An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  “And what happens if we aren’t attacked and we reach the royal citadel peacefully and Príncipe Julio is waiting for us? Will he be introduced to the wrong woman?”

  Jean-Claude hesitated; he hadn’t thought in any depth about the social consequences of this charade. “He’s not supposed to meet you until the ball tomorrow night.”

  “Ah, but could you resist the chance to get a peek at your future spouse? I keep thinking, if it were me, I couldn’t wait. I’d find a way to get a glimpse.” Romantic longings gleamed in her eyes. “I’d want to get to know him before the wedding, to find out what kind of person he is, to see his private face before his public one … unless he’s not interested.” She chewed her lower lip.

  “He’d be mad not to adore you,” Jean-Claude said soothingly, though, in truth, if the young buck hadn’t made any effort to meet Isabelle so far, Jean-Claude doubted the laggard would bestir himself to greet the coach. More than ever, the idea of handing over his precious charge to some disinterested stranger churned Jean-Claude’s gut. How could any ruffle-wearing, peeled-grape-eating, sedan-chair-lounging aristocrat be worthy of Isabelle?

  Isabelle said, “I know so little about him, most of it contradictory. Kantelvar says he is a great man, but everyone else depicts him as bitter and broken. He has surely shown no interest in me, not a secret visit, not even a message of greeting.”

  Jean-Claude ached at Isabelle’s uncertainty. “I’ll find out what I can about him.” He’d start by talking to the príncipe’s servants. If you want the measure of a man, see how he treats his inferiors.

  And what would he do if he found Príncipe Julio cruel or stupid? He could not toss Isabelle into a cesspit of a marriage … except that Grand Leon had signed the marriage contract. Was there any way, if worst came to worst, that he might convince le roi that this marriage was not in l’ Empire Céleste’s best interests? Not, he feared, without a considerably more politically compelling reason than Isabelle’s marital happiness.

  Isabelle leaned against the rail, staring into the middle distance, her painting forgotten. She said, “Part of me cannot help but wonder what it would be like if Príncipe Julio did meet the wrong woman, if he accepted her as his wife. I could disappear, go wandering, see the world unencumbered by everyone else’s expectations.”

  Coming from Isabelle, this was idle speculation, the by-product of a mind that looked at any situation and saw a dozen possibilities and a thousand implications … but the idea had appeal. If Isabelle wanted to run away, Jean-Claude could go with her. Except … flight did not equal freedom. Even if chains of duty did not bind them to a narrower course, relentless pursuit surely would.

  She continued, “Since I was very young, I have been faced with an impossible dilemma. It is my purpose to marry into an honorable Célestial bloodline, bear children, and be a good chatelaine for my husband’s household. It is the only destiny for which one of my station is deemed fit, yet for most of my life, it has been patently obvious that those goals were unattainable. No one was ever going to want me, not even as a thing. It was frustrating, and yet, now that the world has turned … those failures offered a sort of freedom. No one expected anything of me, so I was free to expect things of myself.

  “Now here I am, halfway across the deep sky, destined for marriage and children, but to a bloodline I could never have anticipated. When the impossible happens, the world shudders, for if one impossible thing can happen, why not another? I cannot help but wonder what other impossibilities are out there, waiting to be challenged.”

  Pride and terror flooded Jean-Claude, and he chose his words carefully. “Is that what you want? To run away?” And what would he do if she decided to bolt this dangerous and suspicious marriage? His obligation as le roi’s musketeer was clear, but his duty to Isabelle was … compelling.

  Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t think ‘want’ is a big enough or subtle enough word on which to hang the future. Perhaps Príncipe Julio will be the best thing that ever happened to me. Or perhaps he will be worse than my father. I only wish I had some way of finding out before it is too late.”

  Jean-Claude nodded in acceptance of this ambiguity and swore to help bring her clarity. “I will do my best to provide you with what intelligence I can once we have you safely ensconced in the palace. Until then, secrecy is our watchword. Tell no one but your handmaids what you are doing, and don’t come out of your cabin until it’s time to debark. If you do come out, I’ll take it as a signal that you could not find a volunteer. Other than that, there’s no point in tempting fate.”

