An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  Kantelvar leaned on his wicked staff, tilting his head to the side and turning it to stare up at her, as might a man with a very stiff neck. There was another painful pause as he took some measure of her. Was it too much to ask that he think her a harmless lackwit and leave her be?

  “How much do you know about the kingdom of Aragoth?” he asked.

  If there was a question Isabelle had been expecting less than that one, she could not name it.

  “Practically nothing,” she said, though in fact Jean-Claude kept her up on what gossip wafted in from that fascinating kingdom. “Nothing,” was always a good answer even when it wasn’t strictly true. Nothing was what people wanted her to know.

  “Hmm. To put it plainly, His Majesty el Rey de los Espejos, Carlemmo II, is dying and there is a choice of heirs. His elder son, Príncipe Alejandro, is married, but his wife has proven barren. Carlemmo has petitioned him to divorce and remarry, so his line may have issue, but the wife’s family is very powerful and will not stand to have its grip prized from the crown.

  “Some of the Sacred Hundred—that is the advisory council of high nobles in el rey’s court—have begun pressuring Carlemmo to declare his younger son, Príncipe Julio, to be his rightful heir so that the line of succession will remain direct and unbroken. Alas, Julio is unmarried.”

  Isabelle couldn’t imagine that problem would be hard to solve. Every Glasswalker sorceress in Aragoth must have been eager for the chance.

  Kantelvar waited for her to respond. When she didn’t, he made a weary noise, like the last air being let out of a bagpipe. “Unfortunately, there are very few female Glasswalkers. For nearly two hundred years Aragoth was under Skaladin rule. During the occupation, the heathens made a point of hunting down and murdering every sorceress they could find to appease their false god. Without saintblooded women to have saintblooded children, the Glasswalkers dwindled almost to extinction. The reason the Sacred Hundred bears that name is that by the time the Skaladin were evicted, there were only a hundred or so Glasswalkers left. In the centuries since, their numbers have climbed, but the population has become rather … closely bred. Once one removes Julio’s first and second cousins from consideration, along with women who are already married or betrothed, the pool of potential applicants dries up to a puddle of infants, crones, and mental defectives.”

  Isabelle stood mutely, her skin going slowly cold, for she could see which way the wind of this conversation was blowing, and it made no sense at all.

  Kantelvar said, “As there are no candidates left inside Aragoth, we must therefore look outside. That, at last, brings me to you.”

  Isabelle was stunned despite having guessed this was coming. “Impossible. It’s forbidden.” She shouldn’t have had to tell that to an artifex. The care and breeding of sorcerers in preparation for the coming of the Savior was the Temple’s raison d’être. Canon law stretching back to the Dominion of Rüul forbade the dilution or intermixing of those bloodlines. Such unions brought forth abominations, the Breaker’s get. It was a rule even Grand Leon, famous for his contempt of the Temple, assiduously observed in the many marriages that bound his empire together.

  Was this the trap she was meant to fall into, to be tempted by this offer and thereby prove herself morally corrupt? But surely such a scheme would not require an artifex, and why else would an Aragothic ambassador come to l’Île des Zephyrs?

  “Why should it be impossible?” Kantelvar asked.

  “I’m Sanguinaire,” Isabelle said. “By birth if not ability.”

  “Demonstrably not.” Kantelvar pointed with his staff to the certificate of unhallowedness by her door. “But though you lack sorcery, you are provably saintblooded.”

  “An inheritance without property. A broken cup,” she protested, even while her pulse raced and her imagination conjured dreams of sitting on a throne in that strange far-off land, her wise and kind husband lowering a crown onto her head. What would it be like to command deference from her peers instead of being subject to their scorn? And what resources she would have, money and influence to spare!

  But no. Such dreams were too dangerous to entertain. No one in all the Risen Kingdoms would permit her such a place in the world, much less offer it to her; more likely she’d be thrown to a mob and torn to pieces.

  Kantelvar’s expression was still hidden and his voice was flat, but he straightened his spine and opened his hand like a hidden king rising up to bestow alms on the downtrodden. “Say rather your womb is a fallow field waiting for the right season and the right seed.”

