An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  Isabelle shuddered with a wave of returning sensation, her whole body tingling and aching. Julio, similarly swaddled, smiled at her and sat up. She returned his admiration and allowed him to help her up. Gretl sat nearby, fast asleep in a wooden armchair.

  “How do you feel?” Julio asked.

  Isabelle took an inventory of sensations. “Tired, hungry, bladder sore. And you?”

  His smile faded. “When Kantelvar originally approached my father with the idea of bringing in a foreign princess to marry, I objected. It was against all tradition and it reeked of intrigue. I … Since meeting you I have come to the conclusion that was a mistake, and I would like to withdraw my opposition.”

  Isabelle’s pulse fluttered just a little at this very indirect proposal, and yet it also left a chill. She scuffed the ground with her toe.

  “When Kantelvar first came to my father with this proposal, or at least when I first found out about it, I saw it as my escape, my one golden chance to get away from my father. He was the worst villain in the world, or at least my world. I could not have imagined what Kantelvar turned out to be, or what he had in mind for me, to bear the Savior. Even if not for the danger of mixing bloodlines as … complex as ours, I am reluctant to carry on his plan without him. I want to give birth to a child, not a god or an abomination.”

  Julio chuckled softly. “Judging by the ladies in court, you’d think all children were both saints and monsters.”

  “True,” Isabelle said, momentarily distracted by visions of screaming, laughing squalling sub-adults. “Growing up seems a bit like taking an average of the extremes.” And if she couched it in mathematical terms, so what? If Julio wanted to marry her, he was going to have to accept her philosophical pursuits.

  Julio said, “Besides, now we know the purity doctrine is false. The saints mixed bloodlines all the time. And those crosses that created you brought back a sorcery long thought dead.”

  “A sorcery that many will feel marks me as the Breaker’s get.” She gave him a calculating look. “Or are you hoping that Kantelvar’s prophecy really will come true, and you will be the father of the Savior?”

  Julio recoiled. “Saints spare me, no.”

  Isabelle pulled a blanket around her shoulders as a shawl against the cold, damp cistern air. “Then why do you want to marry me? Aside from the fact that you no longer find me objectionable?”

  “Because you are special. You saved a kingdom and stopped a war. You gave me my life back, and my brother. We make a good team.”

  “Tight allies in a narrow ditch, as Jean-Claude would say, but most of life isn’t like that—at least I hope it isn’t. Most of life is just getting through the day.” She paused, changing her tack. “A month ago I would have married you sight unseen. Except it wouldn’t have been you, just some vague dream of you; anything was better than what I had. Yet now that I’ve known you all of twelve hours, it seems I don’t know you at all.”

  Julio pinched his chin in thought. He paced in a slow circle around the reflecting pool. When he reached his starting point he gazed into her eyes with such intensity that she felt suddenly naked before him. Her cheeks burned, and it was all she could do to keep her expression steady. No one had ever looked at her that way before.

  “Yes?” she prompted, keeping the quaver out of her voice.

  “One year,” he said. “You want time and I will give it to you. Time to think about children, time to decide what you want, time to hear other offers. Not for one whole year will I ask you to marry me. I can’t make the same promise for anyone else, of course, and I imagine that you will be besieged by suitors, but that is a risk I am willing to take if, at the end of one year, you will consent to hear my offer.”

  Isabelle’s spirit lifted, ebullient, as the pressure of commitment withdrew.

  “Thank you,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him in a great hug, grabbing her stump with her good hand for a firmer grip even as her spark-hand passed through him. How lovely it would be to have time to think, to reason, to get to know someone, to be friends.

  And when he brushed his lips across hers, it was but a question, ever so politely asked. And because this was her time to do as she desired rather than as she ought, she parted her mouth for him. His lips caressed hers and her whole skin seemed on the verge of melting. Oh saints. She’d never felt anything like that before. Her toes curled in delight and she twined his dark curls around her fingers, luxuriating in the springy silk of them.

  “All those men you say will try to court me,” she teased. “They’ll say you’re getting an unfair head start.”

  “They would be right,” he said.

