“Yes,” Isabelle said. “But keep it quiet. If anyone asks, tell them you think I need last rites. For now, everyone is to think I’m still unconscious.”

“Of course, but what are you up to?”

“Human sacrifice,” Isabelle said, and sank down into her pillow.

“You’re even less funny when you’re sick,” Marie said, but she lifted a cup of water to Isabelle’s lips. She was so parched it seemed to seep right into her flesh without ever making it down her throat. She followed water with a full bowl of hot broth. Then she smoothed away the matted hair from Isabelle’s forehead and stroked her cheek with her thumb before turning away.

Marie knocked on the door and the guard opened it a crack.

“I heard voices,” the guard said.

“She’s been raving for two days,” Marie said, her tone flat enough to slide under the door. “Do you want to come in and listen for a while?”

The guard grumbled and then let her out, shutting the door and leaving Isabelle alone with her aches and her fevers, and the memories of other lives leaking once more into her perceptions. She was tempted to slip back into the everdream—the constructed space must exist at least partially outside her own flesh, for it didn’t hurt so bad—but there was no guarantee Marie would be able to pull her back out.

Instead she lay and worried about Jean-Claude. If something had happened to him … if the worst had happened, the deep sky would yield no clues.

The gravebound betray, said her chorus. Only family matters. She could almost pick out the individual voices. None of them sounded like Sigsimondo or Brunela. Ghost stains spread across her senses. The bare stone walls of the infirmary wavered in her vision and she found herself in a dark tunnel. The mine had collapsed and the dust smeared the light of her lantern into an impenetrable haze. She closed her eyes against the hallucination but could not convince her mind’s eye that it wasn’t real. Would these visions go away once she assimilated her memorial menagerie? She could not endure this forever.

It seemed like hours before voices filtered in from the hall. Isabelle lay as still as death when the door opened.

“If she’s dying, Commandant Turenne will want to know,” said the guard.

“Does he want to watch?” Marie asked. “I didn’t think he had a taste for the macabre.”

Quill’s shaky voice said, “You may tell the commandant that I am ministering to a sick woman, if you wish.”

Isabelle took note how Quill evoked an air of authority he did not possess to give the guard permission not to do his duty.

The door shut, and Quill said to Marie, “I am surprised you requested these rites of me.”

“She didn’t.” Isabelle croaked. “I wanted a private and very quiet word.”