  Isabelle said nothing. If she was going to be damned, it would not be by any slip of her tongue.

  Undeterred, Kantelvar continued, “Such cross-marriage has the most famous of precedents. During the Dominion of Rüul, the Firstborn Kings faced a similar problem to what Aragoth faces today. There were not enough female saints to ensure the continuation of the saintblooded, so the Firstborn Kings took clayborn women to wife. These Blessed Mothers were not only noble of mind but deemed worthy vessels for divine seed. And lo, they brought forth the Secondborn Kings, whose descendants are still with us today.

  “But sorcery is not the only birthright. Sometimes the gift is that sacred fertility, that ability to blend dynasties without corruption. That is the prize that has been handed to you.”

  Isabelle boggled. Kantelvar was suggesting that everything wrong with her was right. Almost everything. Her wormfinger twitched in her glove like a caterpillar in its cocoon.

  Isabelle shook her head. As little as she wanted to speak, she must not let herself be drawn into Kantelvar’s trap. She would not rebel against society’s judgment. “I was imperfectly formed.” She was flawed. Broken. To aspire to anything else would get her punished.

  Kantelvar’s emerald lens focused briefly on her right hand, her wormfinger encased in its glove, before returning to focus on her face. “Your deformity is a mere accident of the womb, not a reflection of your worthiness as a vessel for … for Aragoth’s seed.”

  Isabelle wished she had someplace to retreat to, but this was her sanctum. She had nowhere else to go except to fold up inside herself, and there was no more room in there.

  Kantelvar continued unopposed, “Princess Isabelle des Zephyrs de l’Empire Céleste, greatest-granddaughter of the saints, will you marry Príncipe Julio de Aragoth and become a Blessed Queen?”

  Isabelle licked her lips, trying to come up with some answer that made sense. More than anything, she wanted out of here, away from her father’s grip …

  “My father will never allow it,” she realized aloud.

  Marie stepped from the corner where she’d been lurking. Her face distorted like thin fabric as her father’s visage pressed through the veil of her flesh. Even occupying Marie’s body, his face was wasted and frail, and his voice was grating as a saw blade.

  “In fact,” he said, “an agreement in principle has already been reached. The sale of breeding stock, as it were.”

  Dismay filled Isabelle’s heart and she shrank away from the horrific visage, turning her back on both of them. She berated herself for even imagining hope. Of two things in this confusion she was certain: If her father was party to it, she wanted no part in it. And just as surely, she would be given no choice.

  Father said, “If you are done inspecting your broodmare, come and let us discuss payment.”

  “And what precisely do you imagine you are owed?” Kantelvar asked.

  “You bargained for a rump princess, but what you are getting is a Blessed Queen. That is surely worth—”

  “You were given more than you deserve,” Kantelvar retorted, “and you will be happy with it, or I shall see to it you are left with nothing, which is what you actually deserve.”

  Part of Isabelle’s mind scurried to keep on top of the conversation, but part of it fell back in time. She’d heard this exchange before, or a very similar one, the day Marie had been destroyed. Isabelle had been listening through the door when Hormougant Sleith threate
ned to withdraw some boon from her father. But that couldn’t be the same boon as this, could it? Twelve years ago, Rey Carlemmo hadn’t been sick, and if she recalled correctly, Príncipe Alejandro hadn’t even been married, much less to a barren woman. There would have been no reason, then, to posit the need for a Blessed Queen.

  “Under the circumstances,” Father said, “I imagine that losing your prize would grieve you more than me losing mine.”

  Before Kantelvar could respond, Father’s visage disappeared from Marie’s face. He might still have been present beneath the surface, silently listening, or he might have gone away completely. Better to assume the former.

  Kantelvar stared at the bloodhollow for a moment, apparently thinking. Then he raised his staff and pointed the spiny end of it at Marie. Tiny arcs of lightning danced between the spines. “No more spies,” he muttered, his voice barely a buzz.

