Gretl shifted uneasily, looked at her hands, looked away. Isabelle all but held her breath; it hadn’t seemed like a horrid question but Gretl’s expressive fingers curled into fists.
After a moment of profound stillness, Gretl drew herself up, unclenched her hands, and pointed to Isabelle’s stump. She mimicked Kantelvar and then she mimed a sawing motion. Then she touched her eye and made a plucking motion, and made a chopping motion against her leg. Then she tapped herself and pantomimed fitting on a prosthetic limb and sewing up split flesh.
When she was done she stared at Isabelle with the dismal look of a subordinate expecting reprimand.
Isabelle took a moment to digest it all. “You help him when he changes bodies.” Clearly, Kantelvar could perform the transfer on his own, but that didn’t mean it was the ideal way to do it.
Gretl made a brief affirmative nod and shrank back as if expecting a reprimand.
“That must be horrible for you.”
Gretl stared at Isabelle with a look of incomprehension that made Isabelle wonder what she’d said wrong. Then Gretl’s eyes overflowed with tears, and she buried her face in her hands, sobbing.
Poor woman. Isabelle wrapped her arm around Gretl as Jean-Claude had so often done for her. She could not imagine what life must be like for Kantelvar’s captive servants that such a simple statement of truth could unleash such a flood of pain.
It took several minutes of pouring herself out before Gretl was ready to make eye contact again, but when she did her expression was more open, attentive rather than wary.
“I’m going to stop him,” Isabelle said, to which Gretl did not reply. “He’s going to set the whole world on fire if I don’t.”
Gretl gave her a doubt-filled look and made an untangling gesture. How?
“First I need to talk to Julio.” In truth, that was about as far as her plan had gotten, but if she could get him out of his cell and on her side, he’d be able to send his espejismo to take a message to his allies. At this point, even a message to his enemies would be preferable to letting them all be duped into war.
Gretl pointed to Isabelle, made a negating gesture, and used her slipper to draw a line in front of the door.
“Kantelvar never said I couldn’t leave this room,” Isabelle said; the imperative to stay was merely implied.
Gretl winced and shook her head in an emphatic no. She made a slash across her cheek to indicate Julio, then Kantelvar locking him in manacles, and the omnimaton standing guard.
“He’s guarded,” Isabelle said. “Yes.”
Gretl pointed to the clock on the wall. It read the ninth hour. She pointed to the tenth hour, made the Julio sign, and made a throat-cutting motion.
Isabelle’s hand flew to her heart and for a moment breath wouldn’t come. She had to rescue Julio now.
“You take him his food. How did you get past the omnimaton?”
Gretl shook her head again and made the Kantelvar sign, the throat slashing.
“I’ll deal with Kantelvar,” Isabelle said, a promise spun from sheer need rather than any stronger silk. “But I must know how to pass the warder.”
The way Gretl pursed her lips gave Isabelle the impression her sanity was in doubt.
Isabelle held on to her patience and gave Gretl what she hoped was her most somber and serious look. “Do you know what’s going to happen next? After Kantelvar murders Julio and takes over his body, he’s going to rape me until he gets a child on me. He thinks I’m the reincarnation of Saint Céleste, and he wants me to bear the Savior.” Her hands balled into fists so tight that her left arm shook and her spark-arm threw off wisps of violet steam. Not while I have strength to fight.
Gretl looked appalled, but not, Isabelle noticed, dubious of the claim.
“And when he’s done with me he’s going to move on to the rest of the world. He has set in motion events that will start a war to end all kingdoms and destroy all peoples.” This would sound completely mad to anyone who did not know Kantelvar. “There’s no one left to stop him but me, and I need your help.” She unclenched her fists and made a gesture of supplication.
Gretl’s already pale features were washed out as old laundry and her nimble hands had knotted like the roots of an ancient tree. Yet though her eyes were round with fright, she nodded strongly and curtsied to Isabelle, a transfer of fealty. Isabelle had no oil with which to anoint Gretl, so she touched her lightly on the head and bade her rise. And now I am responsible for you, too. But what was one more soul on her conscience at this point? What is one more ice crystal in the groove of a fracturing rock?
From behind her apron Gretl withdrew an amulet in the shape of the Omnioculus, the all-seeing eye peering out from the center of a gearwheel. She brandished it and pantomimed the warder standing aside.
Isabelle held out her hand and Gretl passed the talisman over.
Isabelle weighed the object in her hand. “If Kantelvar needs you to help him change bodies, what prevented you from just waiting until he detached from a host and then putting the knife to him?”
Gretl made a grim face and shook her head. She made the sign for Kantelvar and then bumped the back of her head with her fist. That was where the tubes came out. She pointed to the bed and pantomimed someone lying on it, Kantelvar standing over them. She went to the hump on her back, drew out another tube, and attached it to the body on the bed. The new body stood up, walked around the old body, and pulled the tube out, at which point the old body collapsed to the floor.
“I see. He’s always in direct control of the proceedings.” Every variable accounted for, damn the man.
Gretl nodded in the affirmative.
It hardly mattered; she couldn’t wait for Kantelvar to drill into Julio’s skull before she acted. The clock on the wall ticked inexorably away. “We need to go now. Will you show me back to Julio’s cell?”
Gretl squared herself up to a servant’s proper posture and opened the door. Isabelle confronted the darkened hallway. It felt like standing on the edge of a precipice with nothing left to do but jump. Kantelvar was out there, and omnimatons, and Julio, and she was not ready for this.
Jean-Claude would have chivalrously suggested it was just the thin air that made her breath short and her heart pound. By all the saints, but she missed him. She had to do him proud. She smoothed her skirts and forced herself past the threshold.
Now that Isabelle was in motion, she felt as if she were riding a rockslide, her only hope to stay on top of it and pray there was enough left of her to crawl out of the wreckage at the end. Dread waited around every corner. Would she bump into Kantelvar in the hall? How would she excuse herself to him? What if he went to her chambers and found her missing, the prize exhibit absconded from the museum? What reason might she give him for leaving her suite after she had pleaded exhaustion? Surely he could locate her by the stink of her fear.