An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  “How may we help you, Sergeant?” DuJournal asked.

  “Señors, the queen commands your presence. You are requested to accompany me.”

  Jean-Claude patted his jacket, causing clouds of dust to fly up. “If you are sure Her Majesty would appreciate being exposed to us in this disheveled state.”

  No hesitation. “It will not be a problem, señors.”

  Damn. Jean-Claude had not expected to escape the audience, but the alacrity with which the guard disposed of the usual assiduously enforced niceties was alarming. They allowed themselves to be led briskly into the heart of the royal wing. Servants of various types scurried on their errands like mice with a cat on the prowl. By now the whole staff must have known of el rey’s downturn. The usual buzz of a busy household had been reduced to frantic whispers.

  They came soon to the gold-inlaid outer doors of an audience chamber. A pair of guards divested them of weapons. The doors opened onto a room that was small only in comparison to the scale of the citadel. Mirrors inset in doorwaylike arches in the walls managed to make it look labyrinthine and busier than it was.

  Queen Margareta, already draped in voluminous robes of mourning black, sat on a throne atop a dais. The false Príncipe Julio sat to her left. His wooden posture could not quite contain a nervous twitch in his fingers. On Margareta’s right stood a thin man with a waxed mustache and a red doublet. He had the silver eyes of a Glasswalker, but his skin was dark and mottled. A wide nose and thick lips gave the impression of a wider man pressing out from within a skinnier one. His hand rested lightly on the pommel of his sword. There were more guards than a friendly audience required, and more than a diplomatic audience would have allowed, and their postures were close and aggressive.

  Jean-Claude’s pulse thudded harder. He and DuJournal were marched forward by a pair of flanking guards until they reached the foot of the dais. DuJournal bowed to Margareta, pointedly ignoring Julio, a fact which neither of them seemed inclined to protest. Jean-Claude probably should have made some obeisance, but his stiff neck was acting up. He folded his arms across his chest.

  Margareta said, “Lord Martin DuJournal. You and your accomplice, the Célestial musketeer Jean-Claude, stand before us today guilty of conspiracy and treason against the crown of Aragoth.”

  DuJournal looked surprised, but was it contrived or real? From his angle, Jean-Claude could not tell. His own response was muted by his expectation that something like this was going to happen. The king was dying and neither side of the succession debate was likely to pass up the chance to blame it on the other. Even if the king had been hit by lightning, some culpability would have been invented and weaponized. The only question was why Margareta had chosen this venue to make this accusation. It was a private audience, therefore not intended to make a political point, and yet if not to make a political point, why go through the motions? She could have had the both of them rounded up and thrown into prison or executed on the spot. In the chaos that was brewing, two extra corpses would hardly be noticed.

  DuJournal said, “Perhaps Your Majesty would care to explain—”

  “The king, my husband, is dying, and it has been discovered that your patron, Princesa Xaviera, is the murderess. She was caught red-handed this afternoon dripping vile poison into the king’s unconscious mouth. She has confessed her crime and further revealed that she was acting at the behest of her husband, who was carrying out the program himself before he was dismissed from the capital.”

  DuJournal held together fairly well under this onslaught of slander and lies. “That is tragic, Majesty, but what has it to do with me?”

  “You are the disgraced princesa’s agent, the go-between by which she keeps in contact with her traitorous husband.”

  DuJournal huffed in disbelief. “As you said yourself, he was sent away. Furthermore he is a Glasswalker; he can contact her any time he wants.”

  “But he did not leave. His ship was intercepted this morning and boarded, and he was found to be missing. The captain of the ship confessed that Príncipe Alejandro had departed the ship soon after it set sail, returning to San Augustus in direct defiance of the king’s command. He is now hiding somewhere within the city, making plans to contest my son’s rightful ascension to the throne. Xaviera confessed that she was using you to spy on the royal court for him. For that you are condemned to death.”

  DuJournal said, “Your Majesty, I mislike your idea of a trial. Even a saint could not defend himself against such a nebulous allegation. What message do you think I carried and when? Where is your proof?”

