar said to Travers, “Your conspirators have requested that I inform you that the Thunderclap has departed from Joubert’s Folly and is sailing to join the Hoary Fleet. They direct you to set you course for the Bittergale, and they will meet you on the way.”

“You tell Sagax Czensos I will not be—” Travers began, but Ivar disappeared between one eyeblink and the next, dumping stored-up time to move faster than the human eye could see.

This conspiracy was not long for this world, if Jean-Claude was any judge.

“You won’t need those chains,” Travers said. His bloodshadow snapped Jean-Claude’s shackles and flung the bits into a corner. “True incarceration exists in the mind.”

Jean-Claude pushed himself up to his knees. “Monsieur Travers, Ivar is up to something. Quaestor Czensos said—”

“Silence!” Travers’s bloodshadow yanked Jean-Claude across the floor, splayed him facedown in a position of absolute submission, and held him pinned there. The grip of the bloodshadow was like having his skin fastened to the deck by a thousand needles.

“My slaves are raised from birth to be perfect servants, obedient and unquestioning, devoid of curiosity, ambition, anger, or passion: emotions to which they are not entitled. They desire only to serve, to be filled with the will of greater beings. So will it be with you.”

Jean-Claude tried to let go the pain while Travers blathered. Fighting would only make it worse, to no good end. His one consolation was that Travers could not make a bloodhollow out of him in order to learn what he knew. The creation of a bloodhollow suppressed all memory from before the transformation, leaving behind an empty space for the Sanguinaire to fill. Jean-Claude must play along with this for now. At some point Travers would start asking questions, and Jean-Claude would tell him everything Jean-Claude needed him to know.

“We begin at the beginning,” Travers said, and Jean-Claude prepared several different servings of horseshit depending on which question he asked first.

“The soulless have nothing that is not given to them by their master, not food, not water, and certainly not clothing.” With a sudden rip, Jean-Claude’s clothes exploded off him, everything from his doublet to his boots, bits of cloth and loose thread flying every which way.

Jean-Claude cursed inside his head if nowhere else, but to his relief the pain suddenly eased and the bloodshadow retreated.

Jean-Claude didn’t move or make a sound. Clearly Travers wanted obedience, and Jean-Claude saw no reason not to give it to him. It wasn’t as if he could spring into action and stab the spindly git to death with his own rabbit teeth.