Rebecca shrugged. “Weren’t too long ago the Last Men was just a pack of nutters standing on street corners screaming, ‘Builder’s dead!’ Used to throw rocks at ’em. Never bothered with their pockets ’cause they never had anything worth taking. Since Burning Night, they ganged up. Started recruiting hard and beating up folks who won’t pay bribes. Makes lean pickings for me. Now you show up, la reine’s man, and says, how ’bout we put these marbles in their bags. So I think what’s they done to get the nobs mad at ’em?”

Jean-Claude grunted approval at this line of reasoning. Orphans grew up fast on these streets, but Rebecca was quick and bold even by those standards.

Jean-Claude drew forth his hunter’s eye, a device that looked like a timepiece the size of his hand. He flipped open the lid and showed her the face. Instead of watch hands there were three needles with beads that could slide along their length showing distance and direction. All pointed in the general direction of Uptown, and the third bead was catching up with the first two.

“The marble was a prey marker,” Jean-Claude said, which was more evocative to his mind than sympathetic resonance nodes, which was what Isabelle called them. “Works on the same principle as a ship’s orrery. That black needle points to the prey marker you just dropped off. The other two are the ones we planted earlier.”

“The ones I planted.” Rebecca looked rather more skeptical than impressed at this fine bit of engineering. “If you want to know where they’re going, why not just follow ’em?”

“I’ve been following them,” Jean-Claude said. “The problem is, I can’t be everywhere at once. Also, their new leader, Hasdrubal, is a Seelenjäger. He can hear you and smell you and get away before you ever catch sight of him.” Jean-Claude wasn’t fond of shapeshifters at the best of times, but since he’d started hunting Hasdrubal, he half believed he was chasing a ghost. Now he was running out of time. After months of preparation, Isabelle’s ship was scheduled to loft tomorrow on an expedition to the top of the world, and Jean-Claude would be damned if he’d be left behind.

“So why’s la reine care about the Last Men?” Rebecca asked.

“Because their leader is one of the men behind Burning Night,” Jean-Claude said. A foreign spy and agent provocateur, Hasdrubal had helped the old roi’s estranged son depose him. The usurper had come within a heartbeat of claiming the crown before Isabelle had stopped him.