“My apologies, I did not mean to startle you,” said the intruder, stepping toward her and into the light. He moved with a mechanical clank, a hiss, and a gurgling sound like boiling mud. His back was rounded with a large hump. His right hand was made of clockwork mechanisms, gears and screws and pistons that emitted oily clicks whenever he moved. His right leg, too, sounded mechanical, and seemed slightly longer than his left one. A deep cowl shadowed his entire face, but a bright pinprick of emerald light gleamed out from beneath. More terrible than this was the staff he carried in his metallic hand. It was the same purple-tinged, spine-tipped implement that Hormougant Sleith had carried on the day her father had destroyed Marie.
Yet this was no hormougant. This was an artifex. There was no mistaking the divine-eye symbol of his office or his quondam-metal limbs. He was one of the Seven Great Guides, each of whom the Temple made responsible for maintaining the purity of an entire sorcerous bloodline. They were subordinate only to the Omnifex himself.
His vestments were of the most elaborate and ostentatious type. His cope was a tapestry depicting the awakening of the saints in the Vault of Ages after the breaking of the Primus Mundi. It showed their rise through the underworld and the founding of the Risen City of Rüul. His chasuble continued the tale with the anointment of the children of the saints, the Firstborn Kings, and of the clayborn women they took to wife. Those were the Blessed Queens, who gave birth in turn to the Secondborn Kings, who were, in turn, the direct ancestors of all living sorcerers … and unhallowed culls like Isabelle.
Isabelle shied back one step. What terrible errand had brought an artifex here, to her very room? Her mouth moved, but she’d lost the ability to so much as squeak.
The artifex said, “As there is no one else to do so, allow me to introduce myself. I am Artifex Kantelvar, from the Collegia Aragoth.” To her utter surprise, he took a knee before her like a supplicant. “And I have come to beg an audience.”
CHAPTER
Four
Isabelle stood rigid, staring at Kantelvar. This was a trap. It had to be. No artifex would ever make obeisance to any woman, let alone her. But he remained down, waiting for her permission to rise.
And what choice did she have? She wanted to run away, but she imagined that would be seen as suspicious. For a long moment, she could not bring herself to speak, but Kantelvar seemed determined to outwait her.
“Greetings,” she muttered at last. Surely that could not be offensive, unless he took offense at her not using his whole elaborate title. “Exalted One,” she added for good measure. Only a very few clergy received the honor of melding with the Builder’s divine machines.
Kantelvar rose, using the spine-headed staff as a crutch. “You are afraid of me.” His voice was like hammered copper. “May I ask why?”
Isabelle fidgeted, trying to craft an answer that could not be used against her. If an innocent woman had nothing to fear, then a fearful woman must not be innocent.
“Your staff,” she whispered. “Where did you get it?”
Kantelvar turned to look at his staff as if noticing it for the first time. “The last person to hold this staff was a Temple hormougant. When he died, it was given to me as part of my Exaltation.”
Isabelle took the tiniest measure of satisfaction in learning Sleith was dead, but she said nothing. She would not invite reproach, but why in the world was Kantelvar here?
“Is this important?” asked Kantelvar, rolling the staff in his hand. His expression was shadowed, his body language impossible to read, but the question itself implied no censure.
“Because that hormougant caused my friend to be murdered.” Isabelle gestured to Marie.
Kantelvar’s attention shifted to the bloodhollow, and he was silent for a moment before saying, “That would have been over a decade ago.”
“Yes,” Isabelle said.
“And this is the same bloodhollow?”
His toneless voice somehow made his sentence worse. “Yes,” Isabelle said, her throat tightening.
“Extraordinary,” he said. “Most bloodhollows don’t last five years, much less ten, and in such good condition.”
Impotent fury and despair filled Isabelle’s lungs. This heartless clockwork was talking about her friend as if she were some sort of antique vase. But good sense reasserted itself before she could say something for which he would be compelled to punish her. Better to get this conversation over with.
“How may I serve you?” she asked. Whatever misfortune he had come to deliver would not be mitigated by delay.
“That is a matter best discussed inside.” Creaking and sloshing, he ushered her toward the door.
Isabelle steeled herself and stepped inside to find out what malicious surprise he had in store. A quick survey of the room gave her no clues. Everything was as she had left it. Marie trailed her in and automatically began putting art supplies away. Isabelle centered herself in the room and faced the artifex.
Kantelvar shut the door and made a circuit of the room, examining her artwork as he went. This had to be for show, as he’d been lurking in the room when she arrived. He paused and waved his gloved hand over a painting she’d done two weeks ago while thinking about celestial mechanics. It was a scene of two of the three moons, Kore and Bruma, rising over the hills at twilight. The skin of the paint was not yet firmed up enough to stack the canvas.
He said, “These are very good. You have an eye for detail and a soft touch with light.” His coppery voice clicked on the sharp edges of syllables. “These streaks of illumination are an interesting touch.”
Dread wrapped a fist around Isabelle’s chest and squeezed; the streaks of light she’d painted chasing the moons were precise ratios of the arc length traversed by the moons against the backdrop of the celestial sphere over a fixed period of weeks. The difference in the length of the streaks clearly demonstrated elliptical orbital paths.
“Yes,” she said, praying he took his observation no further. There were too many secrets in her artwork, things that could get her eyes plucked out and her ears staved in. She glanced aside at the printing press and tried desperately to remember if she’d left the acid etching of complex number multiplications loaded on the printing plate. That would be hard to explain.
Kantelvar leaned on his wicked staff, tilting his head to the side and turning it to stare up at her, as might a man with a very stiff neck. There was another painful pause as he took some measure of her. Was it too much to ask that he think her a harmless lackwit and leave her be?
“How much do you know about the kingdom of Aragoth?” he asked.
If there was a question Isabelle had been expecting less than that one, she could not name it.
“Practically nothing,” she said, though in fact Jean-Claude kept her up on what gossip wafted in from that fascinating kingdom. “Nothing,” was always a good answer even when it wasn’t strictly true. Nothing was what people wanted her to know.
“Hmm. To put it plainly, His Majesty el Rey de los Espejos, Carlemmo II, is dying and there is a choice of heirs. His elder son, Príncipe Alejandro, is married, but his wife has proven barren. Carlemmo has petitioned him to divorce and remarry, so his line may have issue, but the wife’s family is very powerful and will not stand to have its grip prized from the crown.