An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  In spite of the fire and the fear of the day, or perhaps because of it, the vision struck a silver chord in her breast. She stared into the distance, trying to drink in the tableau, to absorb it and be absorbed by it. She had looked into the sky many times. Sometimes she had cast her dreams across it to strange and distant lands. Sometimes she pondered its elemental composition and the organization of its aetheric forms. But never had she stood within it and seen it for itself, austere and beautiful, without need for interpretation or understanding.

  “I could live here,” she murmured.

  “Princess,” Jean-Claude called, making his way heavily up the stairs behind her.

  She turned to see him clamp himself to the quarterdeck’s forward railing.

  “A word with you, if you please,” he said. “And could you not stand so close to the edge?”

  “I’m perfectly safe,” she said, or at least as safe as she was ever likely to be with disaffected nobles and a homicidal sorcerer trying to kill her. But Jean-Claude clearly had no ship legs—he kept trying to fight the motion of the ship, as if he could force it to stay level by applying counter-pressure to every wobble—so she unclipped herself and glided to him, attaching herself instead to the mizzenmast.

  In a low voice, she asked, “What else do you have to report that you avoided telling the council of captains?”

  Jean-Claude fumbled with his belt clip and finally got it to attach to the safety line, then he looked her in the face and said, “Only one thing. It was your brother who put that mirror on the ship.”

  Isabelle was aghast. Even from Guillaume, she could scarcely believe it. “But why? Even if he loathes me, he has nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

  “I believe he was trying to do a favor for his wife, and I believe that she did not know the nature of what was planned. After all, who would trust Arnette with such information? They were more concerned with winning favors from Duque Diego than with dispatching you.”

  “What did you do to him?” she asked, morbidly curious and terrified of the answer.

  Jean-Claude grinned through the pall of sky sickness that obscured his usual good humor. “The very worst thing I could think of. I bested him in battle and then let him go. If he has the slightest sense at all, he’ll try to distance himself from the whole matter. He certainly can’t tell your father about it.”

  “And if he hadn’t been my brother?” Isabelle asked.

  Jean-Claude shrugged and tried to look insouciant. “I think these plots are tangled enough without confusing them with further suppositions.”

  Isabelle’s mouth twisted in a non-smile at this transparent evasion, but she let the matter drop. Jean-Claude defended her with extreme prejudice, but there was no point in forcing him to confess how extreme.

  * * *

  Isabelle and her ladies had retired to her cabin for the night, though the day’s excitement lingered and nobody seemed inclined to sleep. Five out of six women, including Marie, had exchanged dresses for nightgowns. The sixth, Valérie, was out strolling the deck with Vincent, much to the delight of the other ladies, who had been running low on gossip. Isabelle wondered if she shouldn’t put a stop to the liaison or try to use it to bend Vincent to her service, but she knew how much she hated being used that way. If you couldn’t gain someone’s loyalty without twisting their affections, then you couldn’t get it at all.

  The ladies embroidered and chattered, making small talk and wild conjectures, while Isabelle immersed herself in a thick book of Aragothic history, which sadly consisted mostly of a chronology of battles, as if the only debates that mattered were the armed kind. There was some mention of marriages with an eye toward their territorial value, but nothing of any philosophical interest. Still, she dedicated herself to committing as much of it to memory as possible, as any responsible would-be queen ought.

  “Would-be queen.” Those words were fraught with complications that she had not even begun to unravel, not the least of which was that Aragoth already had, in Margareta, a queen who was relatively young, healthy, and ambitious. Divelo’s description had painted a picture of a formidable woman who seemed intent on keeping power for herself rather than handing it over to her son. Of course, that was only Isabelle’s interpretation of one man’s opinion delivered during a discussion of a different topic.

  So what did Margareta think of Isabelle? It occurred to Isabelle that one more reason Margareta might have chosen Isabelle as her son’s bride was because, as a foreigner, she would be isolated, out of place, and easier to dominate. Or it could just be that Isabelle’s own filial experience had given her an incredibly jaded view of parental relationships.

