An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  “Is something amiss?” Don Divelo asked.

  The chamberlain gave the door another tug. “Ah, apparently not.”

  Jean-Claude sagged against the door and waited until the footfalls receded, then he peeked through the window, eased the door open, and slipped out.

  Escaping the château, with its white marble halls, labyrinthine servants’ corridors, tall rooms, and wide balconies, was not as easy as it should have been. More than once, Jean-Claude got himself turned around in a space that should have been familiar. Descending the acropolis and navigating the tangle of narrow, backward streets was even more awkward, but he forged on to the taproom of the Bosun’s Ballast, or rather the “” as the sign above the door insisted on proclaiming.

  The place still smelled of spilled ale and stale straw, but it was leaning the opposite direction from how Jean-Claude remembered it. The number of drunk sailors passed out in the corner seemed to have swelled on a tide of incoming naval vessels.

  “What ho, demoiselle,” Jean-Claude said. “A pie and pint for His Majesty’s finest.”

  Demoiselle Planchette turned and squinted at him with beady eyes. “His Majesty’s finest are shoring up me foundations, but what are you doing here?”

  Jean-Claude settled at the bar. There were few patrons at this time of day, and so he had the lady all to himself. “Ah, mademoiselle, it is a long story, and filled with shame, but the pain of its recollection would be much mitigated by a pint.”

  She poured, and he began with, “As far as anyone is to know…” Sloshing the beer around, but not drinking it, he spun a tale about a drunken binge, missing Isabelle’s ship, and being left behind. “… And so I sit before you a defeated soul, doomed to the everlasting torment of my duty failed.”

  Planchette shook her head and spoke sotto voce. “What a load of chicken droppings.”

  Jean-Claude placed a hand across his breast and contrived to sound offended. “Madame, I have never dropped a chicken in my life.”

  Planchette waved this away. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll cover your sorry arse with the threadbare blanket it wants, but I saw you get on that ship, all bright and blue as a robin’s egg in your musketeer’s uniform, and so did plenty of other people. And now you’re back, and your sword’s on the wrong hip, and the feather in your cap is on the wrong side. My grampa, he was Aragothic, so I know all about what Glasswalkers kin do. What’s really going on?” A sudden look of concern crossed her face. “Nawt’s happened to the princess, has it?”

  Jean-Claude patted her hand. “Her Highness is fine, thanks to yours truly, and I want to keep it that way. To that end, I’m here to see a man about a mirror…”

  * * *

  Restless in Jean-Claude’s absence and in no mood to be cooped up in her cabin, Isabelle poked her nose into the chart room, where the fire had started. A sudden sucking chill met her at the threshold, turning her breath to frost and bringing goose pimples to her skin. Rainwater and charred wood made a frigid slurry on the floor. At the very center of the room, an enormous cold had frozen the water into a lumpy sheet of gray ice entombing a scorched and twisted stump of bronze and brass that had once been the ship’s orrery.

  Even more than the aetherkeel, it was the invention of the alchemical orrery, with its simulacrasphere filled with denatured lumin gas and sympathy engine, that had enabled the exploration and colonization of the deep sky. Everything on the deep sky moved and whirled on currents of air, making traditional maps useless for navigation. Only an orrery loaded with properly calibrated chartstone shards could be certain of its position relative to its origin and destination.

  Unfortunately, as this orrery’s shattered sphere and cracked pedestal attested, hypervolatile lumin was extremely explosive. Presumably Thornscar had come into this room—had he looked for Isabelle in her cabin first?—then he had cracked the simulacrasphere; the lumin had sprayed into the room. He had set a light to it, mayhap while running out the door. There had been an explosion and a fireball, but Santiago’s quick thinking had extinguished the fire before it could spread. The rain cloud had put out the fire, but the remaining gas expanding from the cracked reservoir had frozen the water solid. Fire and ice.

