An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  Isabelle marveled at Jean-Claude’s clairvoyance. Who else could spend three days carousing and return to present her with some very suggestive intelligence from half a world away? Someone she did not want to lose.

  “We have another problem,” she said. “My father intends to prevent you from accompanying me to Aragoth.”

  Jean-Claude contrived a pained expression, but his eyes twinkled. “Pshaw! I am a King’s Own Musketeer. Your father can bellow like the boor he is but cannot stop me from going where I choose. The only one who might prevent me from accompanying you would be the ambassador the Aragoths have sent to escort you. Once I announce my intention to go, the comte will certainly ask him to forbid me setting foot on Aragothic soil.”

  “Then I will tell Don Divelo that you are to be my personal guest. Once he has given his word to me, he will not be able to retract it.”

  Jean-Claude swept his hat almost to the floor. “I am most honored.”

  A soft tread in the hallway opposite Jean-Claude announced Marie’s return with Isabelle’s prosthesis. The bloodhollow opened the door, padded to Isabelle’s side, and stopped. Father’s face manifested through her ghostly visage.

  “To whom were you speaking just then?” he asked.

  Isabelle looked up, but Jean-Claude had silently taken himself out.

  “My ladies,” she said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need Marie to help me with this glove.”

  * * *

  Isabelle stood on the balcony overlooking the spinward fields, a canvas before her and paints to hand. She didn’t normally paint pastoral scenes, but there was a soft quality to the evening light, like golden honey drizzled across the land, that she wanted to capture. And I’m never going to see this place again. That realization wrenched her heart in spite of all her enthusiasm for escape. She knew every fold of this land, every glade and rill, every street and shop of the town. It was the only place she’d ever known, and its colors had bled into her soul. Who will I be somewhere else?

  “Your Highness.” Kantelvar’s greasy clicking voice drew Isabelle’s attention back to the here and now. She turned to watch the artifex hiss, clank, and gurgle up the stairs behind her. He’d forgone his cote today in favor of long purple tippets emblazoned with the silver sigil of Saint Céleste, a four-armed woman bearing a gearwheel, an escapement, a spiral spring, and a ratchet.

  “Your Exaltedness,” she said. “Thank you for attending me.” After a third day of being drowned in petitioners, Isabelle had discovered the joy of minions: ladies-in-waiting to accept gifts and supplications on her behalf, and runners to fetch people she actually wanted to talk to. Jean-Claude had referred a few ladies of exceptional competence and Isabelle filled out the roster with people who had at least been polite to her and who had shown wit and kindness to others. Most of them were from lesser families, none of them had a drizzle of sorcery, and all were grateful for the secondhand status her elevation afforded them.

  Kantelvar bowed deeply to her, which unnerved her. He need not have shown such deference even to a queen, so why to her? “How may I serve Your Highness?”

  Isabelle needed to talk to Kantelvar about Lady Sonya—she had rehearsed the conversation with Jean-Claude—but her throat locked up at the moment of commitment. Politics and assassinations were too dangerous a subject.

  Isabelle took inspiration from his garb. “You are devoted to Saint Céleste. It seems an odd choice for an Aragothic artifex.” It was always easier to talk to other people about themselves, erasing herself as a subject as much as possible.

  “I was not always assigned to Aragoth,” Kantelvar said. “It is more of a historical oddity that l’Empire Céleste was named for her, given that she was l’Étincelle rather than Sanguinaire.”

  “But she was married to Saint Guyot le Sanguinaire,” Isabelle said. “He named his kingdom after her, or at least that was the story I heard.” It was one of the great vexations of history that most knowledge of the saints, and most of the wisdom they had brought with them from the Primus Mundi, had been lost with the city of Rüul. What was left over mostly had the weight of old cloth, threadbare fabric many times patched and embroidered.

