An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  And she had to become so much more. A queen. Would that truly be allowed?

  Footsteps on the gravel behind reminded her of Vincent’s men, set to guard her against assassins, apparently on the presumption that they might reach her even here, in this mote on a sunbeam that was l’Île des Zephyrs. They were also set to spy on her. In this new life, even her protectors served her enemies. All except Jean-Claude.

  While Isabelle and Jean-Claude steadily increased their pace to put meters of separation between themselves and their pursuers, Jean-Claude had been waking up the gardens with boastful recounting of his latest small victories: “You should have seen the look on Guillaume’s face when I pointed out I had an invitation to a royal wedding and he did not. He puckered like he’d had a shaved lemon stuffed up his arse.”

  When Isabelle judged they had enough of a lead not to be easily overheard, she said, “What else have you discovered about this marriage treaty?”

  “Nothing to speak of,” he said at a much lower volume. “’Twould seem the negotiations were rather closely held. Unfortunately, my friend the shepherd has been too busy avoiding conscription to have received any news from his brother in Rocher Royale, so I haven’t heard any rumors from that direction. How did your conversation with Kantelvar go? Did you ask him the questions I suggested?”

  “Yes,” she said, giving him a précis of the conversation. “I was chosen as Lady Sonya’s second as a sort of guarantee. Who would murder her knowing they would get stuck with me as alternative?” It had been a blow to her pride to know that she had been a booby prize, but pride was coin she could afford to spend.

  Jean-Claude listened intently and replied, “If you were meant to be a terrible warning, we should have heard about your candidacy long before now. It should have been heralded to the widest possible audience to gin up more support for Lady Sonya as the preferable choice.”

  Isabelle tried to look at the problem mathematically. “Surely there are a limited number of people who stood to gain from Sonya’s death, other people who might have a candidate to put forward. They were the only ones who needed to be told, and they could be counted upon to be paying attention, couldn’t they?”

  Jean-Claude made a tsking noise. “In my experience it is just as unwise to overestimate your opponents as to underestimate them. What else did you learn from Kantelvar?”

  She shook her head. “I have the feeling I missed more than I caught from what he said. I’m just not very good at this sort of thing. Have you learned anything interesting about him?”

  “I don’t have as many friends of friends in Aragoth as I’d like,” Jean-Claude said. “But I get the impression Kantelvar was a recluse. He had a large estate outside of San Augustus, preferred to make people come to him for favors and let his ambassadors do his traveling for him. That is, until just about a year ago, when the old Omnifex recalled him to Om, presumably to work on this treaty for your marriage.”

  “He bothers me,” she said, clasping and unclasping her hand as she groped for specifics. “He quoted my father as saying that Carlemmo’s reign would be notable only for its brevity, but Carlemmo has been on the throne for twenty years. That’s only short when you compare it to Grand Leon. So when did my father say that to him? I don’t think he’s ever been on l’Île des Zephyrs before.”

  Jean-Claude scratched the edge of his beard. “He wouldn’t have to be. Your father keeps a bloodhollow in Rocher Royale so he can do business at court without ever leaving his demesne. He might have one in Aragoth as well … but, come to remember it, there was an artifex here once, on the occasion of your birth.”

  Isabelle’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. Jean-Claude had told her the true story of her birth, how the midwife had tried to smother her, to fortify her against the rumors and lies that had sprung up around the event. “You never mentioned that before.”

  Jean-Claude shrugged. “Truthfully, I’d forgotten him. He was administering the admonishment of Iav to your mother in her labor. I didn’t ask his name. That’s the problem with clerics. You see the yellow robe and you think Temple. Well, sometimes you think, Oh look, the bugger’s gone and pissed himself, but usually you give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s pretty thick whitewash.”

  “You don’t find it odd that one of the Seven came all the way out here just to attend a birth?”

  “At the time, I thought your father might have summoned him to provide some extra theological oomph to your mother’s delivery. That was before I realized your father has almost as little use for the Temple as I do.” He grunted as if begrudging this similarity of thought.

