She took several deliberate breaths to calm her nerves, then returned to her observation of the stoneberg. Once more the guns spoke, spraying off more chips of stone. Two minutes twenty-five that time.

The last broadside had knocked the berg onto yet another path that the Thunderclap could not easily adjust to without losing way. Thank the saints.

Isabelle called off the drill, retreated to her cabin, and sucked down another draught. She was only an hour early. She noted the time in her journal and counted back all her doses to make sure she hadn’t missed any. She’d been regular.

There came a rap at the door she recognized as Jean-Claude’s … unless it was a hallucination. So far she’d only had visions of her ancestors’ lives, but what if they evolved?

“Come,” she said.

Jean-Claude entered, closed the door, and favored her with a worried look. “Head troubles?”

“Was it that obvious?” Isabelle asked, mortified. Nearly as terrible as going mad was being suspected of doing so. If Vrain even suspected she was losing her mind he’d be honor bound to remove her from command. After that, she’d be little more than stowage on this trip. Worse, Sireen would never trust her with any sort of authority again. Without a name, a family, or a place in the world, she’d be worse than dead, and that would drive her mad.

“Only to someone who’s known you forever,” Jean-Claude said. “How bad?”

“Not bad,” Isabelle said, willing it to be so. “The last draught was just a little weak.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Jean-Claude said. “What happened?”

“A ghost stain. A minor one. A heavy shadow thumping around behind me.”

“Is it getting worse?”

What would she do if Jean-Claude thought she was mad? He’d always been her partisan, no matter the odds. He’d always believed in her innocence no matter the charges leveled against her. But what would he do if he thought she couldn’t handle the enemy in her head. The words she dreaded most since this ordeal began were “It’s for your own good.” That way lay erasure. Yet if she could not trust Jean-Claude, there was no hope in the world.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“It’s got you spooked.”

“Yes.”

“It’s okay to be spooked,” he said.

The potion’s effect crept into Isabelle’s mind like the shadow of a cloud, muffling her ancestors but washing out the colors of the world, leaving them drab and faded. The ship’s creaking became more like a saw on bone than a healthy hum.

It also loosened her tongue enough to let deeper worries out. “Who will I be if I lose my mind? Will there even be a ‘me’?”

Jean-Claude rubbed the back of his neck and took a long time replying. “I don’t have a good answer for that.”