  Her lips thinned in a wry smile. “Because Vincent will see through the disguise, and you don’t want him to know what we’re about until it’s too late to stop it.”

  Jean-Claude’s face stiffened, which was itself a dead giveaway. He tried to relax his features, but he imagined that made him look exactly like a naughty child trying to look innocent with stolen pie smeared on his face. Isabelle was quick. He knew she was quick, and she still got ahead of him. She laughed at his stunned expression.

  “How did you know?”

  “Because this is … artful. Vincent prefers to test strength against strength. He doesn’t trust art. He would never agree to it.”

  “But you will?” Jean-Claude asked, just to be sure.

  “I trust your judgment and your subtlety. Besides, I want to see the city, and you can’t see anything from inside a coach.”

  * * *

  It was early afternoon when the predicted aetheric trough appeared. Santiago barked orders, and the crew swarmed into action. Jean-Claude bowed Isabelle into her cabin, then attached himself to Vincent with a mind to distract him from any interference he might chance to make in Isabelle’s preparations.

  The Santa Anna slid down the sloping wall of the craton’s aetheric vortex—Progress at last!—until it was level with the equatorial rim. A long, loose caravan of ships—merchants, catch boats, leviathaners, and other sorts Jean-Claude didn’t recognize—stretched out toward the Craton Massif like so many beads cut loose from a string. An equally long line trailed out behind them. Coastal corvettes plied the sky around them like so many cloud sharks, keeping order in the line.

  Jean-Claude glowered at the ships in front of them, in between him and solid ground, then turned to Santiago and asked, “This is a royal ship of the line, isn’t it? Shouldn’t they make way for us?”

  Santiago nodded. “The cutters will move us to the front of the line as soon as we are in position to turn for the harbor. Until then, have patience; even crowns must wait on the wind.”

  Jean-Claude made a disconsolate grunt and stared at their destination, so close and yet so out of reach. Flying, as they were, a hundred meters above the Craton Massif’s coastline, he had what he supposed was a magnificent view of San Augustus.

  A pair of massive fortified stone towers, known far and wide as the Hammer and the Anvil, guarded the vast harbor’s entrance. The harbor itself was a wide, deep well of rock, open to the sky at top and bottom. As far as he understood the nature of such geography, the enclosure of the harbor created its own calm eddy of aether, a non-current in which skyships could safely tether without fear of being dashed against the rocks.

  Beyond the harbor, the city of San Augustus climbed a series of steep, terraced hillsides forming a great bowl filled with a salad mixture of red-tiled roofs, verdant parks, coppery temple domes, and white marble buildings of state. It was at least thrice as big as the Célestial capital at Rocher Royale. Of course it was also many times older than Grand Leon’s city.

  Away from the harbor and atop the highest hill stood the royal citadel. Looking through Santiago’s glass, he could just make out where the old walls from the age of chivalry had stood, before they had been replaced by a modern star-shaped fortress with sloping walls and cannon emplacements galore. Not for the first time on this trip, he lamented that skyships could not fly over land; it would make getting Isabelle to the citadel so much easier. If wishes were fishe
s, urchins would dine.

  In the wide open center of the fortress, like a jewel in a gilded box, stood the royal palace, an enormous rambling structure that climbed over the hill like a vine. And this is where we are taking Isabelle, a warren of stone and strangers. Every unfamiliar face belonged to a potential assassin. Was it too late to turn around and take her away?

  Probably much too late. For years, le roi had unofficially, discreetly backed the skyland kingdom of Brathon against Aragoth in their competition for a controlling interest in the savage but fabulously wealthy lands of the Craton Riqueza, the continent of riches, beyond the equator, a colonial competition l’Empire Céleste had entered very late with very little. Le roi was not in any position to win the game, but he was in a position to pick the winner, for the right price.

