From the back of the tumbled wagon came a hammering, and Travers’s voice, “Guards! Guards! Get me out of here!” He coughed and choked. The lake smoke coiled around his wagon like a great constricting snake.

“All your guards are dead,” Jean-Claude called back to him.

“Release me. I am le Comte de Travers, and I order you to release me.”

“I’m sorry,” Jean-Claude said. “But I don’t answer to you.”

“I am. Sanguinaire! You. Clayborn. I command. You obey. Builder. Builder…”

Jean-Claude waited several minutes after the last gasp died away, then lit an incendiary grenade and tossed it on the cart and watched the wooden parts go up in flames.

Isabelle snapped into being with a force that felt like a spring unwinding, and landed on her hand and knees. She felt like she’d left most of her innards behind. The floor was made of a metal she could not name, as were the ribs of the domed ceiling above. Between the ribs were windows that looked out into a swirling realm of different shapes and shades of light as if the chamber were suspended in the middle of the auroras.

Bubbles of light filled the room like vaporgrams in an orrery. Each bubble looked like a globe, a map of a whole world, but not the one she was familiar with. Some seemed to be covered in forests, deserts, water, cities, or some dizzying combination of them all.

In the center of the room glowed a great sphere of light and within it stood Hasdrubal, the ring of Saint Cynessus on his finger.

She’d only seen Hasdrubal in person once before, and his head had been covered in a hood. Now she understood why. His caprine face was horribly mangled, much of the flesh ripped. His tongue and his teeth showed through the side of his head as if through a ragged curtain. How there was enough of his face left to function she had no idea.

“So, the Breaker sends one last pawn against me,” he brayed.

Isabelle wobbled to her feet, snapping her armored feathers in place. “You don’t have to do this.”

Hasdrubal hovered his hand over the surface of the sphere in the center of the room. It was Caelum. There was the Craton Massif and the crescent-shaped Craton Riqueza in the southern hemisphere. If she got close enough, could she see Rocher Royale?