  “That is a lie told by the Sanguinaire to try to claim her as one of their own,” Kantelvar said, his voice ringing like a hammer on an anvil. It was the most emotion she’d heard from him, genuine anger, but it dissipated as quickly as it flared. “It is true that Saint Céleste had a child by Saint Guyot, your Grand Leon’s direct ancestor, or so he claims, but those were desperate times. Unfortunately Saint Céleste was the only one of her kind, and her sorcery did not manifest in her children. ‘Ghostbred’ is the term of art for that outcome.”

  “What was l’Étincelle, or does anybody know?” Isabelle had never even heard the term before, not that saint lore was near the center of her interests.

  Kantelvar did not answer immediately but tapped the foot of his staff on the flagstones, something he seemed to do when making up his mind.

  When he spoke, it was in a low buzz. “When a great forest burns, the rising heat will carry away some leaves unscorched. So it was with the annihilation of Rüul. The city itself and all its marvels are utterly gone, but some scraps have been found, scattered to the edges of the world. The Temple considers collecting them a sacred duty second only to preserving the bloodlines in preparation for the Savior. We call this collection the Hoard of Ashes. Of course, all of what we have recovered is fragmentary, and the meaning of most of it remains opaque, but there are hints and clues. If those suggestions are to be believed, Saint Céleste could give an animate force, l’Étincelle, to nonliving matter, stone and metal.”

  Isabelle’s curiosity fizzed with excitement. Now, that would be an amazing power to possess. Just imagine all the mechanisms she could make, the instruments. Imagine a lens that could flex to adjust its focal length, or a cogwheel that could turn itself.

  “But you did not summon me to discuss ancient history,” Kantelvar prodded.

  “No,” Isabelle said, forcing her mind onto the topics she’d been avoiding. Rehearsed or not, she could not escape the dread sensation that speaking would only cause her trouble; it was impossible to ask a question without giving the listener a club to hit her with.

  At last she said, “If it pleases you, there are aspects of my betrothal that confound me.”

  “It pleases me to ease your confusion,” he said. His head swiveled beneath his cowl. “I note your bloodhollow is absent.”

  “She is helping pack my things,” Isabelle said. The comte was already furious that she had managed to get Jean-Claude a berth on the skyship and an invitation to her wedding ceremony. She didn’t want Father spying on her now, either.

  She said, “When you explained how you selected a bride for Príncipe Julio, you didn’t mention Lady Sonya.”

  Kantelvar actually stiffened in surprise, his emerald eye gleaming from under his hood. “She was not relevant to your qualifications.”

  “Only because she was murdered.”

  Kantelvar might have denied it or asked how she knew. Instead he said, “That is very astute of you.”

  He seemed disinclined to go on, and Isabelle nearly lost her nerve, but if she was going to be queen she’d need to handle harder questions than this. “Was the killer apprehended?”

  “No,” Kantelvar said. “But the actual murderer is of little concern. Likely he did not even know who he was working for.”

  Isabelle fired off another well-rehearsed question: “And who was he working for?”

  Kantelvar shook his head noncommittally. “The pool of suspects with both desire and ability to perform such an insidious murder is small. It is almost certainly one of the more politically ambitious members of the Sacred Hundred. Rey Carlemmo has people investigating the matter as aggressively as possible, as do I. Rest assured, the traitor will be discovered.”

  “And you mentioned none of this to me?”

  “I did tell your bodyguard. Protecting you is his dut
y.”

  Isabelle wanted to say, My true bodyguard figured it out on his own, and he always tells me that I must know enough to take care for my own safety. “If you’re going to do something foolish, at least be smart about it.”

  Kantelvar continued. “You have other concerns to attend than the rude business of murder. I assume you have been studying the makeup of the Sacred Hundred.”

  Isabelle squirmed at being put on the spot. What would happen if she answered wrong? “Don Divelo has been lecturing me.”

  “Hmmm … He is one of the queen’s partisans. I will lend you a more evenhanded book on the history of the Hundred and another on Aragoth’s great families. You must exert yourself to ingratiate yourself with them.”

