Isabelle selected one and displayed it for Rebecca. In that moment, in her deep cowl, with her spark swarm surrounding her, her luminous arm glowing, and one talon-tipped hand extending the rod to Rebecca, she might have been a forest witch in some ancient tale, delivering a talisman of hope and woe to some young adventuress.

“This is a blood cipher. It can take a sample of your blood and compare it to samples it has from other people. If the ciphers have taken a sample of any of your relatives; parents, grandparents, aunts, or uncles; this can tell you who they are. The catch is, there’s no guarantee that any of your relatives have been recorded. In fact, it’s pretty unlikely. Moreover, learning who your parents are won’t necessarily make your life any easier, and it will definitely make it more complicated. When my blood was taken, I discovered my father wasn’t who I thought he was and met a sister who tried to kill me.”

Rebecca stared at the blood cipher, sizing it up like it was a scorpion guarding a purse she meant to cut.

“If I find out nothing, that’s what I already know,” she said. “So I can’t lose by trying. How do I make it work?”

Isabelle let go a held breath and handed her the device. “Press the round end to your finger. It will sting.”

Rebecca complied. The needle bit. Rebecca flinched. Isabelle took the cipher back and examined the raised lettering on the side.

“Hmmm…” Isabelle said, adjusting the first register so it would display Rebecca’s name.

“What does ‘hmmm’ mean?” Rebecca asked.

“It says you’re a Seelenjäger, which we already knew, but some of the tertiary glyphs are unusual.”

“What about my parents?” she asked.

“Just getting to that,” Isabelle said. She gave the cipher’s tail a twist and set it in the box with all the others. The ciphers buzzed and stirred. Seams in the metal appeared where none had been before. The cylinders sprouted insect-like legs and milled around one another, touching horseshoes to knobs at random until they came to a collective conclusion and began hooking ends together and blooming into the shape of a bifurcating tree.

Isabelle stared at the writing on the trunk, and Bitterlich heard her sharp intake of breath. The pit of his stomach fell. What awful connection had she discovered? His brain belatedly reminded him that the capital city was notorious as a breeding ground, so to speak, of sexual indiscretion, and chief amongst the indiscreet had been the last roi, Grand Leon, a man with so many bastards that half the upper nobility was ineligible to intermarry. But … Grand Leon was a Sanguinaire, not a Seelenjäger.

“Major,” Isabelle said. “You need to see this.”

Bitterlich hurried to her side.