  “No!” Isabelle lurched between Kantelvar and Marie, hugging the bloodhollow to her. She had no idea how Kantelvar had bound lightning to his staff, but she’d read enough to know that even the thinnest thread of galvanic fluid could be deadly.

  Kantelvar withdrew his staff with a jerk. “Saint Céleste—Princess, stand aside.”

  “No,” Isabelle repeated. “Don’t destroy her, please.”

  “She’s your father’s spy.” He somehow extruded incredulity through his mouth grille.

  Isabelle shook her head. “She’s my friend. Was my friend.” The rest was beyond her ability to explain. What stranger could understand twelve years of torturous, painstaking caretaking? Preserving Marie had become a purpose in itself.

  Kantelvar tapped his staff on the ground in a slow rhythm. After a moment, he said, “Walk with me. Leave her.”

  He lurched out the door, clockworks clinking. Isabelle released Marie, whose blank stare recognized neither threat nor salvation.

  “Stay here,” she instructed Marie. She departed and shut the door between them.

  She caught up with the artifex on his way along the garden path toward the central wing of the château and asked, “What did Father get in exchange for me?”

  “That will remain a secret unless he decides to break his bargain.”

  Isabelle seethed with frustration. She wasn’t even allowed to know what she was worth in terms of the price she’d commanded.

  “What about my bargain? If I am to give myself to this as you request, what do I receive?” she asked, imagining she would regret her impetuousness. Words had consequences, and an artifex had the power to make those consequences hurt.

  “And what would you like, in exchange for yourself?” Kantelvar asked evenly, as if this was not an unreasonable question.

  Isabelle hesitated. For more than a decade now she’d gotten along by staying silent and out of sight. Yet she had found a way to make herself heard in the world. She had her printing press and her math, and she was good at it. It was a small life, perhaps, but it was her own, and she clung to it like lichen to a rock. She did not want to be dragged out into the sunlight again, to be stripped bare of all protection and mocked for her flaws.

  “What are you offering?” she asked.

  “Aside from the chance to become a queen, rescue a kingdom from inevitable civil war, and save a sorcerous bloodline from extinction?”

  Isabelle hardly knew what to say. Yes, those goals were noble and worthy, and anyone would be proud to achieve them. Am I greedy for wanting more? Yet she had not been selected for this role because of anything she had done, not for any new idea or act of will. She was just the right-shaped cog for the hole.

  “Why me?” she asked. “Surely there are unhallowed Glasswalkers.”

  “None to speak of. If a Glasswalker family has a child who fails to manifest sorcery the child is given to the Builder, which is to say they are disowned, declared dead, and handed over to the Temple. It is not the sort of legal proceeding that would be easily undone, even if the Sacred Hundred would tolerate someone with such close ties to the Temple.”

  Isabelle dearly wanted to withdraw from this conversation. Clearly, Kantelvar and her father were going to do with her just as they pleased. Her opinion was as irrelevant as if she were complaining about the weather, but if she was going to be sent off to new masters she needed to know more about them. “I thought the Aragoths were devout.”

  “Compared to Célestials, yes. Especially the Aragothic peasants. Their nobility, however, are the ones governed by the Temple purity doctrine. As such, they are happy to acknowledge the Omnifex’s authority, but they prefer that he stay in Om.”

  “But still—”

  Kantelvar held up a hand to cut her off. “I did not say that persuading the various sects and crowned heads to support you was easy, only that the other options were even more difficult. Do you not want this chance?”

  “What I want doesn’t matter,” Isabelle said. It was one assertion Kantelvar could not possibly disagree with.

  Kantelvar fell silent. Isabelle used the moment to catch her breath and try to stop the world from spinning. The messier this deal got, the more she believed it. It wasn’t clean or fantastical but rooted in ruthless and cynical politics.

  At last Kantelvar said, “I will offer you something, personally. A bride gift, if you will.”

  Isabelle eyed him warily. “What, or is it a secret?”

  “It is a secret you should keep, at least for the time being. I will revivify your friend, free her from your father’s grip, and restore her mind.”

  Isabelle stopped as short as if she’d slammed into a wall. In the barest whisper she asked, “You can do that?” She’d spent years searching for any hint of a cure and found nothing but myths and baseless rumors.