  Jean-Claude did his best to be invisible. As vile as Margareta’s lies were, they were a masterpiece of the form, outrageous enough to be interesting, plausible enough to be believable, grounded with facts at the periphery even while being vaporous at the center. It was almost a pity they were wasted on an audience that knew better, though perhaps Margareta meant to use DuJournal as a sounding board to test for holes in her narrative.

  “Silence!” Margareta snapped. “A trial for a foreign spy, and one guilty of attempted regicide? Preposterous. The only reason you live is you may yet have some minor utility.”

  “Let me guess: you want me to fetch Príncipe Alejandro for you, as if I knew where he was.”

  Jean-Claude crowed inside at the thought. With a little luck and a well-greased tongue, he might walk out of here in DuJournal’s shadow with a mission to help him find himself.

  “If you do not know, then you will find out, and when you do, tell Príncipe Alejandro that his beloved wife has been placed in the Hellshard, and will remain there until he submits to justice and confesses his crimes against the kingdom.”

  DuJournal took a half step back, and his face went so pale that even the dust on his cheeks looked dark in comparison. An inarticulate gurgle rose in his throat.

  Jean-Claude had heard of the Hellshard, a bit of quondam sorcery left over from the Primus Mundi. It was supposed to be an implement of unspeakable torture, and the mere mention of it had winded Alejandro. Unfortunately, the queen’s right-hand man also noted this, and with a flick of his wrist he impelled two pairs of guards to brace DuJournal and Jean-Claude’s arms up behind their backs. It was all Jean-Claude could do to resist twisting from their grip and making a fight of it, but there were ten of them, all professionals. Perhaps if he were ten years younger, he would have tried it, and if he were twenty years younger he might have succeeded, but four decades of hard use blunted any edge he had once possessed.

  Instead, he let out a piteous whimper and slumped to his knees. “Mercy!” The guards relaxed their grip rather than be dragged down with him.

  “Felix?” asked the queen.

  The silver-eyed swordsman stalked toward DuJournal like a cat. “Surely you saw his pain, Majesty, when you spoke of Xaviera’s fate. No indifferent hireling is he.”

  Jean-Claude said, “You put a woman in the Hellshard. Did you expect him to be indifferent?” His best chance of getting out of here was still in DuJournal’s wake.

  “You were,” Felix pointed out, though without taking his mirrored eyes off DuJournal.

  “I’m a well-known degenerate. Too many years of hearing bad news gives one scar tissue on the soul.”

  Felix ignored him and pressed in on DuJournal until they were nearly nose to nose, or at least nose to chin, for DuJournal was that much taller. From a metal pouch on his belt, he withdrew a ring. It was the size of a splayed hand and looked to be made of a flat black stone. He brought it up to eye level. DuJournal’s gaze fixed on it.

  Felix smiled a razor of a smile and said, “And would sir care to know that I put la princesa in the Hellshard myself? That I poked her hand through this key ring and watched her unravel like an old sock as it drew her in? Oh, how she screamed. ‘Alejandro! Alejandro!’”

  DuJournal surged against his captors’ grasp. “Bastard!”

  As quick as a striking snake, Felix’s opposite hand whipped out with a slender chain of dark, jagged-looking metal
and looped it around DuJournal’s throat. When the two ends touched, DuJournal’s face blurred like fresh ink smeared across a page and then washed away, revealing another face, swarthy, strong jawed, and mirror eyed, beneath.

  Felix stepped back and made a flourish like a sculptor unveiling a statue. “Behold, Your Majesty, my design has worked even better than I anticipated. Cold iron trumps glamour and reveals the bait as the prize. Sometimes the old methods are the best.”

  The false Príncipe Julio cringed back in his seat, but Margareta leaned forward, her face stern but her eyes shining gleefully. “Well done, Felix. This is better than I could have hoped for. Truly we have the Builder’s own blessing.”

  Alejandro settled but did not sag. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes burned. “Traitress. Murderess. Do not think you will sit easy on your stolen throne.”

  “Silence. There is no one left to contend with. You will confess to treason and regicide before the Sacred Hundred or your wife will remain in the Hellshard until her very soul is flayed to ribbons.”

