Kantelvar made a metallic snort. “The Temple has enough to do sorting out the Builder’s truth from the Breaker’s heresy without releasing all of its accumulated apocrypha into the world. The Book of Instructions contains only those revelations proved to be true.”
“Your experiments demonstrate the efficacy of the cure, surely.” Unless he was lying.
“Two experiments so far, only one successful. More to the point, do you honestly think Sanguinaire society would appreciate it being known that there is an antidote for their favorite poison? No. As degenerate as they have become, they are still the Builder’s chosen and their authority over the clayborn must remain absolute. Now, are you coming?”
Reluctantly, Isabelle resumed following him. He brought them into a section of the palace made of older stone where the blocks were set tightly but without mortar and the floor was dished from great use.
“Do you mean that no one should find out about Marie being cured?”
“If it works, we will claim it is the Builder’s miracle,” Kantelvar said. Another pat answer. Isabelle knew the technique well, for she had often used it to shut down conversations, to defend herself in her father’s house.
Her father. He was one more link in the chain that had brought her here. “Could you have shriven my father’s bloodshadow?”
“The red consumption is not the same as being bloodhollow,” Kantelvar said, which was neither yes nor no.
Isabelle’s stomach quivered with nerves. She’d survived Grand Leon’s audience by being agonizingly honest, Margareta’s by being compassionate and stubborn, but she had no idea how to get around Kantelvar’s relentless obfuscations.
“I suppose what I’m curious about is why didn’t Father ask you to save him from the red consumption when he first bargained to give me away?” Le Comte des Zephyrs cared for nothing more than his own life.
Kantelvar’s hump gurgled, which it seemed to do when he was agitated. What kind of bizarre mechanism did he have under there anyway?
“Because he didn’t have the red consumption at the time,” Kantelvar said.
Isabelle seized on this. “I remember Hormougant Sleith talking about it with my father, some bargain he’d made.” Right before he’d hollowed out Marie.
“Sleith … I … yes. Very clever, that was the same bargain.”
“But that was twelve years ago,” Isabelle said, a welter of new questions boiling up in her head. “How could he have known then that I would be offered to Julio now?” Twelve years ago, Príncipe Alejandro hadn’t even been married to Xaviera, much less been vexed by her infertility. King Carlemmo had been healthy.
“Your father only agreed that … one of my order would choose your marriage partner. Who that partner would be had not been decided.”
Isabelle seized on this new revelation. “Who are your order?”
“A consortium of sorts, dedicated to the preservation of the saint lines.”
“And by ‘preserve’ you mean ‘breed.’”
“Yes.”
Isabelle imagined he was telling the truth, if not all of it. She stewed in irritation. The notion of marriage to a man who apparently had no interest in her turned even more bitter in the context of its being arranged by a clandestine conspiracy for the sole purpose of her being a broodmare, like a damned animal. Bearing children might have been a duty, but it was not the whole breadth of her being. She had her math and her philosophy. She’d been entrusted with the power to unleash or withhold the armies of l’Empire Céleste. She only got to keep her children if she stopped the war. Yes, but turn that logic around.
“I will not consent to bring children into being in the middle of a war,” she said. “If you want my help you will have to help me convince Julio and Alejandro not to fight.”
Kantelvar stopped, his hump sloshing. His neck hinges pinged as he turned his emerald gaze upon her. “And will you consent to the project if that miracle can be accomplished?”
Isabelle felt as if she’d leaned on a solid wall only to have it crumble to dust. His lack of resistance to the idea stunned her. “That follows,” she said, and then took a leap more of hope than faith. “Yes.” If Aragoth was at peace and she was married to Julio, children were naturally part of the plan … even if it wasn’t purely her plan.
“Done,” Kantelvar said with a voice like a gavel. He turned into yet another dusty side corridor. Isabelle followed, feeling she had missed something vital. A little way along was an iron-banded door set into a niche in the wall. He touched the spiny tip of his staff to the door. There was a spark, the smell of lightning, then a chain-rattling noise before the door groaned inward. Beyond was a cramped stone landing and a narrow spiral stairway curling down into darkness. A dry musty smell wafted up from the depths.
Isabelle balked at the threshold—this looked far too much like a tomb to her—but if Marie was to have any hope of ever being freed from her curse, it was down these stairs, and Isabelle had not come all this way not to take the final step. She lifted the hem of her skirt and eased onto a narrow, crumbling stone, guiding Marie after her.
Kantelvar came in behind them. The door boomed shut. Total darkness filled the stairwell and Isabelle had to suppress a shriek. lf she slipped now and tumbled, she might fall forever, or at least far enough to break her neck. But something clicked and the tips of the spines on Kantelvar’s staff glowed brilliant green. The points of light made traceries in the air whenever the staff bobbled. The shadows before Isabelle roiled like steam, but she picked her way down and down, legs aching with the care of placing each foot carefully on the slippery slivers of stone. At the bottom of the stairs, past another landing, another thick door opened with a spark from Kantelvar’s staff and he stiffly bowed her into a large, dark room. She made out two thick columns supporting a tall arch.
Kantelvar touched his staff to an alchemical lantern high on the wall. It came to life with a soft poomph followed by another and another farther along.
Revealed to her widening eyes was a room the size of a Temple nave, forested with granite pillars graven with ancient icons of the Risen Saints. The groin-vaulted ceiling was painted, beneath a layer of soot and grime, with fantastic scenes, beginning with the fracturing of the cratons at the breaking of the world and running all the way to the founding of the great city of Om at the inception of the Final Age.
Closer to hand was a long table piled high with books, and beyond that rows of shelves stacked with more tomes, alchemical instruments, beakers, redactors, crocks of strange compounds, chests, and quondam artifacts. Isabelle turned in a slow circle. There was a true ice crucible, an alchemical forge, a printing press twice the size of her own.