“Because keeping up the pretense of ignorance is as bothersome and inconvenient to me as your disguise is to you. We cannot work together if we are both investing effort in maintaining the fiction of your rather excellent disguise. By the way, how are you managing to not have silver eyes, and to pass amongst your own courtiers without so much as a hiccough of recognition?”
“A glamour talisman of the highest order. It even disguises my accent. The Goldentongue who made it for me charged a small fortune. Fortunately, I have a large fortune that Margareta has not yet figured out how to confiscate.”
“I had heard the citadel was warded against such magic.”
“Against unauthorized sorcery. Being a member of the royal family, I am authorized.”
“I would have thought Margareta would revoke your permission.”
“She can’t. The mechanism that provides the protection is from the Primus Mundi.”
“Ah, so you know how to use it, but nobody knows how it really works.”
“Exactly. I do know there’s a pecking order of sorts and she can’t interdict me.” Alejandro made a sweeping gesture toward the stairs. “I think I should prefer it if you go first.”
Jean-Claude lit an alchemical lantern and stumped down the stairs. Trusting Alejandro with his back was a risk, but a minor one. This was a man who rejected fratricide even for the prize of the throne—not just a nobleman, but a noble man—but he might need a moment to recover from the shock Jean-Claude had given him.
Down the stairs and past another landing they found a heavy door ajar. Beyond it Jean-Claude was surprised to see a vast round room with carved granite columns and a painted ceiling. It was lined with mostly empty bookshelves and workbenches. A wide table took up the center of the room. The place looked to have been emptied out in a hurry, and a variety of oddments had been left behind: a few books; some broken glass; bits of brass, iron, and copper; a few pieces of clockworks. Unfortunately, no one had left behind any princesses. The only other exit was a curtained doorway on the far wall.
“Evacuated,” Alejandro observed, emerging from the stairwell behind him.
“It was a shot in the dark to begin with,” Jean-Claude said, wondering who precisely he was trying to console. This had been his best lead, and now he would have to fall back on trying to wring information out of Clìmacio, and do it all before San Augustus became the world’s largest graveyard.
There came a squeak from behind the curtain.
Jean-Claude froze and listened.
“Help.” The voice barely hung together long enough to reach Jean-Claude’s ears. “Help me. Please.” It was female, young, but ghostly hollow. Only years of professional caution saved him from racing through the curtain. Breaker only knew what sort of ambush lay beyond.
“Who is that?” he called.
“Monsieur Jean-Claude, is that you?”
“How do you know my name?”
“Your voice. I remember. You took me and Izzy home.” She sounded like her voice was rising up from the bottom of a well.
Jean-Claude felt the world spinning. “Marie?” How was this possible? “Hold on, child!”
Jean-Claude flew past the first curtain into an antechamber with another heavy curtain at its opposite end.
“No light,” the Marie voice called from behind the second curtain. “No light, please.”
Jean-Claude halted, staring at the curtain and then his lantern. “Why not?”
“It will make the bloodshadow come back.” Her voice was eerily devoid of the emotion her words should have carried.
Alejandro joined him in the antechamber.
Jean-Claude said, “Tell me what happened.”
The Marie voice spoke in a monotonous rhythm. “I don’t know. It’s all mixed up. I remember you brought us back to the chateau, and we went to see the comte, then there was a nightmare and I couldn’t wake up. I tried and I tried to wake up but I couldn’t. And then the artifex stuck needles in my arms and said no light, and everyone went away, and then I woke up, and I called for help and nobody ever came.”
Jean-Claude braced himself against the wall as his mind fought to catch up with the story. Marie was alive. Well, she’d always been alive, but now she was awake and aware. He thrust his lantern into Alejandro’s hand and said, “Get this out of here.”
Alejandro seized him by the elbow before he could get away. “What if this is a trap?”
“Then I have fallen for it. Twelve years ago, I failed this girl. I failed her more absolutely than I have failed anything in my life, at least until I lost Isabelle. I told her I would make her safe, and then le Comte des Zephyrs turned her into a bloodhollow. So if it pleases Your Highness, wait outside, and if I do not return, you may assume whatever you wish.”
Alejandro nodded solemnly and took himself out. Jean-Claude tugged at the flap of his jacket and squeezed as gently as possible past the second set of curtains. The room was black as a hatful of soot. It smelled of urine and feces. How long had she been trapped in here? In the dark. All alone.
“Where are you?”
“On the cot,” the Marie voice said. It was horrible not being able to see her, like talking to a ghost. He followed the sound of her voice and ended up barking his shin on the frame of the cot and biting back words that were inappropriate to use in the presence of ladies. Jean-Claude felt his way along the cot until he found a human foot. It twitched under his fingers, but she did not cry out.
“Sorry,” he said, and felt her shift on the cot, sitting up, or trying to. Her fluttering fingers brushed his, and he clutched her hand. Living skin, but cool and papery, dehydrated.
“Are you a dream?” she whispered, and he felt ashamed for his own trepidation.
“I am real,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said in that same vacant tone, but when she reached for him, he gathered her into him, hugging her around the shoulders as she squeezed him. She shook like an autumn leaf. As feeble as she was, it didn’t take long for her to exhaust herself, and he replaced her on the cot. He plied her with water from his skin. Not too much. She’d have to come back slowly. The same with food. She’d also need clean clothes and linens, things that made humans feel human. And he would have to figure out what to do about these tubes stuck in her arms.
“Do you know what the pipes are for?” he asked.
“Kantelvar said they were going to filter out the comte’s bloodshadow.” As feeble as she was, she already sounded better for having water in her.
“You can remember things Kantelvar said to you when you were having your nightmare?”
“I can remember everything,” she said, “but it’s hard. It’s like going down a deep hole and it’s hard to climb out. I feel like I’m going to slip and fall and get stuck forever.”
Jean-Claude grimaced for the cruelty in which he must now engage. As much as he would have liked to stay and cosset Marie, there was too much else to be done. She had to be provided for, which meant leaving, and he still had to find Isabelle, which meant he needed every scrap of information he could get.