“Well then, if you’re done provisioning the lower hold, come with me and I’ll show you how to steal from people and make them like you for it.” He’d almost forgotten how volatile children were, and Rebecca had grown up on the streets. Her expectations had been shaped in the gutter. Those wounds would take time to heal, if they ever did.

Rebecca stuffed the rest of a jam tart in her mouth and filled her pockets with bread rolls, then followed him from the room.

Jean-Claude said, “The way here is you don’t steal from the ship or the crew. For one thing, it’s damned foolish to steal what you can’t use or sell. For another, we’ll need each other’s backs when the weather gets rough. This is not to say that being a pickpocket isn’t a useful skill, and you have to stay in practice, but you have to do it the right way.” From his belt pouch he pulled a pack of careworn playing cards. He fanned the deck before her, showing off the blue-inked backs and the colorful faces. “You see this? Forty-eight in the deck. These and nothing else are your targets, understand?”

Rebecca nodded, but her eyes were wary.

“Good.” Jean-Claude led the way down past the gun deck and the keel run to the mess hall, where the larboard watch were finishing their supper. The close space was lit with lanterns and loud with talk and the clunk of wooden vessels, though more than a few men looked up in suspicion at the arrival of a passenger in their space.

Jean-Claude planted himself in the aisle and called out, “Gentlemen and the rest of you, listen up. Who here would like to earn an extra denier?”

There came a rumbling from the crew as avarice momentarily overcame hunger.

Jean-Claude held up the deck of cards. “I have here an ordinary deck of cards”—he clamped a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder—“and an exceptional cutpurse…”

Five minutes later, forty-eight aeronauts each had one of Jean-Claude’s cards and the sworn promise of a silver denier to each man if they could produce the card for him when they reached Joubert’s Folly. Rebecca’s gaze darted hither and yon as each man tucked the card away someplace he imagined it would be safe. Only by herding her out of the room and back to Isabelle’s stateroom did Jen-Claude manage to keep her from swiping half of the cards back in that very instant.

“Your duties and lessons come first,” he said. “You’re here to be a cabin girl.”

She looked up at him slyly. “I’m not missing out on forty-eight deniers.”

“You’re doing this to keep in practice,” Jean-Claude said. “And to make the men respect you.”

“By stealing from them?” Rebecca said.