  * * *

  A thick, slow wind tugged at Jean-Claude’s hat and hair as he escorted his most recent charge along the quay overlooking the endless drop beneath the harbor of San Augustus. The greenish fog of the Miasma veiled the thunder-shot layer of the Galvanosphere, and below that the Gloom. His leg ached, and his skin itched madly from all his recent scars, but he was finally done with the cursed crutches. Yes, he’d probably always have a bit of a limp, but he’d be damned if he’d carry a cane like some decrepit old man. Elder. Graybeard. No. Not yet.

  “Mind the edge,” he said to Marie, who had stopped to stare down at the catch boats on their daily drop into the cloudy shoals. She wasn’t really close to the drop, but he was in a mind to be careful with the white girl.

  Pure white. The process that had relieved Marie of the bloodhollow curse and given her back her mind and soul had also drained her entirely of color. She was white from the soles of her feet to the fringes of her hair. The irises of her eyes, her lips, and her tongue as well. She made new snow look grungy by comparison. What’s more, she had no shadow at all. Darkness did not seem to stick to her unless she was completely immersed in it, so in all but the blackest night, she shone like the white moon, Kore.

  It had been Isabelle’s idea to put Jean-Claude in her dark room to give her company while they both convalesced, and he had spent many hours telling her stories of the years she’d missed, and of Isabelle’s long hunt for a cure for her condition. She had proven to be a good audience, if a rather ghostly one. Her face never changed from its doll-like expression and her voice was a monotone. Yet she asked questions and drew his stories on. He kept having to remind himself that, mentally speaking, she was only twelve years old, though she was catching up quickly. She still had a perfect memory and could recall any conversation word for word.

  “I’ve never seen so many boats,” she said in her hollow ghostly whisper. “There was never such a fleet on l’Île des Zephyrs.”

  “This is one of the biggest harbors in the world,” Jean-Claude said.

  Marie watched the ships and gulls wheel for a few more moments. The shouts of men, the rustle of wind grappling with ropes and sails, and the cry of the birds echoed up and down the harbor’s walls.

  “How is your leg?” she asked in that same wispy voice.

  “Subsiding nicely,” he said stiffly. What was the world coming to when young women were stopping to let him catch his breath?

  She resumed her stroll, falling in beside him as if he were leading, and they progressed in companionable silence around the great curve of the harbor toward the dock where Princess Isabelle, newly minted special envoy of l’Empire Céleste in the matter of what was being dubbed the Grand Peace, made ready to set sail on her first diplomatic errand to sort out some disputes amongst border nobles.

  Jean-Claude shuddered in his boots at the thought of another week aloft but dared not protest, lest Isabelle decide he was not required. With Príncipe Julio stuck like a barnacle to her hip, what need had she for poor old Jean-Claude? Once she got that idea in her head, who knew where it would lead?

  About halfway around the long arc of the quay, they passed the gibbets. A long spar of rock extended out over the deeps. A row of cages hung beneath it, and in the farthest of these slumped the corpse of Margareta, the traitor queen. After her stint in the Hellshar
d, her trial had been little more than a recounting of the facts against her. By popular outcry, the newly crowned King Alejandro had been compelled to sentence her to death by exposure, rather than some cleaner, more humane execution.

  Indeed, Julio’s and Clìmacio’s stated desire not to be forced to sentence their own mother to death was one of the official reasons Alejandro had been proclaimed king, and why his first act was to absolve them and the rest of their family of blame in the matter.

  Jean-Claude had to admit that Isabelle was spinning a wonderful story to put the country back together, one where just about everyone could wash the blood from their hands and cleanse the stain from their reputations. He could not have done better. He could not have made the lies true. The student had surpassed the master. She doesn’t need me anymore. But that was what was supposed to happen, wasn’t it? Children were supposed to grow up. They were supposed to surpass their teachers. Otherwise, what was the point?

  But then what happens to the master?

  He and Marie reached the end of the quay, or rather the beginning of the maelstrom of activity surrounding Isabelle’s ship. Longshoremen, porters, and sailors of all descriptions bustled about like so many oversized ants, but the crowd parted before him, and he led Marie toward Isabelle’s coach.

  “Monsieur musketeer!” called a fruity voice. Jean-Claude turned to greet Hugo du Blain, whose sense of fashion still made extravagant demands on the silkworms of the world while offering no concessions at all to practicality.

  The ambassador had Felix in tow. The dead queen’s ex-lieutenant stood at rigid attention, pinned in place by du Blain’s bloodshadow, his face a mask of despair and desolation. For having killed Grand Leon’s emissary, Felix had been condemned to replace him. Delivering him to Grand Leon would be du Blain’s task.