  She’d left a porthole cracked open, and a chill breeze played across her naked arms in a tingling counterpoint to the heat of the alchemical lanterns that burned and buzzed over the desk. She held the book open with her right arm. Her wormfinger, unbound from any glove, curled and uncurled of its own volition, forever like a separate animal trapped in her flesh and striving to escape.

  Returning her attention to the history book, she made a note to herself to be very careful when dealing with the Aragothic border lords, for they had long been at odds with their Célestial counterparts. During the century of occupation by the Skaladin hordes, Célestial barons had wasted no opportunity to gobble up Aragothic lands on the pretext of keeping them out of the hands of the heretics. Most of those territories l’Empire still held, even a hundred years after the Skaladin had been driven out.

  She tapped her finger on the name of a province, El Bosque de Dolores, and tried to remember where she’d heard it before. Perhaps if the hour were not so late and the surface of her mind not so turbulent, the information would have come to her. According to the text, it had been wrested from l’Empire before the Skaladin invasion and was rightly proud of never having yielded to the endless enemy. There was a précis of a decisive battle, the death of someone called the Silver Baron, and then nothing much else. On the next page was the start of another war. She combed the fingers of her good hand through her short shock of unbound hair and tried to be interested.

  A rapping on the door intruded into her thoughts. Valérie’s voice squeezed through the cracks: “Highness. Don Divelo has returned, and he has brought Queen Margareta.”

  * * *

  Flanked by Jean-Claude and Vincent, Isabelle paused outside Don Divelo’s cabin door to catch her breath. She smoothed her hastily donned skirts, nudged the combs that held her white wig in place, made sure her veil was fixed, and tried to keep panic from her heart. She had anticipated a swift response to her ill news about Duque Diego, but she had not expected a visit from the queen herself. She had planned to present herself to her future royal in-laws with grace, dignity, and all due ceremony in one of Aragoth’s fabled mirrored halls, not rushed, crushed, and crammed into Divelo’s cabin aboard a man-o-war.

  A guard in Aragoth’s royal livery stood before the door. His eyes were Glasswalker silver. He said, in poor la Langue, “Leave weapons.”

  Vincent bristled. “I am Princess Isabelle’s guard.”

  “I am Queen Margareta’s,” the guard rumbled.

  Jean-Claude shrugged, handed over his rapier, and thankfully refrained from saying anything sharp. Vincent reluctantly followed suit.

  The guard opened the door and announced, “La Princesa Isabelle.”

  Isabelle glided in, though she had to duck under the low lintel to do so.

  The queen had taken the captain’s chair as her throne. She wore full skirts of royal purple silk and satin, a like-colored bodice, and a short velvet jacket of a style Isabelle had no word for. Somewhere under there, a leviathanbone corset struggled mightily to keep an obviously matronly figure squeezed into a maidenly shape. Perhaps that was why she looked so dyspeptic … or perhaps the straining corset was soul distortion. Representing what state of mind? A silver net veiled her dark hair and every inch of her costume was festooned with constellations of silver embroidery, stitched opals,
and river pearls so that she looked like a goddess of night. She also wore her golden coronet, tilted aggressively forward, making this an official state audience.

  At her flanks stood two more royal guards, fully armed and armored with polished cuirasses of alchemetal steel, astronomically expensive but bulletproof. Before her, in courtly attendance, were all the remaining ship captains, their officers, and Don Divelo. No pickles had ever been packed so tightly.

  Space was cleared for Isabelle, who curtsied demurely, eyes downcast, to Queen Margareta. She did her best not to droop, or worse, drip, in the sweltering dark. She fought with the nervous thickness in her chest and breathed, “Your Majesty. I am honored by your visit.”

  Margareta’s voice was dry. “Really? I should think you would be terrified. So much of your future depends upon my goodwill, after all.”

  The queen’s observation struck deep and sharp, like a needle lancing a boil; Isabelle’s greatest fear was falling under the sway of another tyrant like her father.