  Carlos, the Santa Anna’s navigator, was circling the damaged orrery and pawing at broken pieces with a badgerlike determination. Isabelle resolved to disturb him as little as possible, but she wanted to get a good look at the shattered device. Something about the whole sequence of events felt unbalanced, like a complex equation missing an unobvious constant.

  She had spent a great deal of time researching the alchemical properties of aether, and while she had no practical experience working with full-scale alchemical machinery, she had detonated quite enough of her small-scale experiments to become acquainted with its capricious nature. Or, as Jean-Claude would have said, “It’s just not empirical philosophy unless something freezes, catches fire, throws sparks, dissolves into slime, or explodes.”

  And yet all those pyrotechnic failures had left her with a rather clear and well-defined idea of the damage explosive aether was capable of inflicting. Therefore, once panic had worn off and she’d turned her head to the numbers, this sabotage just hadn’t summed up. The amount of aether in the simulacrasphere at the temperature and pressure at which it should have been operating would have caused a really impressive bang and a fireball, enough to blow doors open and ignite paper and cloth, as evidenced by the scorched sails, but it had clearly not been enough to blow the ship apart or set fire to the thick wooden structure. So had this been a failure of concept or execution?

  Isabelle eased across the floor, dancing from dry spot to dry spot, to get a better look at the orrery’s broken stem.

  “Princesa!” Carlos yelped, popping up from his task of collecting shattered formulae glass. “Come away from there.”

  Isabelle froze in her tracks and looked around to see if she had missed any death traps. She saw none.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Carlos looked flummoxed by this question, as if the ship’s figurehead had come to life and spoken. “It’s not right. You … might get dirty.”

  Such were the excuses conjured up when she trespassed on a man’s domain, no matter how feeble his claim to the territory. It was infuriating that the pressure of his disapproval actually backed her up a step.

  She regained her balance. “I just want to have a look,” she said, seeking a justification with legs. “I’ve always found clockworks so beautiful.”

  Carlos stood up and made a clumsy bow, making a sweeping gesture toward the door. “Princesa. Please … I am really very busy.”

  “I can see that,” Isabelle said, stooping to pick up a section of the fractured viewing sphere. “Perhaps you would care to explain exactly what you are doing.”

  Carlos tugged at his collar, clearly unnerved to have her hovering over his work. “It’s … complicated.”

  “Hmmmm…” Isabelle waved the formulae glass over the open throat of the orrery. It didn’t glow, so there was no more aether escaping.

  “Highness, what are you doing?” Carlos asked. He came toward her, perhaps with the thought of escorting her away, but he moved slower and slower the closer he got, the proverbial hare unable to catch the tortoise.

  “It’s complicated,” Isabelle retorted. She peered down the device’s neck, through a tangled mass of broken gears and fragmented complexity-matrix beads. It took her a moment to discern the reality of a device she had hitherto seen only in smuggled drawings by candlelight. There was the analogical multi-switch whirring away, and the cryodynamic manifold hissing softly. The actual algorithmic engine of the device seemed to be intact. All those delicate pieces; the explosion just hadn’t been that powerful.

  She muttered, “So the simulacrascope went off with a bang that cracked the aetherfeed, but judging by the amount of ice that was deposited, most of the gas escaped after the fire was extinguished?” The damage could have been worse if Thornscar had allowed more gas to escape bef
ore he ignited it. Had Kantelvar’s interruption startled him into making a mistake, or had he just not known enough about simulacraspheres and aether? And how had he set it off without getting caught in the blast?

  “That is … substantially correct,” Carlos said. “But how does … do you know so much about aetherscopes?”

  Isabelle was recalled to her social obligation of ignorance. “Oh, I don’t know much, really, but when my family had naval officers in for dinner, I always did get stuck at the end of the table with the navigator and the keel master, and men do insist on talking about work.” It was a sad but useful fact that all but the most suspicious or perspicacious of men could blot out any memory of her intelligence if only she gave them permission.

  A rap on the door frame drew her attention, and she turned to find Vincent standing there. He produced the requisite bow and said, “Highness.”

  “Vincent,” she said warily.