  “After that, I whisked you to Rocher Royale and presented you to Grand Leon. I delivered my report, you received his official blessing, and then he banished me back here. By the time we returned, the artifex was gone, and I had no cause to think of him again.”

  “And yet here comes another artifex to whisk me away,” Isabelle said. “Or is he the same one?”

  “No,” Jean-Claude said. “Not even if you add on all the clinks and clanks the current one is wearing.”

  “Ah, so you don’t think the two events are related?”

  “It’s a good question that needs looking into. In the meantime keep your eyes open and your wits about you, and I’ll talk to some people who might know more about that first artifex.”

  The winding path left the orchard and climbed up a stone stair leading to an overlook of the deep sky. Today l’Île des Zephyrs stirred a layered soup of low-hanging clouds. The thin green film of the Miasma overlaid crisscrossing yellow tendrils of the Upper Veil. Beneath them roiled the lightning-shot Galvanosphere. Streaks of lightning chased each other through the indigo murk, igniting tingles along Isabelle’s spine and all the way down to her fingertips. Even her wormfinger felt more alive in the presence of the storm. If only she had a long enough cable to fish up a bottle of that lightning, what might she learn from it?

  Isabelle waited until Jean-Claude had recovered from the climb before asking, “Do you think there is any chance of me becoming queen, happy ending and all?” she asked. Or am I going to end up dead?

  “Alas, there are no happy endings, only interesting middles,” Jean-Claude said. “As for your marriage, the Aragoths made you a promise. I intend to see that they keep it.”

  CHAPTER

  Six

  The Aragothic royal courier, the Santa Anna, was a week out from Windfall, bumping along through turbulent skies. Captain Santiago directed the ship’s operations from the quarterdeck. Jean-Claude clung, one-handed, to one of the stanchions holding up the captain’s sunshade. He strove for nonchalance even as his stomach lurched in a rhythm exactly contrary to the skyship’s undulations. It had been more than twenty years since he had set foot on one of these flying death traps. He had almost forgotten how much he hated sailing. The wind tugged his greatcoat, threatening to whisk him from the deck like a tuft of thistledown and send him tumbling into the Gloom.

  He shut his eyes against the ship’s damnable lift-and-drop and fantasized about stable land. Maybe someday, when Isabelle didn’t need him anymore, he would return to the hinterland of his birth, la Valeé du Vin Rubis, where the sky had an actual horizon, not just a hazy guess, a place where he could tip over in any direction without fear of plunging to his death. Maybe he would take his severance and start a little farm, or better yet, an inn, someplace unlikely to fall off the face of the world … once he let go of Isabelle.

  When she was married, it would be her husband’s job to protect her, and no doubt the husband would find Jean-Claude about as welcome as an infestation of lice.

  Dolt, you knew you would have to give her up when you started this.

  Yes, but twenty-four years ago, he had barely known her. She was just a handful of newborn, a set of healthy lungs, a pair of bright blue eyes, and a way to tweak her parents’ upturned noses. How was he to know she would turn into the most delightful—he hardly dared think the word “daughter,” not with its suggestion o
f bastardy—but the most wonderful ward any man could want? In the face of a world that hated everything about her, she remained curious and compassionate.

  As her warden, encouraging her to take the next step was part of the job. She had to leave him behind, like a newborn chick leaving its cracked and empty shell.

  Isabelle shrieked. Jean-Claude’s eyes flew open. But it was a squeal of delight, not fear. Isabelle leaned over the ship’s rail, pointing with her proxy hand and laughing. “Look, leviathans!”

  Vincent, by her side, wore a bored, supercilious smile, as if he were indulging a child. “Indeed they are, Princess.”

  Jean-Claude’s hand clenched so tightly on the stanchion that his glove picked up splinters. What was that fool doing, letting her get so close to the edge? What if she tipped over? She was tethered, but the rail could give way or the line could break.

  “Isabelle,” he croaked, but she was too involved with her adventure to heed him. She had taken to the skyship as if she was born to it, and would have been scrambling up the rigging if protocol and petticoats had permitted.