  Kantelvar leaned on his staff. “It is an arcane process, difficult and uncertain. I have attempted it twice. I succeeded once. Neither bloodhollow was in as good condition as yours.”

  “How?” she asked, the dry husk of a word fluttering from her lips only after she had stripped it of all desperate pleading.

  Kantelvar faced her, or at least turned his cowl in her direction. “I make no guarantees, but the vital spark cannot be completely gone or you friend would not have grown. Only living things can mature.”

  Isabelle felt dizzy. He could cure Marie. Maybe. It was foolish to put any faith in this. She had endured false hope many times, only to have her heart shattered. But what if … what if…? After all this time her work might be redeemed, her mistake absolved, her obsession justified. What if Marie might come back?

  “Let me see your face,” she said, a mad impulse, but she had to know. Had to make absolutely sure this was not the same man who had condemned Marie all those years ago.

  Kantelvar recoiled. “That is not a good idea. My visage is more than repulsive. I go hooded to prevent people from being afraid.”

  Isabelle found this strangely heartening. Her left hand covered her right. She knew what it was like to generate revulsion in others. All she had to do was show her wormfinger to send some squeamish people into fits.

  “I insist,” she said, though it was utter madness to demand anything from an artifex.

  Kantelvar shifted from foot to foot as if wrestling with himself. At last he stilled and slowly peeled back his cowl.

  Isabelle’s eyes widened in amazement. He was not Sleith, that much was certain. The right half of Kantelvar’s head was mechanical, or at least encased in mechanisms of quondam metal. How deep they went beneath his skull was impossible to tell. A telescoping tube with a glowing green lens bulged from his right eye socket. A clump of wires and hoses emerged from the back of his head, gathered in a queue, and snaked under his vestments.

  The left half of his face was as scarred and pitted as a fortress after a siege, the skin pale and waxy. His left eye, bloodshot with an iris gray as dishwater, seemed to wander without reference to what the rest of him was attending. His mouth … by the Builder, his mouth had been sewn up around a circular grille that gave him the look of a permanent how
l of anguish.

  Isabelle’s amazement overwhelmed her disgust. How was he even still alive? Even the Temple, which claimed proprietorship of all quondam artifacts, didn’t really know how the mechanisms worked. The saints had passed on knowledge of how to use some of the leftover bits from the Primus Mundi, knowledge that was amongst the Temple’s most closely guarded secrets, but the fundamental principles underlying their function remained completely opaque.

  A thousand questions fizzed in Isabelle’s brain, but none of them made it as far as her mouth. She could not show too much curiosity, nor speak any word that might suggest she possessed even a smattering of empirical philosophy.

  “How do you eat?” Isabelle managed at last. Everyone had to eat.

  “I ingest what sustenance I need through this tube.” He opened the lid on a tube that had been inserted in the hollow of his throat. A brief whiff of bilious stink wafted from the opening.

  “Did it hurt?” She gestured at all of him.

  “I felt no pain,” he said.

  * * *

  Isabelle’s skin crawled as she entered her father’s audience chamber, the white marble vault where so much of her life’s pain had been concentrated. Memories revisited themselves upon her mind: the razor-sharp sting of a bloodshadow attack, the helpless paralysis, the horrifying numbness of her mind draining away, the absolute horror of Marie’s hollowing.

  She forced herself through the memories, like a foot soldier fording a deep, swift-running stream. Her past had been ruined here, her friend worse than murdered. She would not let her future be ruined here, too.

  Kantelvar strode up the strip of white carpet that marked the aisle to the foot of the dais atop which her father sat. Comte Narcisse des Zephyrs had been poured into a white doublet that was much too big for his withering frame and propped up in his chair, his rheumy eyes half closed, in the center of his bloodshadow. The sorcerous manifestation was thicker and darker than ever, and it flowed over him, like a great tongue constantly probing a rotting tooth. The sorcery he cherished was consuming him from within, ravaging him like a cancer, growing stronger the more he fed it, feeding on him if he refused to give it other prey.