Isabelle sickened as though she’d swallowed clotted blood. How many had he slaughtered that way? He would have murdered her, too, if she’d failed his test. “What made me any more of a success than Gretl?”
“Your blood was the final proof, but I knew it the moment I saw you grown up. Céleste lives in you, and of course your sorcery only confirms it. The first l’étincelle in nearly two thousand years.”
The ardor in his voice made Isabelle shudder, and she pulled her cloak more tightly about her shoulders.
“Are you still cold?” Kantelvar asked.
“We should confront Príncipe Julio,” she said. She had to keep moving, had to keep alert for that instant she could throw him off balance.
“As you desire.” He gestured her toward the open doorway and the long, dimly lit tunnel beyond.
Isabelle dreaded pressing deeper into this spider’s trap, but there was nothing to be gained by going back, even if she could. She forced herself to stride through the door as if this cave were her castle. With Gretl padding silently behind, Kantelvar escorted her by storerooms, a library, a kitchen, a mess hall, and a few dozen closed doors concealing who knew what. A spiral stair twisted down into the black heart of the rock and emerged into a long, slightly curving corridor that bent out of sight to the left. Several doors adorned the right-hand wall.
Kantelvar stopped at the first door and peered through a grate in the door before unlocking it. “These are Príncipe Julio’s chambers, or were before he proved himself untrustworthy.” He admitted her into a lavishly appointed suite, with a large bed draped with embroidered covers, and an elaborately carved desk with paper and pen laid out as if to compose a letter. A padded chair with an ottoman, a chest of drawers, an armoire, and tapestries depicting hunting scenes completed the fit-for-a-príncipe main room. To the left was a bathing chamber and to the right a locked door. Before it stood another omnimaton, man shaped but squatter and more cylindrical than the one that piloted the ship. It was missing one of its arms below the elbow. Its green gemstone eye flickered erratically as if reflecting distant lightning. Kantelvar displayed his staff and said in Saintstongue, “Warder at Oblivion’s gates, stand aside.”
For half a heartbeat nothing happened, then the omnimaton darted aside. It moved so swiftly that it blurred and caused wind to swirl in behind it, then stopped so still and rigid that it was all but impossible to imagine it could move at all.
Isabelle skipped backward with a startled gasp that had hardly begun by the time the warder’s movement was complete.
If ever the omnimaton had been shaped by mortal hands, surely they had been driven by a mind with a wicked and unnerving sense of humor, for who could look upon such a juxtaposition of suddenness and stillness without great trepidation?
Kantelvar ignored her startlement and put his hand on a locked window flap in the door. “This is the príncipe’s reduced cell. I warn you, he can be quite vulgar and he tends to spit.”
And who wouldn’t, if they were treated like an animal?
Isabelle said, “I understand.”
Kantelvar unlatched the window and looked in. “Príncipe—huh?”
Suspended across the window was a scrap of dirty white cloth on which had been scrawled, in a brownish pigment, “No me tendrá.”
You will not have me, Isabelle translated.
“Julio, what is this?” Kantelvar ripped the cloth from its frame.
There came no answer from within and the room was dark. A whiff of stale and breathless air coiled out around Isabelle’s face.
“Julio, show yourself,” Kantelvar said, his voice grinding like poorly meshed gears. “This gains you nothing.”
From the darkness came a soft creak, almost like a rope under tension. Isabelle tried in vain to peer through the blackness, to draw some form from the shadows. What if he had been desperate enough to choose the last resort?
“If I must drag you out of there, I will, but it will go badly for you,” Kantelvar said, the whine of his gears growing louder with rising alarm. He ignited the spiny tip of his staff. The heat of it made Isabelle recoil and its brightness nearly blinded her. She blinked away tears and squinted through the view slot.
A pair of feet dangled half a meter off the floor. She lifted her gaze. Julio’s hands were bound behind his back, and his scarred face was bent forward around the leather belt that hung him from the lamp hook in the ceiling. His swollen tongue bulged from his mouth, and foam dripped from his lips.
Isabelle gasped in horror.
Julio twitched.
“He’s still alive!” Isabelle cried. Or at least there was still some reflex left in him.
Kantelvar cursed, fumbled at his belt for a key, and jammed the toothed metal wand into the keyhole. He yanked the door open and rushed in, Isabelle close on his heels.
Julio twitched on the end of his line, tongue lolling. Kantelvar tucked the spiny-headed staff in the crook of his arm and drew a long knife from his belt. “I’ll cut him loose. Catch him as he comes down. He’s no good if his brain dies.”
Isabelle wasn’t sure how she was supposed to catch anyone with just one hand, especially a man who weighed half again as much as she, but she grabbed his shirt to pull him close as he fell.
Yet before Kantelvar could swing and cut the strap, Julio dropped. The belt around his neck flapped loose, and he landed in a crouch. His hands came free of their bindings. Their fake bindings.
Isabelle just had time to realize it was all a trick before the príncipe spat out the swollen tongue and lunged at Kantelvar. No scream or snarl betrayed his rage, only a blade-sharp gleam in his silvery eyes as he grabbed for the staff. Trapped in the momentum of her intent, Isabelle heaved on Julio’s shirt. He jerked against her grip, yanking them both off balance. Isabelle stumbled and let go.
Julio’s grab came up short. Kantelvar staggered back. His wide-eyed surprise gave way to a scowling rage harrowed with grooves of fury. “Breaker’s get!” He drove the spiny tip of his staff into Julio’s shoulder, and webs of lightning twined around the príncipe’s body.
Julio’s limbs jerked, and the sparks dragged an agonized shriek from his throat. He collapsed in a twitching heap but still managed to curse Kantelvar. “Heretic! You defile the Builder!”
“I serve the Builder!” Kantelvar roared. His sapphire eye blazed. He smashed the spiked ball down on Julio’s leg and jolted him again. “I gave you a chance to join me. I showed you the destiny He has for you. You would have been the father of the Savior. But you turned your back on Him!” He raised his staff to strike again. Flecks of blood fanned from its tip.