Just outside Isabelle’s room he resumed his erstepelz and adjusted his jacket. Hopefully Isabelle was awake, but if not, Marie or whoever was watching her would appreciate the news.

The door was closed. He knocked politely. There came no response, but given that the plan was for everyone to pretend that Isabelle never regained consciousness, this was not entirely surprising.

He opened the door and eased himself in.

Isabelle lay on the bed, her arm across her chest, eyes closed. Covered in a pale-gray Fenice hatchling down and deep-gray scales, she might have been mistaken for a Seelenjäger. Her spark-arm had reappeared and her glittering mote swarm had regained strength. As emaciated as she had become, she no longer radiated sickness. A tightness in his chest eased to see her so improved.

He closed the door and softly spoke, “Isabelle? It’s me.”

Isabelle’s lavender-and-rose eyes came open and she smiled. She had a devastating smile. It quite stunned him.

“Major,” she said in a voice still dry. “Good to see you.”

He nodded dumbly. It would be unseemly and inappropriate to scoop her up and wrap her in his arms. He’d have to settle for something she’d actually appreciate.

“I have good news,” he said, and held out the hat. “He’s alive, and he says he’s out hunting the missing trinket.”

Isabelle snapped up faster than a catapult, her eyes as round as two full moons. “Alive.” She received the hat and hugged it to her chest, bowing her head over it and weeping tears of joy. “Oh, thank you. Thank the saints. Where did you get this?”

“A fisherman brought it in. He got it at a cloud market along with the message.”

“Which trinket?”

“I don’t know. Presumably the one Hasdrubal stole.”

Isabelle rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand so as not to drop the hat. “Well, I guess that narrows our focus a little bit. To find Jean-Claude, all was have to do is find Hasdrubal.”

“Whom the entire Hoary Fleet is already chasing toward the City of Gears,” Bitterlich said.

“So all we have to do is get there first,” Isabelle said.

“The power of oversimplification in action,” Bitterlich said.

“Without oversimplification, no great deed would ever be accomplished. When I took Sheerface Castle…” Isabelle paused and scowled as if she wanted very badly to scold someone. “That is to say when Primus Maximus took Sheerface Castle, he had no idea how it was to be done until he had already committed himself to doing it.”

Her shoulders slumped. “The story loses its punch when I can’t make up my mind who’s telling it.”

Bitterlich tilted his head and his whiskers twitched forward, a tension on his lip. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll live,” Isabelle said.

Bitterlich put on an expression so attentive that it very nearly had its own notebook.