Taking a deep breath, I forced away the image. There wasn’t time for fear. A steely determination rooted inside me. If I wanted to see my sister again, I had to move.
The kitchens were too busy for anyone to notice a maid wandering through. I adjusted my eye patch as I came around the corner by the deep freeze and halted at the sight of Béatrice standing beside Madame des Rêves.
She must be performing tonight, because she wore a foot-tall chartreuse wig embellished with gemstones. Her pale dress dripped over her like a glass of poured champagne.
“Béatrice told me you were recently demoted,” Des Rêves said when she saw me. A smile slipped up her lips at the sight of my eye patch.
“I was,” I said, and inched away from her. I still wore Maman’s necklace, which meant the silver talon probably wouldn’t do anything, but her long nails would, along with her commanding voice if she suspected anything was amiss.
Béatrice turned to me and cleared her throat. “I already explained to Madame that Alastair promised dignitaries from Verdanne a tour of the kitchens, and how he’d requested that you both bring Issig to his office as soon as possible.” She gestured to the floor where the cage I had used to carry Zosa across Champilliers sat empty.
“I still don’t understand why he didn’t tell me himself,” Des Rêves said.
Béatrice shrugged. “He seemed hurried. He said something about guests demanding to know why we were in Champilliers.”
“Then where’s Frigga? She always helps with these things.”
“She was busy.”
Des Rêves huffed. “Then let’s get this over with. I have a show in less than an hour.”
I lifted the cage and held it out for Des Rêves to take.
“I’m not touching that thing,” she said. “Carrying cages is Frigga’s job. Now hurry up and open the door.”
She wanted me to go inside the deep freeze with her.
“I’ll go,” Béatrice offered, and tried to take the cage.
That wouldn’t work. I needed her in the aviary. “It’s all right,” I said. “I can handle this.”
“Then . . . I guess I’ll find you later.” She gave me a stern look and walked off.
Des Rêves cleared her throat. “Are we going to do this or stand around like mindless maids?” She stepped to the deep freeze door. “Where’s the handle?”
“There isn’t one.” I rapped the steel twice.
Just like before, the door blew open with a blast of cold. We stepped forward and the door slammed, shutting us inside.
The scene hadn’t changed. Issig sat chained to the wall, body still as stone.
“So he’s dead.” Madame des Rêves stepped toward him.
“Don’t,” I said when she lifted a hand to one of his broken white fingers. Ice began to chip off, but Des Rêves didn’t notice. She touched her silver talon, except she didn’t lift it to his flesh. Instead, she walked around him. My teeth chattered when the temperature dipped. I pointed at the talon. I needed her to turn him into a bird. “Do it already.”
She didn’t. Instead, she played with the artéfact, turning it in her fingers.
“It took me a little while. Béatrice is a very clever little liar.”
A terrible feeling shot through me. “What do you mean?”
She glanced at my eye patch. “When Yrsa removes an eye, it’s painful. Even though suminaires heal quickly, they’re still laid up for more than an hour. But Béatrice wouldn’t know. She’s been able to avoid the whole ordeal. At least, she had, up until Alastair hears about this.” She lunged forward, ripping the eye patch off me. “Just what I thought.”
The sweat clinging to my neck turned icy. I took a step back. “You forget. Alastair is still waiting for us.” My voice shook.
“Pishposh. Even if you weren’t lying about your eye, I know he would never let anyone take Issig out of here. I just went along with it because I wanted to see Issig for myself. Alastair forbids it, you know. He lets Yrsa come in here, but he doesn’t quite trust me around him.” She walked in an arc around the frozen suminaire. “He was as powerful as Bel once, perhaps more. A living freezer. So much wasted magic.”
“You tricked me.”
I realized my mistake when she reached into the neck of her dress and pulled out the hand mirror. From this distance, the tarnished metal gleamed with an oily shine. A low, dangerous humming vibrated from it.