  And what fate awaited Jean-Claude when he stood before Grand Leon at the end of this voyage? The only certainty was that he had to present himself to his master of his own free will and on his own two feet, or else risk bringing shame on himself, on his fellow King’s Own Musketeers, and on Isabelle.

  Du Blain turned to Jean-Claude and said, “Jean-Claude, I began to despair of your arrival. His Imperial Majesty has a message for you.”

  Jean-Claude’s stomach dropped and tried to hide behind his liver. Was Grand Leon going to condemn him at a distance without a further hearing? There was no reason not to. Why, after all, should he believe anything Jean-Claude had to say at this point?

  Jean-Claude forced himself to smile and asked, “And what message would that be?”

  Du Blain cocked a very odd smile at him. “He said, and I quote, ‘We don’t have that much horse shit.’ I don’t suppose that means anything to you?”

  It took Jean-Claude several minutes to stop laughing. At last he wiped the tears from his eyes and said, “Tell him his command is my wish.” After all, what choice did he have?

  The ambassador chuckled. “I will give him your words exactly.”

  “Jean-Claude! Marie!” Isabelle hailed them, waving with her star-shot arm. One of Jean-Claude’s prouder moments during the many diplomatic sessions it had taken to establish Aragoth’s new government was convincing the Temple legate, the newly minted Aragothic artifex, that Isabelle’s l’Étincelle sorcery was really nothing more than an unexpected by-product of the metal cap that sheathed her stump, a cap that had been bestowed on her by a Temple artifex. It certainly couldn’t be a noncanonical sorcery; she had after all been declared unhallowed by a Temple hormougant. Isabelle had squealed with delight when Jean-Claude had presented her with an official document declaring her new arm theologically benign.

  That wouldn’t stop the fearful and the superstitious from condemning her, but it took away their official sanction to commit violence against her. No doubt the next elected Omnifex would choke on that designation, but those were problems for the future.

  Isabelle rushed up and gathered both Marie and Jean-Claude in with extremely improper but heartfelt hugs. “Great news. Xaviera is up and walking!”

  Jean-Claude grinned, and Marie said tonelessly, “That is good news.” The whole kingdom had been hanging on news of her recovery, as if her improvement were some sort of barometer for Aragoth as a whole. First she had followed her attendants around the room with her gaze, and then she had called for Alejandro. And then she had accepted a very small number of visitors, and now a month on she had finally left her bed. Nobody knew what she’d been through; even mentioning the Hellshard threw her into fits of hysterical shrieking. The first time that happened Alejandro had promptly thrown the horrid thing off the sky cliff and persuaded the Sacred Hundred to pass a law against torture in all its forms.

  Isabelle went on to other news. “I’ve got an idea about how to approach that border dispute between Conde Sancho and le Baron de Soumans…”

  Jean-Claude’s smile kept growing as she gabbled. Isabelle was in her element here. She’d finally found room to grow and she was filling it as rapidly as possible. If she had less use for him than before, it was only because she had grown so much stronger.

  “The ship is just about ready to get under way,” Isabelle said. “Could you two help Gretl with my crates? There are volatiles in them, and I don’t trust the longshoremen not to stack them upside down. One burning ship was enough.”

  Jean-Claude bowed and Marie curtsied, and they moved off through the press. Some of the workers were almost too eager to get out of the way. More than one of them made a sign against the evil eye at Marie.

  Jean-Claude scowled; Marie was a fine young lady, but innocent in spite of her ordeal, and with an obvious link to Princess Isabelle. To a certain kind of mind, that would make her a target, and her strangeness would make superstitious fears easy to arouse into violence.

  Jean-Claude rolled his shoulders to loosen them and checked his sword in its sheath. Anyone intending Marie harm would have to get through Jean-Claude first.

  About the Author

  CURTIS CRADDOCK lives in Aurora, Colorado, where he teaches computer information systems to inmates in a state penitentiary. This is his first book. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Map

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  AN ALCHEMY OF MASQUES AND MIRRORS

  Copyright © 2017 by Curtis Craddock

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Thom Tenery

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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red trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8959-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8961-9 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765389619

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  First Edition: August 2017