Dok knelt on bare, hard ground, staked out between the pales, naked but for the mask on his face, his skin bearing the colorless pallor of one who had been shadowburned into submission. Jean-Claude would not be surprised if Travers had excised Dok’s voice to make him useless if he was captured. Travers had implied at the beginning that he could give Jean-Claude’s voice back, no doubt he could do the same for Dok.

In the center of the encampment stood Travers’s pavilion, all white with red trim and emblazoned with the Travers’s coat of arms, which was, in grand irony, a black tree of many branches bearing blood drops for fruit. The tent glowed from within like a paper lantern, with bright lights to make strong bloodshadows.

Inside, Travers sat upon a throne on a platform, his canes folded across his lap and his bloodshadow in a wide pool around him. To one side stood a small cadre of officers. Jean-Claude recognized most of them from his eavesdropping aboard ship. They were the ones who called Travers father-brother, and they shared his chinless, beak-nosed aspect.

To the other side stood Hasdrubal, short and broad of shoulder, wearing red robes and a hood with black tassels over his caprine head. His eyes, red as garnets, watched Jean-Claude intently. Also present in the back was a bloodhollow, though Jean-Claude could not tell if it was the one belonging to Travers’s cousin.

Jean-Claude’s escorts forced him to his knees and made him touch his forehead to the ground. If Hasdrubal could smell fear, he’d be getting a snoot full. Travers might well kill him now out of spite and wounded pride. Jean-Claude had planned for death—to do otherwise would have been malpractice—but he had no wish to meet the Breaker yet. He must find out what had happened to Isabelle and stop these miserable schemers in their tracks.

The question was how to separate them. Hasdrubal’s place in the conspiracy had to be precarious. His contributions to the cause had been Dok, who was now in Travers’s control, and the relic, which he’d lost. Yet he must still have some value to Travers or he would have already been killed or fled.

Travers, on the other hand, wanted to draw his prize to him in the center of his power, like a spider in his web. He despised anything he did not control absolutely.

“So, my property has returned itself,” Travers said, his sinuses providing him with his own personal echo. “Is there any sign of the wind witch or the reliquary?”

“No, monsieur,” said the escort.

The bloodhollow came to life. Jean-Claude could see nothing but its feet. The body was male, but the way it glided when it walked suggested the rider was a woman.

“You didn’t expect there would be?” said the bloodhollow. It had the cousin’s voice.