Andre was sitting belowdecks with the mirror in his hand,looking down at it fondly. "Hello," he said in a soft voice. "hello. Hi. Yes, hello there, it's Papa, little boy. Hi. Hi," he said, waggling a finger at the mirror even if the boy couldn't see. "I miss you. Hello."

What with the ghosting going on, any mysterious voice echoing from a corner suddenly became worth investigating. Starling slipped up quietly, prepared to turn and just as silently flee if it turned out to be Lang and the bard. Or Ashon and his girl. Or . . . all right, it was Andre. No Spider in evidence. But they already had a baby so they'd probably stopped having sex anyway. Safe enough.

He watched for a moment, curious, before being overwhelmed with the instinct that this was probably private and turned to go. Except that in the course of leaving, he joggled a shelf with his shoulder and knocked it--empty, by pure luck--off its hooks and down on top of him. "Shit!"

Andre looked up, put the mirror down and bolted from the bunk he was sitting on. "Starling?!" he asked, reaching to help pick up the contens of the shelf. "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right." He got himself to his feet and put the shelf properly on its pegs. "Hit me in the dignity, is all," he muttered, examining a new dent on his elbow. "Why were you down here talking to yourself?"

"Myse--" Andre blinked, and then reached for the mirror. "Oh. No, you see," he said,holding the mirror up."I was talking to the baby. You can see people in this...it's how I..."

And then he remembered when he'd seen Starling with it. "Er. Keep track of my children."

"Oh yeah." Starling remembered that incident too. "That thing." He took a hasty glance in the mirror, as if concerned he might see something equally indecorous. But the mirror was back to normal now. "It's probably better'n my mother puttin' little stars on her arm to keep track of me and the baby," he said. "Do you look in on Si sometimes?"

"Of course," Andre replied. "I talked to her this morning, before the baby. It's night there right now. Ah...stars on her arms? How did that work?"

"Like my tattoo. But warded so she can find me. She can't, y'know, see me, the way you can with that. Just so she knows I'm still around." Still alive, to be more accurate. "How is Si doin'? Is she all right?"

Andre gave the boy a sidelong look, curious. "She's fine. It sounds like she's bored, mostly. She hasn't been in one place this long in years. I've been trying to explain to her why she really needs to tell her grandfather that she isn't married."

"Because she doesn't actually want to get married," Starling said carefully, in a tone that implied he believed that all Andre needed was minor clarification to understand this point. "Maybe later if she does she can tell 'em I died at sea or something."