  Isabelle felt a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air. There was nothing quite as futile as trying to ingratiate herself to someone who was determined to despise her; she could never lower herself far enough to slide under the blade of their contempt.

  “And what about Príncipe Julio?” she asked. Her impending husband had been remarkably absent from their discussions. “Do you know him?”

  “He came to me for training. He has the potential to be the greatest Glasswalker Aragoth has seen since the days of the Secondborn Kings.”

  “But I mean do you know him personally. Was he … were he and Lady Sonya beloved of each other?”

  “They had never met,” Kantelvar said.

  “Does he have a lover?” Isabelle asked. Am I going to come to him as a horrible disappointment?

  Kantelvar hesitated and then said, “He does not want for female companionship, but he has no special attachments.”

  Isabelle’s emotional strength flagged—Julio’s experience would find her incompetent—but she pushed on. “And how does he treat his paramours?”

  “None of them have confided details to me, Highness, but neither have they complained, nor spread vicious rumors about him.”

  Isabelle got the feeling she was asking these questions to the wrong person. She ought to talk to one of Julio’s servants. Jean-Claude always said that one of the best ways to judge a man was by how he treated his inferiors.

  Kantelvar went on, “He is handsome, intelligent, well respected, puissant at arms. A worthy husband.”

  But will he find me a worthy wife?

  “When will I meet him? Will he come here?” she asked. Most mirrors in l’Empire Céleste were deeply scored with a grid of fine lines to break up the espejismo of any Glasswalkers trying to manifest through them, but Château des Zephyrs had a special room for receiving Aragothic nobles bearing news or doing business. She always found their silver eyes fascinating.

  “I’m afraid not,” Kantelvar said. “Protocol forbids such a meeting before the wedding.”

  Isabelle shook her head. Why did tradition always insist that ignorance was the optimum state for important transactions involving women?

  “Did the príncipe take any part in choosing me?” Isabelle asked, trying not to sound too plaintive. Was he even interested? Certainly she would have preferred having more than a yes-or-no say in her own matrimonial prospects, but then how would she have chosen? Her circle of acquaintances was small enough to be graphed as a point.

  “The electors decided to shield him from the decision-making process so as to frame the marriage as practical rather than personal. It makes it easier to justify politically.”

  Isabelle shook her head in dismay. “You are setting up a relationship that is supposed to be so tightly bound that two people are living inside each other’s skin, and you don’t imagine it will be personal? Who were these electors?”

  “Carlemmo, the old Omnifex, and me,” Kantelvar said. “And intimacy will come later. Two people who are thrust together by outside forces are more likely to find common cause than two people who merely drift together on a gust of feckless, transitory passion.”

  Isabelle had no basis to argue that assertion, but another fact caught her attention. “You said the Omnifex, but he’s been dead for nine months.” The College of Artifexes’s inability to select a new Omnifex was a scandal that had found its way even to l’Île des Zephyrs.

  “Signing the decree that permits this cross-marriage was very nearly the last thing he did before he died.”

  “But that was before Lady Sonya was killed. My name should never have come up.”

  “There were politics involved,” Kantelvar said, lightly rapping his staff on the floor. “We electors decided that it would be better to name two potential brides in the treaty. Lady Sonya, being Aragothic, was the least controversial choice, so she was named first. To be perfectly blunt, one of the reasons your name was included was that it was supposed to provide some protection for Lady Sonya. I’m sure you can see why.”

  The bitter logic left Isabelle numb. “Because if anybody killed her, they would be stuck with me.” She’d not been chosen because of her virtues but because of her faults. Once again she was the Breaker’s get, the fate so terrible that anything else looked good by comparison. “I’d be as well received as a gut wound.”

  “Which is why we are going to make absolutely sure you arrive safely for your wedding at the royal citadel in San Augustus.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “No expense is being spared on your personal security,” Kantelvar said, “but more importantly we are hunting the assassin’s master, which will make it harder for him to move against us without attracting attention to himself. Capturing him will likewise discourage imitators.”

