Guillaume looked genuinely surprised. “Eh? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? I have very reliable information that says the mirror was taken aboard at your direction.” Planchette had told him about a longshoreman, who had told him about a linkboy, who had told him about Guillaume’s attaché. “It was such a thoughtful gift that the sender deserves an appropriate thank-you in return.”
Guillaume hesitated, as if struck by a thought, then shook his head. “You are mistaken, monsieur. Now, if you will excuse me—”
“I will not,” Jean-Claude said, grabbing Guillaume by the scruff of his collar and impelling him deeper into the plum grove. “The mirror came from your household.”
“Unhand me!” Guillaume twisted. Jean-Claude obliged him by shoving him into a pile of cut brush so that he tripped and landed on his backside.
Guillaume’s face burned. “Cur!” His bloodshadow lunged for Jean-Claude but broke up, confused, when it encountered the interlaced shadows of the orchard’s branches and leaves in the lengthening dark.
“I don’t think your pet can find me in this tangle of darkness. Pity.” After seeing his first execution in the Pit of Stains, Jean-Claude had dedicated countless hours to researching and devising ways to defeat bloodshadows. Obscuring one’s shadow in a tangle of shadows worked unless the sorcerer had the presence of mind to sift and shift all the shadows apart. Le roi could do it, but Guillaume was not that dedicated to his craft.
Jean-Claude drew his rapier and set the tip against Guillaume’s throat, just above the knot of his cravat. “Who told you to put that mirror aboard?”
Guillaume tried to crab-walk away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Jean-Claude forced him onto his back. “This is not a good time to cultivate ignorance. Its rewards tend to be empty. Bled dry, in fact.”
“Breaker take you!” Guillaume squeaked. “I don’t know.”
“If not you … then it must have been your lovely wife.”
“No!” Guillaume shouted, and the trees rattled as his sorcery thrashed at their shadows. A lucky swipe brushed the shadow of Jean-Claude’s hat and sent it tumbling from his head. To Jean-Claude’s surprise, the hat evaporated like a puff of fog before it hit the ground. So what would happen if he dropped his rapier, or fired a bullet?
He slapped those questions aside and pressed his advantage with Guillaume. “I see I have struck a nerve. How noble of you, trying to protect your lady. Or perhaps you are only trying to protect yourself; as her lord and master, you could be implicated in her treason.”
“Treason? How is a mirror treason?”
“Aha! So you admit it.”
“I do not! She is innocent.”
“Which means you are guilty,” Jean-Claude said. He doubted a creature like Guillaume was actually capable of love, and the malfeasant Arnette was not a woman to inspire devotion, but there was some loyalty in Guillaume’s heart, and was that not a virtue? And was it not a sin to pervert a virtue into a weapon? Isabelle would not be proud of him for this, or for many other deeds. His only solace was that she need never know of the bones he had broken in her service.
Jean-Claude summoned his coolest demeanor. “Your wife is of du Troisville, and the Duc du Troisville has extensive trading interests in Aragoth. Someone in Aragoth asked her father to instruct her to put that mirror aboard ship. I believe I shall have to ask her who that was. I imagine le roi will not be pleased with the answer. Perhaps he will put her to the flame and attaint the whole line.”
“Because of a mirror? Madness!”
“Not because of the mirror itself, but because of the Glasswalker assassin who came through it and tried to murder Isabelle.”
Guillaume’s face went waxy in the failing light. “No!” he said; defeat this time, not denial.
“Fortunately for you, you will probably be able to deny knowledge and escape fatal punishment, though it may cause le roi to reconsider the distribution of your father’s estates upon his death. He wouldn’t want them falling into the hands of a man who couldn’t even prevent his wife from committing treason.”
“It wasn’t treason. It was supposed to be a gift. She didn’t know!” Guillaume blurted. Three lies in a row, Jean-Claude suspected, and if finding out who Isabelle’s Aragothic enemies were weren’t so important, Jean-Claude would have nailed Guillaume to a wall for his part in the scheme. Alas, mortal justice was as imperfect as divine justice was ineffable.