  The question in Jean-Claude’s mind was whether Isabelle’s marriage to Príncipe Julio represented a full-scale change of alliance, or if the arrangement merely increased le roi’s bargaining leverage with the Brathonians. As a King’s Own Musketeer, this was a question Jean-Claude could reasonably ask of his master—Which way do you want me to jump, sire?—but what if le roi said Isabelle was to be a sacrificial pawn? It was not an answer he wanted to receive. Better to stick to the same orders he had been following all her life, the command Grand Leon had never bother to rescind: protect her.

  The towering pillars of the Hammer and the Anvil loomed larger and larger until they filled the entire forward sky. The mouths of hundreds of massive gun emplacements yawned like wolves baring their fangs in warning. As the ship entered the channel between the towers, the shadows of the fortresses spread across the deck and seemed to swallow the wind. The sails grew limp, and the rigging thumped and banged with shifting tensions. Jean-Claude swore he could hear the muttering voices of the murderous guns embedded in the stone to either side of him. His skin prickled in gooseflesh despite the afternoon’s warmth. What if the assassin had suborned a gunnery officer? He could blow the Santa Anna to flinders before they knew what hit them.

  It seemed to take a very long time, but finally the Santa Anna emerged into the harbor proper. It was a veritable maze of long, thin piers, each supported by its own squadron of aetherballoons, stretching toward the center of the harbor, like a great spiderweb. Longshoremen and sailors scurried along those pathways like so many ants, to and from the hundreds of skyships, stacked three levels deep in places, that rocked at their moorings. Immense treadmill-driven wooden cranes lifted and lowered goods and supplies up and down the cliff face. Warehouses were built right into the stone sides of the shaft. The whole thing looked like a colony of gigantic cliff swallows. Colored lanterns hung in a variety of patterns at the ends of the piers, guiding the harbor pilot as he steered the Santa Anna to a berth reserved for royal ships.

  * * *

  Jean-Claude kept his face perfectly straight when a woman emerged from Isabelle’s cabin wearing Isabelle’s dress, her white wig, and a concealing veil. She was about the right height, but under so many layers, even Jean-Claude couldn’t tell if she was an imposter or not. When Vincent, dressed in his finest uniform complete with a shiny new alchemetal helmet and cuirass, took her arm to guide her down the gangway, she was careful to fold her right hand with her left, just as Isabelle did with her prosthetic fingers. Had Isabelle been unable to find a volunteer for this charade? But no, this gowned figure did not have Isabelle’s careless walk.

  Jean-Claude straightened his own rarely worn dress uniform, a bright blue tabard with a golden thundercrown, a coronet made from jags of lightning, and sparkling silver trim, and took his place at the back of the column of debarking passengers, just in front of the first group of Aragothic officers and ahead of the two-score troops. Worry crept into his heart as he failed to lay eyes on Isabelle. Presumably she had donned her soldier’s uniform and was waiting for an opportunity to join the throng. Had she, working with only one good hand, been able to put the unfamiliar clothing on? Of course, she would have had at least one lady to assist her. Had she already debarked the ship, or had she had some inspiration and run off to do some other mad thing? One could never assume with Isabelle, though one could trust her.

  Surrounded by Vincent and his guards, the decoy, her handmaidens, and Marie debarked onto a graceful jetty that was built like half an arched bridge and supported in part by thick cables strung from pillars onshore. The mechanics of the arrangement entirely eluded Jean-Claude. The important thing, from his perspective, was that it wasn’t moving.

  Yet when Jean-Claude stepped onto the jetty, his knees buckled, and he slumped against the railing. He cursed his treacherous body; after nearly three weeks being sloshed about like the dregs of Templeday ale in that rickety wooden deathtrap, his legs had forgotten how to handle unyielding wood. Captain Santiago and his officers brushed by him, cool and confident, apparently unfazed by the transition from ship to shore.

  “Need a hand up, good sir?”

  Jean-Claude looked up at a slightly built young soldier with a waxed mustache, brown hair, and eyes like pools of summer sky. Thank the Builder.

  Jean-Claude forced himself upright despite the fact that the world kept washing up and down. “No, thank you … Sergeant.” Isabelle’s uniform had acquired frogging since the last time he’d seen it. He impelled himself into the line of offloading marines. Isabelle formed up next to him so that they made their own rank.