  Isabelle gathered her wits and forced her unwilling mouth to move. “Honor is distinct from fear, Your Majesty, but not opposite to it.”

  “Kantelvar told me you were clever,” Margareta said. “He did not mention silver-tongued. Rise, girl. Let me get a look at you.”

  Isabelle stood and took the opportunity of being examined to return the scrutiny. Margareta’s skin was flawless, pale, and glowing. The queen’s silver eyes were flat in this light, and though her words had been friendly, her expression was closed. There were more etchings of anger around her eyes than of laughter, and her mouth was set in an unbending line.

  Margareta said, “In your own words, tell me of this assassin who affrighted you.”

  “I did not see him,” Isabelle said, “but I am made to understand that he gained access to the ship through a mirror placed aboard by an agent of Duque Diego.”

  The queen’s brow darkened. “And how do you come by that information? Begin at the beginning, leave nothing out.”

  In the stuffy, sweltering cabin, Isabelle told the story from the moment Jean-Claude had burst into her tour of the aetherkeel until his return from his mission to l’Île des Zephyrs.

  “And who was Diego’s Célestial agent?” Margareta asked when Isabelle failed to identify her brother.

  Isabelle’s pulse raced and she looked to Jean-Claude.

  “His name is … or rather was Hugh le Petit. He was a merchant, down on his luck and deep in debt.” Jean-Claude made a dismissive little wave as if that was all the explanation that was necessary.

  “I take it he is now beyond the reach of questioning,” Margareta said.

  “He did not respond well to interrogation,” Jean-Claude said.

  Margareta’s lips pursed and then she returned her attention to Isabelle. “It is a peculiar guest gift you have brought into our house, not at all customary. Most people bring poetry, or artwork, or quondam artifacts, but you, fair Princesa, lay at our feet a grave accusation against one of our great lords.”

  Isabelle did not miss Margareta’s usurpation of the royal pronoun; this was not a woman who looked forward to ceding power. Isabelle kept that thought to herself and said, “My apologies if I have acted inappropriately. I only provided the information I received.”

  “And do you trust the source of this information?” She pointed to Jean-Claude with her nose.

  Isabelle lifted her chin. “With my life.”

  “But is your life his only priority? He is a royal musketeer, his Célestial master’s personal lackey, and what better way to discommode us than to cast doubt on one of our most trusted nobles?”

  Jean-Claude’s brows drew down in a scowl, but he kept his tongue.

  Outrage on his behalf flared in Isabelle’s heart, and she had to tamp down her tone of voice. Stick to logic. It was her only tool. “This marriage is meant to sweeten relations between our nations, not sour them.”

  “Ah, but that is the beauty of this ploy. It covers l’Empire Céleste in a blanket of virtue. It shows that I can better trust my new foreign allies than my own nobles.”

  Isabelle’s heart twitched, but she understood Margareta’s fear. And how could she say the queen was wrong? Carefully she laid out the simplest truth she could manage. “I cannot speak for His Majesty, but neither I nor Jean-Claude wishes to disrupt the very faction we are attempting to join. This union is not low-hanging fruit to be risked for some greater prize.” At least she hoped it wasn’t.

  Margareta raised two fingers. “Peace, daughter-to-be. As it happens, we agree with your assessment. Diego opposes this marriage to the hilt, and the majority of our court agrees with him. Marrying our royal scion to the daughter of a different bloodline shatters all precedent, and that prospect terrifies them, especially in this time of uncertainty.

  “As of this moment, the opposition is disorganized, but any public accusation against Diego without ironclad proof to reinforce it will provide them with a rallying cry. We cannot allow that.” Her silver-eyed gaze bored into Isabelle’s as if trying to read her soul. “All our hopes depend on the success of your marriage. I only pray that your womb is not as temperamental as your mother’s.”

  Isabelle’s eyebrows twitched upward in surprise, but of course Margareta would have been apprised of la Comtesse des Zephyrs’s much maligned infertility; like mother like daughter, or so it was said. Still, that was a hypothesis that could only be tested experimentally … with a man she’d never met.