  “May I have a word?” he said, leading her from the chart room onto the deck, where they could be easily observed without being easily overheard, thanks to the wind.

  Isabelle checked her posture and fixed a neutral expression on her face, preparing to be berated for some failing. “Yes?”

  He bobbed his head, a calculated fraction of a bow. “Highness, it occurs to me that, in addition to sending your, ah, minion to dash about the Île des Zephyrs in search of the saboteur’s conspirator, there is another well of information from which we might draw.”

  “And what would that be?” she asked. She had no personal reason to dislike Vincent, but he was her father’s man—dangerous to her autonomy even when he defended her person. She had to assume every word she spoke to him would be relayed back to her father.

  Vincent held out a hand, palm up, as if offering a gift. “Your bloodhollow.”

  Isabelle was appalled. “Marie?”

  Vincent nodded. “I am given to understand that bloodhollows see everything, hear everything, and remember what they witness with absolute clarity. They don’t have personalities to get in the way.”

  A resentful frost formed around Isabelle’s heart. “I am aware of that.” The comte had often used Marie’s eidetic memory as a bludgeon against Isabelle.

  “If this Thornscar or one of his accomplices crossed your path any time between your betrothal and your embarkation, if they were doing any reconnaissance, as they should have been, the bloodhollow may have seen them. If we were to question her, or better yet have your father sift her memory—”

  “No,” Isabelle snapped.

  “But she may have seen something without knowing it.”

  “She sees everything without knowing it,” Isabelle said. Then she made a soothing gesture as if to soften the sharpness of her words. “I mean, you are right. She might have seen something. I will question her, but I will not involve the comte.”

  Vincent looked perplexed. “It would be more efficient. Your father—”

  “The comte is a monster,” Isabelle said. In her anger, words came more easily but were harder to control. “A murderer of children and a defiler of souls. Tell me if you can what crime a thirteen-year-old girl could possibly have committed to deserve being turned into a bloodhollow.”

  Vincent took a step back from her in alarm, and Isabelle forced herself to dismount her tower of rage. He was not necessarily an evil man, and he was certainly no fool. There was no point in alienating him; quite the opposite.

  “I know you work for the comte, not me, but he is dying, Breaker take him. Yet when he is dust, you will still need an employer, and I will be, at the very least, a princesa of Aragoth.” If she could winnow his loyalty away from her father, that would be an unprecedented victory.

  “Do you not think that your husband will provide for your security?” Vincent asked.

  Isabelle’s mouth worked around some mumbles as she fought to articulate the idea blooming in her mind. “I am certain that he will, but a royal woman needs someone under her command who is not beholden to anyone else, even her husband.” As much as she loathed the idea of setting someone else in Jean-Claude’s place, she must plan for the contingency and be well out in front of it.

  Poor Príncipe Julio; he was supposed to be the most important thing on her mind right now, but instead he seemed to be receding into the background of her unfolding crisis.

  “You have a very keen mind,” Vincent said. “It is too bad you were not born a man; you would make a wonderful officer.”

  Irritation rose in Isabelle’s mind, but she stopped it from expressing itself anywhere but in a tightening around her eyes. Why was he baiting her? Was he really that much of a boor? No, he was feeling out a potential employer. She rallied her words again. “I am already malformed and unhallowed; being male is a handicap I can live without. Besides, I would much rather be in the business of appointing wonderful officers than be one.”

  Vincent settled back, his expression still closed, and said, “You put an interesting offer on the table, but I cannot pick it up while I am still under contract.”

  “It remains there for the time being,” Isabelle said. “But now I must speak with Marie.”

  “I shall accompany you.”

  Isabelle held up her hand to forestall him. “I thank you for the offer, but no. Interrogating a bloodhollow is not like interrogating a normal person. Extra care must be taken so as not to damage them.”

  “But they have no feelings,” Vincent said.

  “Precisely. It is much easier to injure someone who cannot feel pain than someone who can. Rest assured, though, I have a great deal of practice at this. Her memories are just piled up, twelve years of unsifted experience in layers like silt. And if you go tromping around in it, all you get is clouds of mud.”