  Felix held the stone ring up to his ear and said, “Even now I can hear her wailing.”

  From there the negotiations proceeded with a gut-wrenching efficiency. Both players had seen the endgame and nothing remained but to play it out, and for Alejandro to hope for Margareta to make some inattentive mistake. He said, “And what guarantees do I have that you will release her if I do what you say?”

  Margareta smiled thinly. “The Hellshard will only hold one person at a time.”

  “Take her out now, hold her someplace else if you must, and I will do as you say.”

  “You are in no position to bargain,” Margareta said. “You will do as you are told, and you will be grateful for our mercy. If you offer any resistance—any at all—we will leave Xaviera in there until her soul is rendered unto dust and blown away in the wind.”

  Alejandro sagged, daunted if not defeated. “Assemble the Hundred,” he said.

  Margareta leaned back in her seat. “In time. My husband is not dead yet, and it would strain credulity to punish you for an incomplete crime. You will be held in solitude until he breathes his last, which may yet be several days.”

  “But Xaviera—” Alejandro cut himself off.

  “There will likely be little left of her by then,” Margareta purred. “Unless, of course, you choose to expedite the matter. If so, you will be led to Carlemmo’s chambers and a dagger provided for the purpose.”

  Jean-Claude had never seen such mortal horror on a man still standing upright. Alejandro might have absorbed defeat, even disgrace, but this wickedness overwhelmed him.

  “My father—” he choked.

  “Is dying anyway,” Margareta said. “Slaying him now does him a mercy, saves your pretty wife’s soul, and prevents the kingdom tearing itself apart in open war. It is in fact a noble sacrifice you make, one life for thousands.”

  “Three lives at least,” Jean-Claude said. “Carlemmo’s, yours, and Xaviera’s, because if you think Margareta is going to let any of you live—”

  A soldier’s boot slammed into Jean-Claude’s stomach. Pain doubled him over and he vomited on the parquetry.

  While he was heaving his guts, Margareta said, “Dispose of him. The whole world will know how Grand Leon conspired with Alejandro in this murder.”

  Jean-Claude forced himself to laugh. Margareta was an imaginative liar, but she was too impatient. More importantly, she thought she was better at it than anybody else.

  Not so, Jean-Claude swore. Aloud he said, “Yes, go ahead and dispose of me. Slay the only man who can save your scheme from disaster.”

  Margareta scoffed at him. “Kick him again. Harder.”

  The kick was harder, but this time Jean-Claude was ready and curled himself around the boot. “Have you not wondered about your great enemy, the one who slew your pet artifex and Isabelle on the same night?” As close as he could figure it, Kantelvar had been the driving force behind Margareta’s schemes, perhaps nurturing her native ambition into the monstrous thing it had become. His sudden absence had been like stripping the muzzle off a vicious dog.

  “Harder!”

  The kicker aimed at Jean-Claude’s head, but he took most of it on his forearm.

  “I know where he is!”

  The kicker lined up for another go at Jean-Claude’s head, but Margareta stayed him with a flick of her fingers.

  “Where?”

  Jean-Claude took his time pushing up to his knees. “The Naval Orrery.”

  “Where at the orrery? Who is he?”

  “The orrery is how I will find him. The who is a subject for further negotiation.” Because I am inventing this as I go.

  Felix said, “Pay him no heed, Majesty. He is only trying to save his pale, ugly hide.”

  “Quite correct, Majesty,” Jean-Claude said. “I am trying to save my skin. That is why I came here today. After Isabelle’s death, my life is forfeit if I return to l’Empire Céleste. I therefore seek employment elsewhere. Aragoth is the most prosperous kingdom in the world, and is likely to remain so if it can avoid tearing itself apart in civil war. And you, Majesty, are the most powerful patron in the kingdom. I therefore thought to win your favor with a gift, but what gift suits a queen, except perhaps her greatest enemy’s head on a pike? Alas, instead of gladness and honor, I am met with scorn and abuse.”

  Alejandro looked at him askance, and Jean-Claude could only hope the man was as honorable as he seemed.

