Ivy had been trying very hard not to come to precisely that same conclusion herself, but once her Jäger companion had spoken the words, there was only so much wishful ignoring she could do. She froze midstep, and held his gaze even, so many questions rushing through her head, even she was sure what exactly she was thinking. Embarrassment (and subsequent, fiery, defensive rage) at having been caught in a blatant Heterodyne lie aside...what if he was right? What if [i]she[/i] was right?

It was clear from Ludd's musings he had been, at the very least, familiar with a woman -- and a Spark -- who looked, and apparently acted quite a bit like Ivy. And if Ludd was supposed to have been dead long enough for children to tell ghost stories, where was this phantom woman? [i]Who[/i] was she that she could capture the heart of a feared dread pirate? And how had Ivy ended up so far from house and home? 

Ivy realized suddenly she was staring without quite seeing anyway and turned away abruptly somewhere between dismay and shame. Her eyes fell just briefly on the dusty bed with its dusty coverlet in the corner, and she thought, for an instant, how nice it could be to sleep forever. She all at once felt as thought she had been walking her whole life, that she and Jötz had fallen into the canals not the night before, but centuries earlier, when her great grandmother was still sailing the skies with whatever had been before the skeleton in the next room. 

"All the more reason to get some answers before he realizes who I am," Ivy said abruptly, tracing star-shaped patterns in the dust on a low shelf with her remaining fingers. "We can't kill him yet. Not if we don't have to. We're going to...we're going to head to the next town. We're going to play his game, for now." 

At her hip, Petris poked one spindly leg from the pocket of her apron, prodding the air like a curious dog sniffing for meat. Ivy didn't notice. 

"And in the meantime," she began slowly, chewing her lip as an idea began to form in her head, "I want you to tell me everything you know about Jacob Lubb."