  Isabelle wound her courage up like a spring. She did not dare ask a favor, but a question … would Margareta take offense? “Majesty, if I may be so bold, does Príncipe Julio know any of this?”

  Margareta huffed. “Julio was present when Don Divelo presented his story to me. He agrees that we will deal with Diego … privately. It goes without saying that no one here will so much as breathe the name Diego to anyone in San Augustus, lest he be forewarned.”

  There was some shifting of weight amongst the captains but no protests, which was good because there wasn’t enough room in here for an argument.

  Emboldened, Isabelle aligned herself behind the wedge of her curiosity and gave a push. “May I make a request?” This didn’t have to rise to the level of a favor, she hoped.

  Margareta regarded her with the closed expression of a person who received thousands of petitions a day and said no to most of them. “What request is so small that you require it of me?”

  “Only a message to Príncipe Julio, from my lips to his ears. I look forward to meeting him.”

  Margareta’s expression relaxed. “Of course. You shall have your chance. In deference to your Célestial traditions, a great masquerade is being planned in honor of your arrival.”

  Surprise pulled a response from Isabelle’s lips. “But Artifex Kantelvar said tradition forbade a meeting.”

  Margareta said, “Kantelvar is … old-fashioned, an appropriate temperament for a cleric.”

  At the thought of being able to meet Julio before the wedding, delight bloomed in Isabelle’s breast, only to be blown away by a frigid wind of doubt. If Julio could meet her, why hadn’t he bothered to try? Why wasn’t he here? Kantelvar said he had opposed this marriage from the beginning. Perhaps he still did, and this indifference was his way of expressing it.

  * * *

  After the steaming closeness of the audience cabin, the chill night breeze slapped Isabelle’s face with fingers of ice. High thin clouds threaded their way through the glittering maze of stars. Isabelle did not return to her cabin. She was too keyed up to sleep and too tired to think. Instead, she made a circuit of the ship, climbing to the quarterdeck, crossing the stern, and then making her way forward. Her good hand absently occupied itself folding and unfolding the prosthetic digits covering her wormfinger. The closer she came to Aragoth, the more treacherous the path forward became. The queen’s faction was fractured; the queen herself burned with the sort of ambition that scorched anyone who came close; Isabelle’s betrothed was apparently a broke
n man who wanted nothing to do with her; and, oh, yes, people she had never met were trying to kill her.

  She reached the forecastle and leaned out over the forward rail, a position that would likely have given poor Jean-Claude fits. Would that she could just fly away, go somewhere nobody cared that she was a princess and only cared that she was Isabelle. There were several problems with that notion, of course, the first and most obvious being that she was not in control of where this ship was going. Even if that were of no issue, escape was a null set. If she ran away, people would look for her. If she managed to escape them … well, she’d spend the rest of her life holding her breath waiting for that condition to end.

  On her next circuit, she stopped before Captain Santiago and asked, “How long will it be until we reach San Augustus?”

  He said, “Two weeks, if the winds do not betray us.”

  Isabelle made an unladylike grunt. While she was cooped up on this ship, her enemies had two weeks to plan her demise. Of course, Margareta had said she would deal with Duque Diego privately, though what that entailed, Isabelle could not guess; it could be anything from a knife in the back to an exceptionally stern talking-to. And Kantelvar had said he intended to lay a trap for Thornscar, if the man was still alive.

  Isabelle resumed walking. There was so much going on, all out of reach. All being handled, or was there something she’d missed? She needed to sit down and sift it all. No, belay that. She needed to sleep, to let her mind rest and all the data settle. Then she needed to figure out what questions she should be asking.

  * * *

  The next morning, Isabelle sat on the Santa Anna’s quarterdeck, charcoal stick in her left hand and easel erected before her. The early sun warmed her back through half a dozen layers of clothing. The cool breeze caressed her face but found no loose strand of hair with which to cavort. Even her hair was a prisoner to fashion and tradition, a captive denied parole.