“This is you,” she hazarded. Kantelvar had said he’d been there from the beginning.
Behind her, Kantelvar let out a rattling breath and whispered, “You do remember.”
Isabelle swallowed hard. She pasted a smile on her face and turned. “Of course.” He thought she was Céleste, her second coming. Oh, wretched woman, what sin could you have committed to have earned this sort of obsession? Were you kind to him? Did you give him hope so bright that it seared his soul?
Kantelvar bowed to her, as he had always deferred to her, echoes of the supplicant. “I am glad you approve. I will leave you to rest and see to it that refreshments are brought to you. In the meantime, I must make Julio secure.”
Kantelvar left. The door closed. Isabelle slumped against the wood, as if her slight weight could hold out all the forces arrayed against her. She rubbed her hand on her dress, trying to wipe away the cloying sweatiness of Kantelvar’s touch. By the Builder, she’d give her other arm if only Jean-Claude would come rushing in, preferably with a whole cadre of musketeers at his back. He could not be dead. Must not. The thought choked like dust in her lungs, but she refused to believe it.
Yet even if Jean-Claude was alive somewhere, there was no way he could find her here. And Marie was abandoned in darkness. And Julio was chained to a wall. Builder help us; I am the last reserves.
So think! Her mind was her personal pride, a well-oiled machine … a delicate clockwork easily thrown out of balance, never meant to be shaken or stepped on like this.
Simplify. That’s what Lord DuJournal would say. So what if the imagined command came to her now in the voice of the imposter? It was still good advice.
She had to stop the war. So simple to say. So out of reach. At the very least, she had to get a message off this skyland, something on the order of “Stop, stop, you’ve all been tricked!” If she could get Julio to a mirror, he could send his espejismo to do that job, but Kantelvar had just gone to strengthen his captivity. Would Kantelvar begin torturing Julio right away? And what would Julio do if she managed to free him? Even if the príncipe wasn’t convinced she was Kantelvar’s conspirator, he might still murder her just to thwart the breeding program.
Isabelle pressed the heel of her thumb to her temple, trying to rub out an incipient headache. Never had her mind felt like such a blunt, squishy instrument. She was tired, hungry, weak, and sore. I can’t do this. I don’t know how. But there was no one else and no more time.
An arrhythmic knock on the door nearly startled Isabelle out of her skin and she jumped away from the door. Was Kantelvar back already? How much time had she wasted? She wrapped herself in the same stony impassivity that had seen her through so many potentially lethal audiences with the Comte des Zephyrs and said, “Enter.”
Strangely, the knock repeated itself again, three beats, then one, then four, before the door glided open. Gretl bustled in and curtsied low while holding up a tray bearing an assortment of delectables and a ewer of wine. Isabelle surmised that, being deaf, she had been trained to knock her special knock and enter rather than waiting for permission.
Isabelle lifted her toe, giving the poor girl permission to rise. Gretl gave her a broad, carefully blank servant’s smile that made Isabelle shudder. There, but for the Builder’s grace, stand I.
Gretl proffered some light pastries with candied fruit and a crystal flute of Célestial wine, pale and sparkling. The pastries’ fresh-from-the-oven smell set off desperate urges in the primitive root of Isabelle’s mind, and she nearly pounced on the tray. It felt like she hadn’t eaten in years. No wonder her head was so muzzy. She spent several minutes gorging far too quickly to appreciate the confectioner’s art. The flaky things seemed to turn to vapor before they hit her stomach, leaving her far from sated. She needed real food, not these lacy teases.
“Do you have any meat?” she asked. Then she remembered Gretl was deaf, but the woman bobbed her head in understanding.
Isabelle’s brows wrinkled in puzzlement. “Can you hear me?”
Gretl made an emphatic negating gesture, but then pointed to her eyes and thence to Isabelle’s mouth.
“You can see my words?” Isabelle said, being careful to enunciate.
Gretl bobbled her head again, a sparkle peeking out from behind the mask of simplicity that shielded her eyes. Isabelle was abashed; she, more than anyone, ought to know that a defective body did not mean a dull mind. But just because Gretl could understand her didn’t make her an ally. If anything, it made her a danger.
Isabelle asked, “Why didn’t Kantelvar tell me this?”
With her free hand, Gretl mimed pulling a hood over her head. She covered her mouth and shrugged. Kantelvar’s mouth was a grille. He had no lips to watch.
“He doesn’t know.” And it would never occur to Kantelvar that someone like Gretl could be any more than what he made her to be. So how much loyalty would she have to a master who treated her like an omnimaton?
The question, she realized, could only be answered by experiment. “Please bring me real food and water, and then we will talk.”
CHAPTER
Twenty
Isabelle wanted to curl up around the plate of cold meat and cheese Gretl brought in and hiss like a cat at anyone who thought they might steal a morsel, but that would have been counterproductive. Instead she bade Gretl join her. The other woman warily sat down on one of the old embroidered pillows.
Over the course of an hour, with Isabelle dreading every moment to hear Kantelvar’s approaching footfalls, Gretl demonstrated a wide repertoire of hand signs for Isabelle to absorb, like reading semaphore, only much faster. Isabelle wished she had more time to explore this technique—could these ad hoc gestures be formalized? Could they be adapted for the one-handed “speaker”?—but that was a question for later. If there was a later.
“How did you meet Kantelvar?” Isabelle asked.
Gretl paused, her hands pressed palms flat against each other below her naval. Her expression was bland and her gaze was distant, as it frequently was when she was figuring out how to express herself to someone not fluent in her silent language.
She tapped herself and then made a round belly gesture for “mother” and a beard-stroking one for “man,” presumably “father.” Then she made a stooped pantomime that meant “Kantelvar” followed by a bit of purse jingling and an exchange of coin.
“Your parents sold you?” Isabelle was appalled. The comte had sold Isabelle before she was even born, but of course she hadn’t been his to begin with.
Gretl shrugged and made a stomach-clamping gesture and pointed to her mouth, pantomiming hunger. Desperate families did desperate things.
The real question, she supposed, was, “Why did Kantelvar keep you when he has not kept so many others?”