Yet, though she heard the echoes of distant activity, ghostly voices and mechanical clanking, they encountered no one in the passages.
A short eternity later, they arrived at the suite of rooms that contained Julio’s cell. Isabelle listened at the door but heard nothing. Surely Kantelvar would be talking if he were in there. Julio made him rave.
What if Kantelvar had already taken Julio away to be prepared for his surgery? All too vividly, she imagined Kantelvar plucking Julio’s eyeball out and taking a chisel to the vacant socket. A hammer blow and the príncipe’s body would jerk and lie still. Not yet. There was still time. She kept repeating that in her head like a prayer.
Isabelle depressed the latch and eased open the door. There was no reaction from within. No sound but the creak of the hinges. The omnimaton stood at attention next to Julio’s cell door, a hulking armored skeleton of quondam alloy. It gave no sign of noticing her, though who knew what processes went on behind that great cyclopean eye.
Isabelle turned to Gretl, who all but clung to her skirts. “Please stand watch outside. Give your knock if anyone comes along.” Though how such a little forewarning might help Isabelle, she had no idea.
Gretl nodded and closed the door behind Isabelle. Isabelle forced herself to stand erect. The damned warder must already have known she was present and cringing wouldn’t help.
“Julio,” Isabelle said, but her voice came out a harsh croak. She gathered herself and tried again, more clearly: “Your Highness Príncipe Julio.”
There came no answer. Had he already been taken to be prepared?
Isabelle drew out the amulet and held it before her as if warding off an evil spirit. Slowly she approached the door. Could the omnimaton sense terror? Its glassy eye, throbbing with an internal light, was the only indication of … “life” was the wrong word, but she could not very well use the word “animation” in reference to something standing so incredibly still.
She came within arm’s reach of the machine.
The omnimaton moved so quickly that it blurred. When it came to a stop, its singular three-fingered hand had closed on the door handle.
Isabelle flinched uselessly. If the thing had been inclined to attack, it could have had her head off her shoulders before she could blink.
With a series of abrupt twists the omnimaton twisted the door handle and opened the door. It didn’t seem capable of moving at anything other than blinding speed and seemed to be trying to average its movements out so that it didn’t shatter the door. The result was a staccato series of still lifes that ended with the door ajar just far enough for Isabelle to enter without scraping her shoulders.
Isabelle held her breath and eased past the machine into the cell.
“I see Kantelvar was right about you,” came a soft, harsh voice from the gloom.
Isabelle’s head whipped around. Príncipe Julio sat slumped in a far corner, his hands shackled and bound by chains to iron loops set in the walls above him on either side. His face, downcast and obscured by lengths of tangled black hair, was pale and dingy as old snow. His silver eyes were sullen. His posture, sagging like the last sack of potatoes after a long winter, radiated defeat and despair, but Isabelle was chary of deception. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice … I think not.
“That depends on what he told you,” Isabelle said.
“L’étincelle, the long-lost sorcery of Saint Céleste,” Julio said. “A fine birthright to bestow upon the Savior.”
Isabelle’s hackles rose, but she kept her temper at bay. She had no time for anger or fear or any other emotion, no matter how they scratched and whined.
“You accuse me falsely,” she said. “Kantelvar is my enemy, and I shall not complete his project.” Which meant that in the unlikely event that she lived through this, she could never marry Julio. Indeed, with all these sorceries lying dormant in her veins, she hardly dared contemplate children at all … but those problems presumed a future out of reach.
“I do not accuse you of being his partisan,” Julio said. “Only his puppet. We are all his puppets. The only question is, what does he want from this—what is your word?—tête-à-tête.”
Isabelle resisted the urge to turn around to check if Kantelvar had come up behind her. Instead, she approached his corner, the swirling maroon glow of her spark-arm painting faint pulsing shadows on the walls. Julio blinked and shuddered as if even these dim flickers burned like flecks of molten iron. Up close, his cheeks glimmered like tarnished silver, the aftermath of quicksilver tears.
To defend herself against accusations of being manipulated would be futile, so she took a different tack. “Perhaps Kantelvar has a goal for this meeting, but that does not preclude me having one as well. I need you to help me stop this war he has planned. If I can get you out of these chains and out of this room, can you get your espejismo back to San Augustus? I need you to put this before Carlemmo—”
Julio’s expression remained stony but there was a hitch of suppressed grief in his voice. “It’s too late. My father … Carlemmo is dead. Kantelvar administered the last dose of the poison before he snatched you away. He’s dead and the war of the príncipes has begun.”
Isabelle’s breath came short as the one thread of hope she’d been holding was ripped from her fingers. She could not be too late. There must still be time, but once the first pebble fell, was there any way to stop the landslide?
No. She would not believe it. Not without more proof than Kantelvar’s word. She would keep fighting.
Julio said, “Kantelvar wants to hollow out my head and use my body to get a child on you, which he will call the Savior. That child must never be born, but at this point I can do nothing to prevent it. That means the fatal deed must be in your hands.”
Isabelle recoiled. “Are you saying I should kill myself?”
Julio looked appalled. “No. I do not envy you the choices you have left to make, but I would not ask such a sacrifice of you, even if your life were mine to command.”
His alarm faded into a dull, hot determination, a banked coal waiting for the breath of air. “I ask only for your help. I have no wish to be Kantelvar’s vessel, or the tool he uses to rape you or unmake the world. You won’t even have to strike the blow yourself. I had the mute smuggle me some leaves of queensmercy. They’re under my blankets.” He gestured to a pile of rags in the far corner. “Just put them where I can reach them and leave.”
Isabelle struggled for balance in her mind. “I came here to free you, not murder you.”
“You will be freeing me. When Kantelvar invades a body, the original owner does not die, not completely. He is mangled, shoved aside, crippled beyond saving, and cut off from the flesh that was once his, but he does not die. Some part of him lives on, a helpless witness to the atrocities subsequently performed under cover of his exalted name. I beg you, do not condemn me to that fate.”