Jean-Claude grunted. “You and me both, boy.” Isabelle would want to know what he had learned about Thornscar and Nufio. She would be particularly keen to hear his deduction about the hinges. He only wished he had more of substance to share with her.
A footman in royal livery opened the door to the coach and stooped to lower the carriage step. Jean-Claude’s wounded leg throbbed, and he hesitated, contemplating the vexing problem of which foot to climb with. The footman rose smoothly and swiftly, his hand blurred. The truncheon slammed into Jean-Claude’s gut just as he lifted his unwounded leg. Agony doubled him over, his planted leg buckled, and all breath left him in a gasp. Strong arms prevented him from falling, and someone slapped a moist rag to his face. Vapors stung his eyes. He couldn’t hold a breath he didn’t have. Against every command of his will, his body rebelled and sucked down a lungful of the rag’s vile poison.
Jean-Claude twisted in his attackers’ grip, but his boots slipped on the cobbles. He had no leverage. He wanted to cry out, but his face had gone numb, and his tongue was a dead snake bloating in his throat. The light of the torches bubbled and blurred. The colors and patterns of the night smeared. The world turned upside down and he fell toward the sky.
*
The opportunity for Isabelle to gracefully exit a party held in her honor did not come until King Carlemmo himself declared weariness a little after third bell, by which time Isabelle’s eyes were crossing. She’d spent most of the night evolving ever-wilder speculations about Julio and/or Thornscar. Could they be long-lost twins, or was one some strange doppelganger conjured by Kantelvar’s eerie arts, or, or, or … She couldn’t remember four words she’d said in the last few hours, or whom she’d said them to, and she was going to have a terrific headache when she woke up, assuming she ever got to sleep. Despite multiple appeals to Don Angelo, she had received no news of either Jean-Claude or Kantelvar.
The exodus from the ball took place in order of rank so that the greater might not be inconvenienced by the lesser. In less civilized times, dickering over the order of precedence had been known to lead to duels. Tonight, it merely produced bluster. Thus did civilization advance. The king and queen departed first. Isabelle made a curt farewell to Julio, who might have been Thornscar—had the intruder on the ship been missing a leg?—and took herself off quickly.
Stifling yawns, she mounted her carriage and returned to her chambers. The night guards outside her doors saluted. Though she had drunk but a little, her brain was a fog of indistinct faces and half-remembered names. Her body wanted nothing more than to strip out of these hot, heavy clothes and collapse in a comfortable bed for a week, but she called for Valérie instead.
Her handmaid appeared with remarkable alacrity for someone who ought to have been asleep. “Highness, how may I serve you?”
“Has there been any word from Jean-Claude?”
Valérie looked puzzled. “He left here several hours ago. He was going to find you. Some of Don Angelo’s men came looking for him shortly thereafter, and we sent them back to the palace.”
Isabelle’s heart faltered at the dread possibilities that simple statement implied. Had Kantelvar gotten to Jean-Claude first? Isabelle resisted the urge to run out in the courtyard and shout the musketeer’s name. “Has anyone else come by?”
“No, Highness, just the guards changing an hour ago.”
“Send a runner to the palace,” she began, but who to contact? Don Angelo had not told her that Jean-Claude was supposedly on his way, but perhaps his scouts had not given him the complete message. He remained her best wager. “Tell Don Angelo that Jean-Claude has been waylaid.” If it turned out not to be so, she would live with the embarrassment. “And send another runner to the dock, to the berth of the Santa Anna, find Captain Santiago, and do whatever it takes to put him on retainer.”
Valérie’s eyes grew round. “Are you running away?”
“Not yet, but I want an avenue of retreat if it becomes necessary.” Nothing in the Aragothic court was what it seemed, and she would be damned before she married a man whose doppelganger had tried to kill her, at the behest of an apparently ancient artifex who might have killed Vincent and been complicit in Jean-Claude’s disappearance.
Valérie nodded, and her expression became sharper. “Is there anything else?”
“No.” Except there was. “Yes, curse it. I have to find Marie.”
“Don’t you know where you took her?”
“Yes, generally, but this place is a maze.”
“If you are in danger, you will need guards.”
“I’ll take some of Vincent’s men. Nobody from this household should go anywhere without a companion, including you.”
“I’ll rouse the others,” Valérie said with a decisiveness the warmed Isabelle’s heart. Thanks be that her ordeal hadn’t broken her.
Valérie disappeared into the waiting ladies’ bedroom. Isabelle stumped through her vestibule to her bedroom on legs that felt like wooden pilings. The door, with its padded edges, shut with a sound like a pillow being squeezed. Silence enveloped her, so thick and heavy that she imagined she could hear the alchemical lamp flames whispering to each other. It was by far the quietest space she had ever inhabited, not just noiseless, but armored against sound. She made her way to the trunk at the foot of her bed, unlocked it, and extracted the pistol she had worn yesterday as a guard. Jean-Claude had shown her once how to load a pistol. She meticulously repeated the process now, powder, wad, and shot. She closed the lid of the trunk and tucked the pistol in the sash round her waist.
“It is good for you to arm yourself,” Kantelvar rattled.
Isabelle spun so fast she felt like she’d left all her innards facing the other way. And there was Kantelvar, with that huge hump on his back, bent over and leaning on his staff. And there was a hole in the floor next to him, a secret trapdoor. How had he moved so silently?
“There is going to be a war,” he said. “A war like no other in history, a conflict that will draw in all the kingdoms of the world and consume them to the last ash, and you must be protected from it.”
Isabelle judged that she was closer to the outer door than he was, and she had the pistol. She put her hand on its grip. “And how can you know that?”
“Because I have worked very hard to arrange for it to be so. Carlemmo will die, his true heir and his false heir will vie for the throne, and between alliances I have brokered and greed that needs no help to grow, the whole world will be sucked in. Only then, when chaos consumes all civilization, will the world be ready to receive the Savior. Only then will the Builder be compelled to yield him up through you.”
As jaded as she had become to Kantelvar’s assertions, this prediction stunned her in its audacity and scope. “You can’t force the Builder’s hand just by arranging events to resemble the outcome of a prophecy.”
“Can I not? I have been bidden, commanded, condemned to this course. Céleste herself bade me redeem her word.”