  Jean-Claude noted the stripes on her uniform sleeve. “I see you’ve been promoted.”

  “That was Darcy’s idea; her father is military and she says sergeant is a very useful rank. High enough that nearly everyone listens when you bellow an order, low enough to avoid attracting much attention.”

  Jean-Claude touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgment of this point, but added, sotto voce, “You’d better walk like a sergeant then, a little march, a little swagger, and for the Builder’s sake, don’t fold your hands in front of you.”

  Sergeant Isabelle checked her hands and said, “This feels very … odd.”

  “It takes practice. For now, just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”

  At the foot of the pier, a group of dignitaries had gathered to greet the woman playing the part of Isabelle. There were several Aragothic nobles, and a trio of Temple sagaxes in lieu of an artifex. Kantelvar was not present. His espejismo had retreated to his body in the palace to direct security from that end.

  “I hope I don’t have to remember any of those people’s names,” Isabelle muttered as her handmaiden accepted formal greetings on her behalf.

  “You can always have your doppelganger introduce you. Which lady is it, anyway?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Hmmm … a little shorter, just as slender, and has a sense of humor … Valérie.”

  “Very good,” Isabelle said. “She also speaks Aragothic. I’ve caught her reading over my shoulder a few times. I think she might have some interest in learning.”

  Jean-Claude and Isabelle moved with the crowd of soldiers who were fanning out along the quayside. Another, larger group of royal soldiers in red-and-black uniforms, the processional guard, stood arrayed in a small but well-decorated plaza before them. The compressed size of the venue made the numbers look greater than they actually were. All the civilians who must ordinarily have given this place its function had been cleared out.

  The greeting ceremony took remarkably little time for a royal event. Jean-Claude supposed there would be longer introductions later when a larger number of important people were present. Then the gathering rearranged itself, and the Aragothic dignitaries led Valérie toward the coach. Jean-Claude and Isabelle struck out toward an equestrian queue where horses were waiting for visiting riders.

  On their way, they crossed paths with the sagaxes, talking in low voices amongst themselves.

  “… must not have children,” one of them complained, “it’s an abomination.”

  Jean-Claude shared a glance with Isabelle and they deflected their course to trai
l the clerics. Temple influence was much stronger in Aragoth than in l’Empire Céleste, and it would be useful to hear what the local clergy were thinking.

  The second sagax said, “I don’t know about that. Artifex Kantelvar says—”

  “Kantelvar is mad,” snapped the third. “Ever since his Exaltation. All that spewing of signs and portents.”

  “He used to be more concerned with his rents and debtors. Now it’s all ‘The Time of Reckoning is at hand, the Savior is coming.’”

  “Peace abide, brother,” said the first. “When the new Omnifex is elected, he will put a stop to Kantelvar’s schemes.”

  The third said, “Even if Julio is king?”

  “Even kings must bow their necks to the Builder’s law,” said the deep thinker. “A crippled king, a soul-blighted queen, and the chance of an abomination child will put the people on our side.” Then, perhaps fearing to be overheard, he looked around and espied Jean-Claude and Isabelle. The conversation died.

  Jean-Claude casually veered off toward the horses.

  “That was … disturbing,” Isabelle said.

  “Something to question Kantelvar about, to be sure,” Jean-Claude said. Isabelle had never been popular with the clergy, but the Temple artificers in Windfall had been content in the knowledge that her putative impurity was no threat to the Builder’s design. Not so, here. She must have seemed a nightmare come to life for the devout.

  “Do you think that’s true?” Isabelle asked. “That he thinks the Reckoning is at hand, the Savior is arising, and the world is about to be remade?”

  “He’s never mentioned it in my hearing,” Jean-Claude said. “I don’t know enough about him to know what he believes. It’s one of the things I intend to find out. I know some people in San Augustus”—he considered the scope of the sprawling city—“assuming I can find them. I’ll make more friends from there.”

  “Do we have that much time?” Sergeant Isabelle asked. “They’re pushing this marriage as fast as protocol allows.”