“Of course she isn’t,” Djordji said. “That’s nay the point. Look at it the other way around. Impervia tells Bitterlich about the summons days afore it happens. Do ye thinks ye’d get so much warning if Sireen didn’t wants ye to act on it? She’s given ye all the lead time she can without being obvious about it.”

Bitterlich said to Isabelle, “If not for you, Sireen wouldn’t even have a crown, and she’s grateful to you. She also knew you wouldn’t be happy being an ornament at court. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that she gave you the expedition as a personal gift and justified it vis-à-vis politics rather than the other way around.”

Isabelle licked dry lips with a raspy tongue. “Let’s assume you are correct and Sireen wants me to avoid this summons. What exactly do you imagine she wants me to accomplish? And why me? All of you are perfectly competent.”

Marie and Djordji exchanged a look. Marie said, “Isabelle is congenitally incapable of accepting the idea that anyone in a position of power might actually like her enough to bend the rules in her favor. It’s one of those weird blind spots I keep telling you about.”

“Blind spots?” Isabelle spluttered indignantly.

“It’s right up there with her indifference to food and the fact that no one else speaks math as a first language.”

Isabelle glowered, which took just about all the energy she had. “Are you quite finished?”

“I could go on for days,” Marie said.

“We knows the risks of what we proposes,” Djordji said.

“Perhaps,” Isabelle said, “but does Rebecca?” Isabelle lifted her gaze to the youngster, who was now standing on the ceiling, her white mane hanging down.

“I’m in,” Rebecca said.

“Are you? If Djordji is wrong, or if we get caught by people unsympathetic to our plight, they will not take mercy on you for your youth.”

Rebecca shrugged. “Been a thief my whole life. Could’ve got my hands cut off, but I didn’t. Never thought to be anything but a thief until Jean-Claude came along. Then I was a cabin girl and an aeronaut.” She flipped over again and floated cross-legged over the foot of the bed. “Now I’m a Seelenjäger, and I’ll stick with them what’s been good to me. Also what gets me off this rock.”

Isabelle let her head sink back into the bolster. Rebecca couldn’t know what she was getting herself into, no twelve-year-old could, yet Isabelle didn’t have the right to make her decisions for her, not anymore.

Isabelle had learned early on that life was dangerous, and Jean-Claude had made it clear that her first and best defense was to be competent. Rebecca, being who and what she was, needed the same sort of education.