“What about your parents?” Rebecca asked.

“They died when I was eight,” he said, “killed by rebels in an uprising against le roi.”

“My parents abandoned me,” Rebecca said in her let’s-pretend-this-isn’t-important voice. “Left me on the street.”

Bitterlich’s heart ached in sympathy. “That’s hard.”

“S’okay,” she said, taking a bite of salt pork. “I can take care of myself. I mean, when I was little … I used to dream they’d come find me. That’s the kind of things little kids do, like tell ghost stories.”

“Which you are, of course, far too old and sophisticated to do,” Bitterlich said, but that wasn’t really the point. She wanted to know who she was and where she fit, as if those answers might come from outside.

Yet she was a saintborn noble; she had a family somewhere. There was no guarantee they were good people, but there was also no guarantee they were bad. Noble children were at particular risk of being kidnapped, and out-of-wedlock births were a leading cause of foundlings.

“Would you find your parents if you could?” Bitterlich asked. It was a natural desire, but also a huge emotional risk.

Rebecca shrugged defensively. “Dunno.”

“If you ever decide you want to,” Bitterlich said, “I have an idea where to start looking.”

She turned to face him for the first time during the conversation. Her expression was wary but her gemlike eyes held the hope of ages. “Where?”

“I’ll show you.” He pushed himself from the platform, slipped into a bird suit, and circled up to the quarterdeck. Rebecca alighted beside him and they stepped into the chartroom, where Isabelle and Similce were taking measurements on the orrery.

“Capitaine Isabelle,” Bitterlich said, “might Rebecca and I have a private moment of your time?”

Isabelle’s head came up under her cowl, though not far enough for him to see more than the tip of her chin. The scales there had taken on the color of a rose.

“Of course,” Isabelle said, and gestured them into the capitaine’s cabin. Similce watched them in, but asked no questions.

Once the door was shut and latched, Bitterlich said, “Rebecca is curious about her parents, and I thought you and your little friends might be able to give her some idea where to look.”

“My little … you mean the blood ciphers.” She looked to Rebecca and back again. “I see what you’re asking, but that’s not necessarily going to work.”

“You never know,” Bitterlich said.

“Never know what? What’s not going to work?” Rebecca asked, distrustful of circumlocution.

Isabelle dragged out her sky trunk and plunged her spark-arm through the wood in order to unlatch it from the inside. She pulled out a wooden box about as big as a loaf of bread, decorated with bare, branching trees. Inside lay her blood ciphers.