“And all four of your grandparents.”
Perhaps the sudden heaviness in Isabelle’s chest was the weight of history settling behind her breastbone; if Kantelvar’s astonishing claim was true, someone had been tracking her ancestry for more than two thousand years. Was the conspiracy that old? It seemed impossible, but so did at least three other things that had happened to her today.
She tried to school her face and glanced at Kantelvar, but he was staring enraptured at the genetic tree, like an artist staring at a vision he was struggling to bring into the world. This was his obsession. He’d brought her here to show her this, but also to show himself, to make absolutely sure of his facts.
“This is fascinating,” she said. Question his obsession, push his lever. “But this grand lineage seems an inheritance without property.”
“No.” Kantelvar’s voice came out a rusty groan and he shuddered like a sleeper waking. “There is destiny.” Almost unconsciously, he reached out with his gray hand and stroked the cover of the Fragments. The answer was there, so close she could touch it. So far away.
“What destiny?” she breathed, as if she were blowing on the ember of a candle trying to get it to light. How badly did he want to tell her?
Kantelvar shook his head slowly, his cowl swinging. He withdrew his hand from the book. “To carry on the line. Until the Savior comes.”
Isabelle looked back and forth from the artifex to the family tree. No. Not until the Savior comes. Until the Savior is created. That’s what all this was about. The Temple admitted to only one prophecy, “The Savior will come,” and Kantelvar’s order was trying to force destiny’s hand.
Isabelle’s blood felt like icy slush in her veins. If Iav’s transgression, seeking the secret of life, had caused the Breaking of the world, how much worse must be the attempt to shortcut humanity’s redemption?
“What happens next?” she asked aloud. How close was Kantelvar to his goal? Did he imagine that Isabelle would deliver the foretold redeemer?
“We get you back to your handmaids to prepare for the masked ball.” Kantelvar twisted the blood cipher with Isabelle’s name on it, and the whole tree collapsed in a brief rain of cylinders. He scooped them into the chest and then stepped toward the door. “Come.”
The book lay unattended. If she could grab it up … but no, he’d surely see her. She could not sneak it out from under his sight.
From under his mind, then.
“May I have this?” she asked, resting her fingers ever so lightly on the cover. “If Saint Céleste was truly my greatest-grandmother, I would like to have something of her to think on.”
Kantelvar hunched in alarm, but his voice was its usual monotone. “Leave it. You would not be able to read it in any case.”
Summoning every ounce of calm she possessed, Isabelle let her fingers slide across the leather cover and down the spine. Fear churned her bile to a froth, but she kept her voice calm and reasonable. “Reading isn’t the point. It’s an heirloom, something that was touched by her hand, now by mine. A memento.” She eased the book from the table and cradled it to her breast, praying like an Iconate that the saints would aid this mad deception.
Kantelvar raised his hand as if to ward her off, but hesitated and then lowered his arm. “As you wish, Highness.”
Elation thrilled through Isabelle’s veins as she followed him out of the room. She felt like she was clutching a powder keg with a lit fuse to her chest. She hated abandoning Marie, but what choice did she have? She had to give Kantelvar’s potions time to work. She had to make it to the masquerade and meet her husband-to-be. She had to talk to Jean-Claude, and she had to find a spare secret moment to read this book!
*
A space narrow, dark, and so stuffy that the air tasted of vomit, the Cog and Crank tavern had little in its favor as a venue. The one-man play in progress, which Jean-Claude titled Bait for a Villain, with the swordsman Nufio in the leading role, made up with longevity what it lacked in variety. Nufio had done little but moan and clutch his belly since Jean-Claude had fed him a concoction of herbs guaranteed to induce stomach cramps, telling him it was a slow-acting poison. All he had to do to earn the antidote was stay put until Thornscar or his proxy showed up.
The Solar had settled on the rooftops, the matinée performance rolling on into the evening. Jean-Claude had just dealt himself yet another hand of cards when the rickety door banged open, then fell off its frayed rope hinges. A quartet of Temple guards in wheat-yellow doublets burst through, bringing the performance to a premature close.
Every patron shrank in their seat except for a couple who tried to flee out the back, only to encounter a pair of guards coming the other way.
A guard with sergeant’s stripes barked into the sudden silence, “We are here for Nufio Tellarez.” Several people reflexively flicked their gazes at the incapacitated swordsman.
“Breaker’s balls,” Jean-Claude muttered. It was a whole afternoon wasted, or was it? He’d been expecting someone to come looking for Nufio, and someone had. Had this been the plan all along?
In theory, Nufio would only have nailed the hat to the door if Jean-Claude were dead. And who better to receive that signal than someone inside the Temple. Kantelvar? Jean-Claude resisted making that leap, as tempting as it was. The Temple was a vast organization, a stateless nation with its own factions and internecine quarrels. As Isabelle was wont to say, follow the evidence where it leads, and right now his evidence was being bundled out the door.
Jean-Claude waited a slow thirty count after the guards had left, then slapped down a winning hand of cards, swept the pot into his coin purse, and limped after them.
The Solar had sunk behind the rooftops and inky shadows quickly washed the color from the cobbled channels of the city’s streets. A few meters along the way the Temple guards shackled Nufio in the back of a wagon. Jean-Claude crossed the street at a hobble, too slowly to give the guards any cause for concern, at least until he got to the alley opposite, after which he limped at speed. On the next street over, a cul-de-sac, awaited Mario and the chaise.
“Se?or musketeer.” Mario waved in what he likely imagined was a surreptitious manner.
“Mario, are you a sight for sore legs. Mount up. The Temple has Nufio and I want to know where they’re taking him.”
“Of course, se?or.”
Jean-Claude was about to embark the chaise when he noticed a ragged figure curled up on the floorboards. Rheumy eyes peered at him from under a hood made of layered rags. “What’s this?”
“I’s Tony,” said a voice that had traded several teeth and part of a tongue for an extra helping of slobber. “I has what you’re looking for, good sir.”