Isabelle checked her timepiece, but her next scheduled draught wasn’t for hours yet. The chorus was just riled up because she was. Most likely Belda was trying to turn Isabelle away from Bitterlich so that she could suggest a replacement. The navy was the world’s single largest repository of ne’er-do-well nephews, and putting one of her Sanguinaire relations on Isabelle’s ship would give Belda insight into and influence over Isabelle’s greater mission.

Yet why had Belda thought Isabelle would believe such a horrid lie? Surely if such a tale existed Isabelle would have heard about it by now … or if she hadn’t, Coquetta would have.

Isabelle craned her neck and spied the gossipmonger plying her trade, drifting through the room introducing newcomers, doling out fresh ideas, and listening to chatter. She sifted the high court babble for the conversations being had beneath the surface of the language, the undercurrents that pulled society along.

Isabelle caught her gaze and tapped her own earlobe, requesting a moment of her very busy schedule. Coquetta eased her current escort into the waiting arms of her political allies and swept around to guide Isabelle on a stroll through a less inhabited corner of the room.

“You look less than pleased, considering the joyous circumstances.” Coquetta said.

“I am perfectly delighted by Gretl’s success,” Isabelle said.

“And your own, presumably,” Coquetta replied. “So this must be trouble in my domain.”

“Something you might tell me about,” Isabelle said, but the accusation laid at Bitterlich’s feet was not something she cared to repeat. “I was just accosted by Belda du Lavaudieu.”

“Martyred saints,” Coquetta muttered. “That hag. Let me guess; she filled your ears with that nasty business about Major Bitterlich.”

Isabelle’s stomach curdled. “Are you saying it’s true?”

“I acknowledge the rumor exists,” Coquetta said. “And its Belda’s favorite pot to stir.”

“So what do you know to be true?” Isabelle asked.

“Very little,” Coquetta said. “You have to remember this was over a decade ago. Comtesse Eulalie was newly arrived in the capital, here to be introduced to prospective husbands. Bitterlich was young, handsome, and horny. He was warned against courting her, but that only encouraged him, and he applied himself to the project with the sort of zeal only a suicidally romantic sixteen-year-old can muster. Eulalie encouraged him because who doesn’t like that attention? And then…” Coquetta spread her hands in a gesture of unknowing. “One morning, Bitterlich turned up in one of the water channels below Highwall Street, mostly drowned and shadowburned within an inch of his life. It took him months to recover, and he never would say what happened to him, but Eulalie was married off very quickly and without any of the usual fanfare for a wedding at that level.