  Felix said, “Your Majesty, trust not the traitor. One who has betrayed another will betray you as well.”

  Jean-Claude smiled inwardly, for arguing about his character was infinitely easier than arguing about his facts; character was such a pliable thing. “And whom have I betrayed, sirrah? My disgrace comes not from disloyalty but from defeat. Protecting Isabelle was my singular duty and I failed, as any man may do. Alas, Grand Leon is not merciful toward merely human frailty and I have no wish to serve him as a bloodhollow. Queen Margareta is said to be more pragmatic, and more in need of allies. Thus I seek an elegant solution, securing a new position for myself by means of revenge on the man who robbed me of Isabelle and you of Kantelvar.”

  Margareta said, “Who is this enemy you speak of?”

  “You mean your lapdog here hasn’t told you?” Jean-Claude pointed at Felix with his nose. “Surely with all the resources at his disposal, he could have done more in the last four days than capture poor Xaviera.”

  Felix’s face darkened with anger, but Margareta said, “Felix’s actions are not at issue here. Nor will I tolerate any more circumlocutions. Answer the questions put to you or die.”

  “Does that mean I won’t die if I do answer?” Jean-Claude said.

  “That depends how well we like the answers.”

  “That hardly seems fair. I can only guarantee truth, not happiness.”

  “The name. Now!”

  “As you wish, though the name alone will do you no good.” And now the big gamble. Every good con involved making the mark think he’d figured out the trick. The question was how much the queen knew about Kantelvar’s most recent activities. “Thornscar.”

  The queen scowled, but the hitherto-silent Príncipe Julio started in his seat.

  Jean-Claude addressed the false príncipe. “I see Your Highness recognizes the name.” If Jean-Claude guessed aright, Kantelvar had tapped him to play the part of the fictional assassin when he hired Nufio to murder Jean-Claude. An assassin with a limp, and bodyguards.

  Margareta wheeled in her seat. “You knew about this? You!”

  Julio shrank from her anger. “No. I mean I know the name, but I did not know this.” Cautiously, like a male spider approaching a hungry female, he leaned toward the queen and whispered urgently in her ear. Jean-Claude could not imagine Kantelvar would have trusted such a cringing creature with the truth, only with the cover story.

  Margareta’s eyes narrowed and then rounded. She brushed Julio away and returned her attention to Jean-Claude,
watching him over steepled, pudgy fingers. “Tell me about this Thornscar.”

  Jean-Claude held his glee close and tight; the hook was set. “There’s not much to tell. The name itself seems to be a nom de guerre. He is a man who had a grudge against Kantelvar and all his works, including Isabelle’s marriage. The only other target I know of is a man I haven’t been able to track down yet. At least I assume Clìmacio is a man’s name.”

  The false príncipe, now fully absorbed in the conversation, did not manage to suppress a twitch at the mention of that name. Score one for Adel, bless her.

  “I suggest, therefore, that your best and simplest option is to use this unfortunate individual as bait in a trap.”

  “Clìmacio is dead,” Clìmacio said. “He died months ago.”

  “Ahh,” Jean-Claude said, contriving to look disappointed. “So much for the simple solution.”

  Margareta said, “You claim to know where this assassin is.”

  “No. I claim to know how to find him, but for that I will need the Naval Orrery.”

  “And how do you intend to use it?”

  “To find his ship, of course.”

  “He is lying,” Felix said. “He should not be let out of this room with blood in his body.”

  Jean-Claude glared at Felix. “Thornscar killed Isabelle, and I will see him dead! By my hand!” He returned his attention to Margareta. “In this, our causes align perfectly. Let me slay this man for you.”

  Margareta tapped her fingertips together, and Jean-Claude bit down hard on his tongue. He could do no work on the queen that she could not do better herself. She must have been going mad trying to figure out who had apparently killed Kantelvar, and now her false prince had confirmed that the assailant was real. And what if she refused? There were still ten guards in the room. If he could take the man behind him in the throat, he could snare the man’s sword. And how would Alejandro react? That he had not yet tried to sell Jean-Claude’s secrets for his wife’s safety was hopeful.