Isabelle blinked, and Primus was gone, taking Luggia with him. Not the man, the ghost stain. Every day Isabelle lived in dread of the day that she could no longer tell the whispers of her ancestors apart from reality, and in the moment that shadow had made manifest, that fear had come true. It had only lasted for a few seconds, half a dozen racing heartbeats, but in that span she would have testified on her life to Luggia’s presence.

Everyone else in the room was staring at her. What had they seen? What did they think?

“Just thinking out loud,” she said, gathering her scattered wits. Had she said more than she recalled? Had she lent her voice to both parts in her hallucination?

“We aren’t going to initiate hostilities,” Isabelle said.

Luggia wanted to attack, but then his response to anything he didn’t understand was to label it an enemy and kill it.

Except Luggia had been dead four hundred years, and she shouldn’t know that much about him. But he’d been one of her lieutenants … that is to say Primus’s lieutenants. Trusty enough when you needed someone to run down a flank, but keep him away from the wine butts.

“It’s not like they’d show us any mercy,” Dok said.

“I said no. We will fight to defend ourselves, but I reject the doctrine of preemptive self-defense. Killing other people on the excuse that they would surely do the same to you is nothing more than murder dressed up in a loop of braid with a tin medal.”

Isabelle turned to Vrain. “Lieutenant, report the Dame Formue to Comtesse Impervia. If Thirdeye is working for wages, we need to find out who his paymaster is.”

“I should inform the Cauldron,” Vrain said. Like every Sanguinaire officer of the line he kept a bloodhollow at the naval base in Rocher Royale. This pool of tortured souls allowed the fleets to communicate with one another and with their other assets across the deep sky almost instantaneously. Isabelle hated taking advantage of such a horrific arrangement. It tainted every project it touched, but she had no other option.

“Not the Cauldron,” she said. “Too many political connections.” Vrain must know as well as she did that the most likely culprits for lofting fleets in competition with l’impératrice were other Célestial nobles. Nearly every officer in Fleet Command had gotten there through patronage, and they would not hesitate to warn their benefactors about inquiries into their misdeeds.

Vrain nodded curtly. “Yes, Capitaine.”

Isabelle dismissed the council and sent everyone on their way, but Jean-Claude and Marie lingered. Marie closed the door.

“Your ghosts?” Jean-Claude said, his expression awash with worry.

“You looked out of your head,” Marie said.

“Just for a moment,” Isabelle said. “Just a hiccup.”