Isabelle crashed into the quaestor, her shoulder to his chest, and flipped him over the wall. He landed with a thump, then rolled to his side even as obliteration claimed him. His body unraveled. Skin, muscle, and bone flayed away. The reliquary and his clockwork arm were the last bits to go.

“Isabelle?” Bitterlich tugged her teetering body away from the wall.

Breathing like a bellows forge, she faced him. So this was what he looked like as a clayborn. He had a square face, long hair the color of chestnuts, and dark eyes. The eyes had the same soul in them.

She smiled and said, “I see it now. Rebecca has your cheeks and your nose.”

Bitterlich looked down at himself. “This is very strange. I can’t feel my Seelengewölbe. And your arm—”

“Still missing.”

“I meant your l’Étincelle.”

“Gone, along with all the ancestors in my head.” Was that a trade she would take? A week ago she would have given anything, including her other arm, to get rid of her ancestors, but now … now she was making progress.

Marie sat on the ground, hugging her knees and weeping. Isabelle hurried to her. “Are you hurt?” It was a stupid question, but her heart ran away with her tongue.

Marie looked up at her, her face red with crying. “I’m … I’ll live. I forgot how much it hurts not to be able to weep, to laugh, to blush. It’s like living in a box. I can only talk to people by shouting through a wall. No one can really hear me. No one can feel me.”

Isabelle pulled her up into a hug. “Oh saints, I’m so sorry.”

Marie snuffled into Isabelle’s cloak. “And I forgot what a relief it is to be able to forget. There’s so much I want to forget. So much, and now I have to go back to that. I have to go back in the box.”

Grief filled Isabelle’s chest, if Czensos had been telling the truth, everything would return to the way it had been: a relief for the sorcerers, but an entombment for Marie.

“What can I do for you?” Isabelle asked.

“Just … just keep being my friend. It’s having friends that makes it worth living.”

“Ahem,” said Sedgwick, approaching cautiously. “As much as I hate to interrupt, we’ve still got business.”

“What else do you have to say?” Isabelle asked flatly.

“A few things,” he said. “First, I had no idea what Czensos was up to.”

Bitterlich said, “Because you couldn’t find out, or because you didn’t want to?”

Sedgwick tried a friendly smile. It came off slightly pained. “That hardly matters at this juncture, does it? What’s important is that I know about your friend Jean-Claude.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-Eight