“Then give me the name of the Aragoth who made this request. Speak truth and your wretched wife will never lay eyes on me. Lie to me and there is no place in the deep sky you will be able to run from me.”
“But … How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
Jean-Claude made a mirthless smile and bent the skin of Guillaume’s throat with the tip of his rapier. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
CHAPTER
Eight
Isabelle stood in the Santa Anna’s hold, beneath a single swaying alchemical lantern that made her shadow weave drunkenly across the narrow space. Vincent, two guards, and one handmaid hovered in attendance while she examined Thornscar’s empty mirror frame. The shattered glass had all been swept away and disposed of with elaborate ceremonies meant to ward off bad luck, but the empty frame had been left in place and secured with its original rope and canvas veil.
“So, except for the mirror being gone, that’s what it looked like when Thornscar was passing through it?” she asked Vincent.
“Not precisely. The fabric was pushed aside.”
Isabelle grabbed the fabric and tugged it to the side. This took effort because of the way the ropes crisscrossed the frame. She circled the frame and looked through it from the back.
“What is the significance of this inquiry?” Vincent asked.
Isabelle brought two fingers down on the rope with a chopping motion. “Why didn’t he cut the rope? It would have been easier than fighting with the canvas.”
“Perhaps he was only half emerged from the mirror and couldn’t get at his blade,” Vincent suggested.
“Did he have a blade?” Isabelle asked. “Did you see one? Marie did not.” As it turned out Marie had seen the invader as he rushed up the stair. He’d shoved her into the storeroom and slammed the door on her. Very strange behavior for an assassin.
Vincent frowned. “He was already most of the way through the mirror when I got here, and the light was bad, worse than it is now.”
“But you didn’t see a blade?”
“No, I did not,” he admitted grudgingly.
“And he clubbed Kantelvar rather than stabbing him.”
“So it would seem, but why is this important?”
“Because I find it hard to imagine a man intent on murdering a well-defended woman on a ship full of well-armed marines would make his bid without so much as a knife. Even I have a knife.” She tapped the maidenblade on her belt. Isabelle despised the weapon’s loathsome official purpose but kept the blade and used it to cut canvases for painting and to core apples.
Isabelle asked, “And after he squeezed out of the mirror, what did he do?”
“He went looking for you. He didn’t find you in your cabin, so he went next door to the chart room and tried to set the ship on fire using the orrery, but Kantelvar interrupted him. He subdued Kantelvar, ignited the orrery, and came back down here, where he was cornered and hopefully killed.”
Isabelle folded her arms and drummed her fingers against her upper arm. “Your analysis matches the facts.”
“But you do not agree with it,” Vincent surmised.
“Why did he go above looking for me?” She gestured to the hold around her. “Here we have wooden crates, bales of fine des Zephyrs wool, ingredients for a magnificent fire. Why not just step out of the mirror, set the hold on fire, and then step back out again? Much simpler, safer for him, and more likely to work.”
“There are five ships in this fleet,” Vincent said. “He probably wante
d to ascertain for certain that you were on this one. If he just set the ship on fire, he’d have had no way of knowing if he’d actually gotten you, especially since the first thing anyone would do in case of a fire would be to get you on a launch. Or, perhaps, it was meant to be personal. He wanted to kill you himself as a proxy for the royal family. In either case, he couldn’t find you, and his time grew short, so he improvised with the closest tool to hand.”
Isabelle suppressed a shudder at this dire idea. If she were the type to take afternoon naps instead of badgering the captain to show her the inner marvels of his ship, she might have been in that room—
“Highness!” called a cabin boy from the far end of the hold. “Don Divelo and the musketeer have returned! They are safe. They’re being ferried over from the Lanza.”
A knot of tension eased from Isabelle’s heart. Thank the Builder Jean-Claude was safe. She could never tell him how much she worried about him. To be afraid for a brave man was an insult to his abilities that could cripple his heart.
