Coquetta looked thoughtful. “I can see how that would be uncomfortable, but it’s not a catastrophe. There’s no need for them to speak to each other, and even if they do, neither is likely to bring the matter up.”

Coquetta had a point, but Isabelle still felt sick to her stomach. She saw no reason to subject Bitterlich to what was likely to be an exquisitely painful encounter, and if Eulalie was to be Gretl’s student, she’d be around for years.

A fanfare of trumpets shook her from her brooding. Impératrice Sireen entered the room accompanied by her consort husband, the former roi le Duc DeStJabreaux, once known as Grand Leon.

Sireen’s arrival set off a cascading series of formalities and protocols that gave Isabelle no opportunity to retreat, though she kept looking around for Bitterlich. She willed the interminable formalities to go faster so she could sneak off and await him outside.

Everyone honored l’impératrice, and then Sireen graced them all with an aria from a Vecci opera, Il lamento dei Maximi, her handsome voice conjuring joy and sorrow in every heart.

Isabelle did not speak Vecci per se, but the passages called up feelings from her past lives, and ghost stains from her ancestral chorus supplanted her vision and sense of place in the present world.

Isabelle found herself standing on a tall, snaggletoothed shard of sandstone, thrust up out of the pitiless Ash Wastes. The relentless sun hammered down and the wind rasped her face. Far across the drifting dunes rose a pillar of dust, the Skaladin Army on the march, the boom of their drums rolling before them like thunder before a storm of blood and steel. There would be no escaping this time. With her back to the Thornhills and the deep sky, she would make her final stand … at least in this lifetime.

And then the present tugged at Isabelle once more. Her breath caught, and she dabbed tears from her eyes. It was not often that such visions of the past overwhelmed her, but that song had been written about her … about her many-times-great-grandsire Primus Maximus. All too well it captured his despair, his lust for battle, an emotion Isabelle never would have admitted to, much less reveled in. If only he’d had the good grace to finish dying, she wouldn’t be stuck with this damned muddle of memories in her head.

A royal page appeared at Isabelle’s side, “Mada … I mean, Capitaine Isabelle, l’impératrice requests your presence.”

An imperial request was as good as a command, so Isabelle made as much haste as was seemly through the crowd and was permitted into Sireen’s presence. Also present was a Sanguinaire woman in an empire-waisted gown that did not manage to hide the fact that she was some months pregnant.

Isabelle bowed to l’impératrice. “How may I serve l’Empire?”