  “I still think I should—”

  “No!” Isabelle railed against the automatic male assumption that anything she might do, they could do better, even if they had no experience with it whatsoever. Jean-Claude would never have doubted Isabelle’s assessment.

  She scraped Vincent off and entered her cabin. Marie had been put to bed, kept warm against the high-altitude chill. Isabelle roused her and performed the ritual bruise checks, attended the bodily waste functions, directed the consumption of food. Could Marie be brought back to herself, guided out of the dark pit into which she’d been condemned all these years? Kantelvar … hadn’t promised success, but he claimed to have had success before, a greater miracle than anyone else had ever boasted.

  Will she be sane? Will she thank me, or despise me for so enabling and prolonging her suffering? If so, at least she will hate me of her own free will.

  Once she was satisfied of Marie’s health, Isabelle drew heavy curtains across the portholes, stuffed bedding in the crack beneath the door, and snuffed the alchemical lanterns. Darkness filled the room. And there can be no shadows without light. The comte would not be able to interrupt.

  The skip’s rocking and the impenetrable dark combined to make Isabelle’s gut a little queasy, but she schooled her voice to calm and soothing tones and said, “Marie, I’m going to ask you a few questions. If you do not know the answer, say, ‘I don’t know.’”

  Carefully and gently she went, so as not to scatter and scramble whatever was left of Marie’s consciousness. “I’m going to be asking you about things you have observed. I’m going to be asking you about people…”

  * * *

  Night was just wrapping her shawl across the shoulders of the hills behind the Château des Zephyrs when Lord—soon to be Comte—Guillaume and his companions cantered into the yard on fine coursing steeds. They laughed gaily amongst themselves, expounding upon, and grossly inflating, the events of the day’s hunt.

  Jean-Claude, sitting on a low stone wall before the front gate, could not help but notice they had only two grouse between the six of them. His dear departed mother would have clubbed him if he’d spent all day hunting and come back with such a paltry catch, but these men had never in their lives hunted to stave off hunge
r, or grubbed in the dirt, or chopped wood until their backs ached, nor did they care for those who did … but those were old complaints and not important to the task at hand.

  A pack of stable boys appeared from behind the house and swarmed round the horses to help the riders dismount and take their steaming steeds away. Jean-Claude rose and ambled toward the approaching party. “Good evening, my lord.”

  It took Guillaume a moment to pick Jean-Claude out of the crowd of stable hands. When he did, his brow pinched in surprise and suspicion, but by the time Jean-Claude reached his side, he’d propped up a practiced smile, the sort one wore when preparing to dodge. “Good evening, my good musketeer. What are you … I thought you had taken ship with dizzy Izzy.”

  Jean-Claude smiled grimly even while evolving plans for making Guillaume pay for that slight. “I have returned, and I am on His Majesty’s business.”

  “I … see. In that case, how may I serve His Majesty?”

  “He would have a word with you, personally, on a matter of some delicacy. Walk with me.” Jean-Claude tipped his hat at Guillaume’s companions—“Gentlemen”—and then strode off across the field, leaving Guillaume to catch up, which he did in a huff of unaccustomed effort.

  “What is this about?” Guillaume asked impatiently.

  “It is a matter of grave importance that impacts the future of l’Île des Zephyrs and indeed the whole empire.”

  Guillaume scoffed. “As if His Majesty would entrust you with important business.”

  Despite his bravado, Guillaume had a tendency to twitch, and his bloodshadow rippled in agitation. Jean-Claude might have been the town drunk, but he remained a King’s Own Musketeer, and interfering with a King’s Own Musketeer in the discharge of his lawful duty was a capital offense.

  Jean-Claude led Guillaume down a slope into an orchard along the very same path he had walked with Isabelle just days ago. The buds had burst and leaves yearned skyward. “My master is very interested in knowing from whom precisely you received instructions to place a mirror aboard Princess Isabelle’s ship.”