* * *
Isabelle, Vincent, Santiago’s whole command crew, and the captains of the remaining escort ships crowded into the reserve officers’ cabin to hear what Jean-Claude and Don Divelo had to report. The press of bodies warmed the room and woke the unwashed smells that clung to nearly everyone, but even that stink would not have prevented Isabelle from rushing up to hug Jean-Claude. Alas, the propriety of the audience forbade any physical reassurance of his well-being.
Jean-Claude doffed his plumed hat, eyed it speculatively, then bowed toward Isabelle and the head of the table. “Greetings, Highness, Captain. Please tell me you have some wine.”
“I imagine you are quite parched,” Santiago said, and a goblet of wine was delivered into Jean-Claude’s hands.
Jean-Claude took a mouthful, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Gah! Someone might have mentioned that mirror passage tastes like tomatoes boiled in ammonia.”
“It takes different people in different ways,” Don Divelo said, sounding anything but displeased. “Some believe that the experience reflects the traveler’s character.”
Isabelle asked Jean-Claude, “Are you well?”
Jean-Claude brushed at his arms as if dislodging spiders. “As well as any man may be after he’s been turned inside out and dragged through cold, gritty mud. Now I know what a hide feels like when it is tanned, and I lost my hat.” He held the hat up again and glowered at it suspiciously. “It disappeared beyond the mirror, but it was on my head when I got back.”
Don Divelo said, “You lost your hat’s reflection. When next you stand before a mirror with your hat on you will feel it on your head but not see it in your reflection.”
Jean-Claude shuddered like a damp dog dislodging water and muttered imprecations about sorcery. Someone pushed a chair toward Isabelle, but she declined it. There was no way for everyone to sit down, and being the only one to sit would put her head at the level of other people’s bellies.
Isabelle said, “Jean-Claude, pray tell us what you discovered.”
Jean-Claude held out his cup for a refill and got it, but he refrained from further imbibing. He said, “Thanks to Don Divelo’s excellent guidance, I was able to track down the person who placed the mirror aboard this ship. After much hard work and diligence, I extracted from this miscreant the name of the mastermind behind the plot to assassinate Princess Isabelle. His name is Duque Ramon de la Gallegos Diego.”
A surprised murmur quickly rose to a buzz as everyone started talking at once. Isabelle was acquainted with Diego’s name. He was King Carlemmo’s cousin by some degree, but she knew almost nothing else about him.
“But that makes no sense,” Don Divelo said, quieting the other Aragoths by dint of his noble status and courtly experience.
“Why not?” Isabelle asked.
Divelo said, “Duque Diego is a member of the queen’s faction.” At Isabelle’s uncomprehending look, he added, “Alejandro, the elder prince, is the heir apparent, but he is not Queen Margareta’s son. If he ascends the throne, she loses influence and so does everyone in her faction. The only way Diego wins is if Julio takes the throne, which he has no chance of doing if he is not married.”
“Perhaps he does not object to the idea of marriage so much as the match that has been made,” Vincent said.
“He has two daughters,” Santiago said.
“But he does not want them married to Prince Julio,” Divelo said. “Right now, the factions are about evenly balanced. If Diego married either of his daughters to Julio, that would bring him closer to Príncipe Julio, but it would add nothing to the weight of the faction. The ideal marriage must bring some extra weight to the queen’s faction to tip the balance of power in her favor. Before Princess Isabelle’s betrothal, it was assumed that Margareta would try to marry Julio to the daughter of one of her more powerful enemies and thus shift the balance of power. There were several of them just waiting for the right bribe to switch sides.”
Isabelle’s brows furrowed. “I was told that all the other candidates were unsuitable, too young, or too old, or too close in blood.”
Divelo said, “In politics fault is where you find it. There were several women, second cousins, who might have been chosen, had they not been vetoed by the Temple.”
“You mean Kantelvar?” Isabelle asked.
Divelo shrugged. “The bull came from the Omnifex. Whether Kantelvar wrested it out of him or not, I cannot say.”
Jean-Claude said, “Seems to me, Isabelle brings the entire weight of l’Empire Céleste to the queen’s faction.”
