Isabelle bit back a dozen questions; Valérie needed time to pull herself together, and Isabelle didn’t know what to do to help. Uttering platitudes like, “You did well,” or, “It’s over,” could hardly be a comfort to her at this point. Likewise saying something like, “Would Vincent have wanted you to fall apart like this?” would squash her flat.
Instead, Isabelle asked, “Is there something we can get you? Wine? Blankets?”
Valérie looked at her with gratitude in her eyes. “Yes, please.”
“Get her wine and warmth and anything else she wants,” Isabelle said.
“What about you, Highness?” asked Darcy of sergeants-are-better-than-privates fame.
“I…” Isabelle hesitated. She felt neither good nor exactly calm, but, instead, strangely balanced, focused. It was as if she’d climbed a steep emotional cliff and found herself on a high plateau where the view was broad and clear but the air was cold and thin. She couldn’t stay in this clarity above it all forever, only as long as it took to scout a course ahead.
“I am uninjured,” she said, but Vincent was dead and Jean-Claude’s fate uncertain. Was she defenseless now? Whom would she turn to for counsel?
A quiet cough drew her attention to the Aragothic ladies-in-waiting, all six of whom had formed up in an arc and stood with downcast eyes, apparently awaiting her recognition, or approval, or something. On a mannequin between them was displayed an elaborate, layered gown of silk and velvet, black and red with gold embroidery. It had matching gloves and slippers and lacquered combs for her hair.
“Highness,” said the first lady, “allow us to cover your nakedness.”
Isabelle looked down at herself, still clad in cuirass, jacket, trousers, and boots, and tried, unsuccessfully, to contemplate the propriety-is-more-important-than-reality mind-set that could possibly consider this naked, or that being so was important at a moment like this.
But as much as she wanted to hare away to find Jean-Claude, outside was more dangerous than inside, and information was likely to come to her faster than she could fetch it. And when that information arrived, she had to be ready to receive its bearers. Being clean, polished, calm, and collected could only help.
She spread her arms and said, “Ladies, I place myself at your mercy.”
*
When Isabelle disrobed, the Aragothic lady who pulled off her right glove nearly swooned at the sight of her wormfinger, and all the others turned slightly green.
Isabelle glowered in habitual resentment of this revulsion, but she was still too worked up to be anything but blunt. She smoothed her expression and gathered the Aragoths around, holding her hand up like a torch. “I am Princesa Isabelle, and this is my hand. Yes, it is malformed, but there’s nothing I can do about that; I just have to live with it. You all don’t. If you stay, be informed that I am not ashamed of it and I will not hide it. Or, if you think this makes me a monster, or if you just can’t stand the sight of it, you can go with my good blessings and a letter of recommendation. I leave the choice to each of you.” Probably this would come back to bite her, but right now she didn’t care.
The Aragothic ladies dispersed to discuss the matter with a great deal of whispering, and Isabelle’s Célestial handmaidens took over the duties of bathing her. She hated this. People got one look at her wormfinger and forgot everything else about her. Not for the first time, she wondered if she wouldn’t be better off just having the whole thing amputated at the wrist. Then she could claim she’d lost it in an accident. A stump would still be unattractive, but it might provoke reactions of sympathy rather than horror.
She lowered her gangly body into the steaming bath. The hot water soothed her flesh even if it couldn’t touch the shivers in her soul. How could she be carrying on like normal while Vincent cooled, Valérie grieved, and Jean-Claude’s fate remained uncertain? But maybe that was her job, to be the place where fear and panic stopped, to pin down one corner of reality so that disaster did not blow all civilization away, like a loose sail.
It physically hurt to turn her attention to the future, almost like ripping free of her own skin, but if her job was to pick up shattered pieces, she had damn well better have a plan.
As Jean-Claude liked to say, “In confusion, there is opportunity,” and she expected a spate of opportunists to show up on her doorstep seeking audience. She made a mental wager with herself that the first ones to arrive would be the ones who had nothing important to do during a crisis. As a survivor of the Comte des Zephyrs’s court, she knew the value of identifying such parasites and avoiding them.
Would Príncipe Julio come to check on her? He was presumably nearby, but he seemed to be the only person in all of Aragoth who wanted nothing to do with her.
She was still brooding on this when Olivia, her oldest handmaid, leaned in the door to the bath chamber and said, “Highness, Artifex Kantelvar is here. He seeks an audience.”
Isabelle’s first thought was to rush to meet the artifex, but Kantelvar had once again failed to stop an assassin from making a try at her, this time at great cost. She would not put her vulnerability on display by being rushed. “Tell him to wait until I am dressed.”
Normally it took an hour or more to get sewn into a new dress, but Isabelle’s Aragothic ladies seemed determined to make up for their earlier squeamishness and had her stitched up in a quarter of that time. The threads would hold, probably, as long as she didn’t attempt any radical movements … like sitting down. She swept from the dressing room, hugged by velvet from the waist up and flowing with silk from the waist down. The strange short-hemmed, long-sleeved jacket that she had seen Margareta wearing was called a bolero, and Isabelle had been given one of black velvet embroidered in gold.
Kantelvar stood up from the padded chair the ladies-in-waiting had provided for his comfort. His hood hid his expression and his hunch distorted his body language, but the gleam from his emerald jewel of an eye fixed on her. He made a formal bow, the joints of his quondam prosthesis softly whining.
“Highness,” he said, his voice a rasp. “Thanks be to the Builder, you are safe.”
“Thanks be to Vincent, you mean,” she replied.
“Yes, of course, what happened to your men was unfortunate, tragic, but they—”
“Men?” The plural form gripped her around the throat and made her voice quaver. “Jean-Claude?”
“I am given to understand he entered a building that exploded, but you must not—”
“But you don’t know if he’s…”
“Dead? I have not confirmed it, but he is not my charge. You have a greater destiny, and it is my concern to see that you reach it. I must keep you safe.”
“You’re doing a rotten job so far,” Isabelle snapped. “Why are you here now, with the assassin still abroad?”
“You asked to be kept informed.”
Isabelle sucked down a deep breath to calm herself. “Yes. And now I wish to know how this assassin managed to evade your security, kill my bodyguard, and elude capture.”
Kantelvar’s head shook. “I have not yet had the chance to investigate the scene myself, but I am informed there was a mirror—”