  Isabelle was not soothed. Kantelvar seemed to have a great deal of confidence in things for which there was no certainty. She dipped her paintbrushes in solvent and began scraping off her palette. She’d lost the light and her enthusiasm for the painting before her.

  “Are there any other questions I can answer for you, Highness?” Kantelvar asked.

  Isabelle wanted to point out that he hadn’t really answered the ones she’d already asked.

  “No … wait. Yes, there is one. I almost forgot. You said you revivified one other bloodhollow; how is it no word of that ever came to my ear?”

  “Because I am discreet. There was a minor noble family, every bit as delightful as yours, deep in the Forest of Sorrows. I was called there by a Sanguinaire widow. Her unhallowed son could not inherit his father’s domain, and so she tried to draw his sorcery out of him, using her own bloodshadow, with results you can anticipate.”

  Isabelle winced in sympathy for the poor boy. “She went too far and turned him into a bloodhollow.”

  “Yes, so she called me in and I reconstituted him.”

  “And what happened after that? What was his state of mind?”

  “I didn’t know him before he was a bloodhollow, so I have no basis for comparison, but he seemed compos mentis to me. His mother requested that I never speak of the incident to anyone. Apparently she never did, either.”

  * * *

  Two of Vincent’s guards braced to attention as Isabelle approached her room. They were stern men in infantry uniforms, white tabards with the des Zephyrs blue triskelion crest over leather jerkins and gray shirts. One of them opened the door and took a quick look inside, presumably to make sure no assassins had taken up residence in her absence. Inspection completed, he bowed her in. Isabelle muttered shy thanks to him, slipped inside, bolted the door, and leaned against it.

  Her mind boiled with revelations about politics, assassins, and betrothals. It was all excited steam, too hot to touch, much less organize. She needed rest and routine and time to let things settle down enough that she could make sense of them.

  Isabelle placed her painting of the landscape next to other recent paintings of the harbor, the millhouse, the townsfolk about their daily business. It was not the detailed and meticulous style favored by portraitists, but a looser, more vibrant expression of light and shadow. They were her memories, and they were heartbreaking, but her heart kept thumping just the same.

  Marie stood against the
wall like a caryatid, not even waiting, just being, like a statue.

  Not for long. The promise of getting Marie back, of finally divesting herself of this desperate burden, sang to her more clearly than anything else she’d been promised. She knew nothing about being a wife, or of fulfilling her duties as the bearer of children, or of being a queen. Those were just words, merely dreams, but she had been living in the ruins of Marie’s destruction for nearly as long as she could remember, far longer than she had been the girl’s friend.

  She put Marie through a series of stretching and strengthening exercises, then had her strip down for her evening inspection. Might this twice-daily indignity at last be bearing fruit? Kantelvar had said Marie was in better condition than either of the other bloodhollows he’d treated.

  Isabelle sat back on her haunches and frowned, for that wasn’t all Kantelvar had said. He’d said, “Only living things can mature.” But how had Kantelvar known she had matured? He hadn’t been here when she was hollowed out. Of course he must have known Isabelle and Marie had been children at the time she had been changed, and Marie had grown up a little, though she looked sixteen instead of twenty-five, much as some plants deprived of sufficient water grow more slowly than those fully nourished.

  Isabelle shook off her unease. This upending of her life was making her crazy. If Isabelle was going to call herself an empirical philosopher, even if only in the privacy of her own head, she must be mindful not to entertain the phantasms of anxiety and fear. Right now she had only a feeling that something was … off, and even that was shapeless.

  * * *

  Dawn drizzled the Oreamnos Hills with a glaze of amber as Isabelle and Jean-Claude strolled the curving lane of the Château des Zephyrs’s plum orchard on the morning of her scheduled departure. The buds on the trees were just beginning to swell, like they had every year of her life. She wouldn’t get to see them bloom. That thought clung to her like a cobweb. Indeed, she was so hung about with gossamer memories she felt like the ghost in a haunted house, all but gone.