  “Isabelle!” Jean-Claude forced himself to let go of the upright and stagger to her side, clipping his own tether to the rope—like the rail, far too flimsy a precaution.

  The ship rocked. Jean-Claude pitched forward, and only his mad bulldog grip on the rail prevented him tipping headfirst off the ship.

  Isabelle gesticulated emphatically at the leviathans, enormous, glittering, aether-filled bodies, easily as long as the Santa Anna and her escort ships. They undulated slowly through the sky, propelled by translucent membranous fins that ran the length of their bodies. Their mouths, which opened like parasols on four long, slender jawbones, were filled not with teeth but with something that looked like pink feather down. Even as Jean-Claude recovered his balance, the great beasts turned their tails up and dove slowly into the Miasma.

  “Jean-Claude, did you see them?” Isabelle asked. “It looked like they were feeding, but what is there in the Miasma to eat? Perhaps they consume the vapors, but why doesn’t it make them sick?”

  Down past the inverted forest of turvy masts sprouting from the bottom of the ship, past the leviathans, waited the nether skies: the Miasma, the Galvanosphere, and the Gloom. Isabelle had told him that empirical philosophers had calculated the depth to the heart of the world as more than ten thousand kilometers. Jean-Claude had not asked how long it would take to fall that far. The immense dark depth enticed him, shrinking his world around the edges.

  He yanked his gaze from the seductive abyss and fixed it on Isabelle. His voice was a rasp. “Come away from the edge, please. It isn’t safe.” Builder knew he’d spent most of his life keeping her safe from assassins, kidnappers, and lesser enemies. It would be inexcusable to lose her en route to her wedding.

  “Don’t be so fussy,” she said. “I’m perfectly safe. I’m double tethered. Even if the ship capsizes, I’ll just hang here, like a spider from a thread, until somebody pulls me up.”

  Jean-Claude eyed the ship warily and muttered, “Don’t give it any ideas.” His toes clenched in his boots, trying to grab the deck and take root in case the ship suddenly flipped.

  Vincent laid a well-manicured hand on Jean-Claude’s shoulder. “Monsieur musketeer does not look well. Mademoiselle, if you will permit me to escort your guest below?”

  “I do not need your help.” Jean-Claude tried to shake the younger man off, but it was hard to do with almost every muscle in his body locked.

  Isabelle’s brows beetled in worry. “You do look a bit green. Why don’t you go inside and have a cup of tea?”

  Jean-Claude suffered himself to be towed away. Like a doddering old man. It was either that or cause a public scene. Vincent directed him belowdecks, into the undercastle, a gun deck beneath the hold, currently unoccupied. No doubt he thought it would be the perfect place for a private manly chat. At least belowdecks, the sky didn’t insist on rocking around so much, but, damn it, Jean-Claude couldn’t watch Isabelle from here, not that there was much to guard her from on a skyship.

  Of course, that isolation came with problems of its own. All the gossip he’d gathered about Aragoth was months old, and he had no way of freshening his store until he arrived in San Augustus. It would take precious time to make enough contacts to get a worthwhile finger on the pulse of Isabelle’s new city. If the sampling he’d gotten from the Santa Anna’s crew was any indication, it would be rough going. The sailors made signs against evil behind her back, and muttered about witchcraft and abominations. “To each his own kingdom,” as the teaching went; ten kingdoms for ten sorceries, seven now that two bloodlines were extinct and a third banished.

  “Monsieur, a word,” Vincent said.

  Jean-Claude looked up into Vincent’s cold gray eyes. “Just one? Certainly.” Jean-Claude didn’t like the man; he was too much le Comte des Zephyrs’s creature. Isabelle had, in her father’s eyes, suddenly gone from being an embarrassing liability to a very valuable asset, so he’d bought the best sell-sword he could obtain, a man loyal only to coin.

  Vincent fixed a disproving look on Jean-Claude. “In a word then, desist. In slightly more words, I bid you to recall that you are Princess Isabelle’s guest, not her guardian. Now that the need of serious guarding has arisen, His Excellency le Comte des Zephyrs has selected a serious guard. Your continued assistance will not be required … or tolerated.”