Divelo raised one hand, palm up, and made a balancing gesture. “Perhaps, although I must say the choice … pardon me, Highness, but the choice of an outsider is still … controversial. If it played well, it might add weight, or it might cause the whole side to collapse.”
“How does the king fit into all this?” Isabelle asked. “Whose side is he on?”
Don Divelo spent a moment rubbing his second chin before answering. “Until King Carlemmo fell ill, he seemed to favor Alejandro, or at least he tended to side with his elder son against his second wife on the occasions when their domestic disputes became political.”
“And what about Príncipe Julio?” Isabelle asked. “Does he have a part, or is he merely a pawn to these greater players?”
Divelo shifted his great weight uneasily and said, “When Julio was first told of the arrangement of his marriage, he was…” Divelo groped for a sufficiently neutral term.
“Less than enthusiastic,” Isabelle supplied; she was the only one in the room who politely could.
Divelo cleared his throat. “To be clear, he offered no disrespect to Your Highness, but he thought that the marital strategy his mother proposed was ill advised. He preferred a more conventional approach. Odd for a man who is so frequently unconventional, but he hasn’t been the same since his accident, and he seems to have capitulated to his mother on that topic.”
“What accident?” Isabelle asked, alarmed.
Divelo’s eyebrows lifted. “His hunting accident, last Hoarwinter. Has nobody told you? He and his squire were out coursing red deer in the Slatefinger mountains when they got separated from the hunting party and fell into a crevasse. The squire was killed and Julio was badly wounded, his leg smashed. By the time they got him out, he had the drowning lung. He lost part of his leg and much of his strength. It took him months to rise from bed, and the debility has made him more sullen and temperamental.”
Isabelle was appalled. Was she the one being sold damaged goods? No, that was not fair. A missing leg did not make a man any less a man, any more than a wormfinger made her less a woman. Yet such an injury had to come as a great shock to a man’s soul, especially for such a young man, two years her junior, who had not reached the natural apex of his physical prowess.
“I was told he was one of the greatest swordsmen in Aragoth,” she said.
“Before the accident, perhaps,” Divelo allowed. “Since then, he does
not get about much. The leg, you see.”
Isabelle shook her head, trying to rearrange her as yet unsubstantiated imaginings of her future husband. Why hadn’t Kantelvar told her this? Sadly, the artifex was not here to be questioned.
“This is beside the point,” Vincent said. “Assuming that the musketeer has not been misled, the question becomes how to deal with Duque Diego.”
Divelo said, “Unless you have more proof than the testimony of this musketeer, I suggest diplomacy.”
“We should warn Queen Margareta,” Isabelle said. If the queen was Isabelle’s chief advocate in Aragoth, she had to be apprised of this treachery within her own ranks. She addressed Don Divelo directly. “May I trouble you to carry this news to the queen for me?”
Divelo considered that for an extended moment. “My duty is to the king, but I think, in this, your desire and his would be congruous. I shall attend to it immediately.” He made a bobble that passed for a bow in the crowded chamber and then backed out the door.
The gathering broke up. Isabelle made farewells to the captains as they departed for their ships and then took herself to the galleon’s quarterdeck to clear her head. There was more intrigue in Aragoth than she had imagined, and she had imagined a great deal. She needed to get to the bottom of Duque Diego, but she didn’t have enough information to work with. Also, she had just impulsively sent her best source of information to be decanted first by a woman who apparently had Isabelle’s betrothed under her majestic thumb. Though perhaps that was not such a bad thing; when Divelo came back, Isabelle could ask him what questions Margareta had posed to him.
Isabelle clipped herself to a line and leaned against the railing. The sun had disappeared beyond the clouded horizon and a million stars danced overhead. A million million. All around her, the deep sky closed in, milky clouds coalescing from the abyss below and spreading out in a great blanket until it seemed the Santa Anna sailed on a great lake of mist. The wind had lessened and the ship seemed to stroll rather than bound across the pearlescent surface.
An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel Page 14