  Jean-Claude sagged theatrically. “Too true. In all these years, never has my mettle been truly tested in Her Highness’s service. Alas, my orders come from le roi.” He reached under his tunic for the pouch containing his carefully preserved orders—they hadn’t been renewed in twenty-four years—but Vincent flung up a warding hand.

  “You have no authority outside l’Empire Céleste. You no longer possess even the delusion of being the princess’s protector. Because Her Highness values your sagging hide, I will tolerate your presence, but only so long as you do not interfere with my duties. If you become an impediment, or persist in being an embarrassment, I will remove you.”

  Jean-Claude considered Vincent’s hands—finely muscled, callused, and scarred—and his high collar bedecked with dueling trophies, jeweled pins in the shape of crossed swords. Le roi had made dueling illegal for Sanguinaire—saintborn blood was sacred—but it remained a popular method of suicide amongst clayborn nobles and military officers. This created a small but lucrative market for men like Vincent, who were good at dispatching easily provoked young men at the behest of older, wealthier ones.

  Jean-Claude was not proud to admit that he had once been one of those young hotheads, nor was he fool enough to deny it. Even now he was tempted to taunt Vincent into violence—teach the whelp a lesson—but serving Isabelle required temperance. Even so, Jean-Claude could not bring himself to cultivate the man’s goodwill.

  Jean-Claude rubbed his face and worked his jaw. “Your proposition is noted. Now, if you will kindly lend me your boot, I need something in which to vomit.”

  “Drunken sot.”

  “Better than being des Zephyrs’s lickspittle. Or was it his cock you sucked to get this post?”

  “Cur!” Vincent whipped the white glove from his belt and slapped Jean-Claude across the face.

  Jean-Claude reeled, stung more in pride than in flesh. His anger flared up, and it felt good. Oh how he yearned to take this runt to pieces! Only the weight of experience held him in check, not the ache of old knees, surely. Never play the other man’s game. Vincent was good, and Jean-Claude had never been much of a fencer. A fighter, yes—give him a tavern full of crockery or a pigsty knee-deep in mud and he’d teach this pup new ways to bleed—but he was no duelist, to be hemmed in by rules or honor.

  Jean-Claude spat on the deck. The gobbet was pink with blood from his split lip. “I am sure that you will stand fast if one of Isabelle’s enemies is polite enough to challenge her to a duel.”

  Vincent curled his lip in contempt, and he dropped the glove at Jean-Claude’s feet. �
��Coward. Until you have the balls to pick that up, stay away from the princess. She is my first priority, and I will brook no meddling from you.” He turned and climbed through the hatch.

  Jean-Claude let him go. Isabelle is my only priority. He walked in circles a few times to shed the gut-churning energy of constrained anger. He plucked the gage from the deck between thumb and forefinger. He considered using it to wipe his arse next time he went to the head and then flinging it at Vincent’s feet, but that would likely be an insult too far. He couldn’t get rid of Vincent, so he’d have to use him instead. That would be much more satisfying. He squeezed between the cannons and threw the glove out a gun port. It whisked away in the wind.

  And yet there was something about what Vincent had said, not what he was talking about, but his actual words. She is my first priority.

  And that was what was wrong with this whole cursed scenario. Priorities. If Jean-Claude had been an evil bastard attempting to abrogate Príncipe Julio’s marriage and faced with a bride and a spare, he would have killed the lightly guarded spare first. It would have been less work that way. Presumably the threat against Sonya had been anticipated from the beginning, and she had been guarded, however ineffectively, but it was not until after her death that all this extra attention had fallen on Isabelle. If the evil bastard had done things the other way around, Jean-Claude might have been blindsided. There would have been no second line of defense.

  That thought made Jean-Claude even queasier than the skyship’s heaving. But for his notable failure to protect her friend Marie, Jean-Claude had always managed to keep Isabelle one step ahead of intrigue and danger, but this betrothal had hit him like a broadside from the fog. No one had even whispered of it on the l’Île des Zephyrs before Kantelvar arrived.