An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  “Do we have any choice?”

  They acquired horses and mounted. Fortunately, Isabelle didn’t need any help. Once young Isabelle had made it plain that she was going to ride horses, he’d arranged for her to learn it properly.

  They formed up with the cavalcade. Jean-Claude’s attention was drawn to the princess’s heavily armored coach. Vincent was just helping Valérie into the coach when he paused and gripped her hand. Her right hand. He stepped back and looked around, a thunderous expression on his face.

  “Damn, he’s twigged to it,” Jean-Claude said, but how much of a scene was the man willing to make?

  Valérie tugged on his arm, and there was an angry whispered conversation before he reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged on board.

  Jean-Claude let out a breath of relief. “I can’t believe he didn’t throw a fit.”

  “I can,” Isabelle said. At Jean-Claude’s inquisitive look she said, “He’s been up Valérie’s skirts six nights out of the last seven.”

  Jean-Claude snorted. “Damn, I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “Logistically, I believe he had it in her.” Isabelle flushed at her own joke; she could never have made such a ribald comment to anyone else.

  Jean-Claude nearly guffawed himself out of the saddle, and it took him a moment to restore what passed for a serious mien. “But do you trust him with your handmaid?”

  Isabelle shot him a reproachful glance. “I trust her to make her own choices.”

  Jean-Claude conceded the point by changing the subject. “He’s going to be in a foul humor when we get to the palace.”

  “Wouldn’t you be,” Isabelle said, “if I suddenly disappeared and all your elaborate preparations went to waste?”

  “These preparations have not gone to waste; I could not have designed a better distraction if I’d had a month,” Jean-Claude said. The thought of losing Isabelle, on the other hand, was too dreadful to contemplate. “Remember, your duty is to see to it that, no matter what else happens, the princess reaches the palace in one piece.”

  Her face stiffened slightly at his sober tone. “I will.”

  “The proper address is ‘Yes, sir,’ soldier.”

  “Yes, sir,” she repeated enthusiastically, snapping off a wrong-handed salute.

  The procession was suitably impressive, led by outriders, a troupe of musicians who announced their progress with a marching song. A color guard with the flags of Aragoth, l’Empire Céleste, and the house des Zephyrs came next, followed by a squad of royal cuirassiers, then a platoon of pikemen followed by the royal coach. The dignitaries and their escorts, including Jean-Claude and Isabelle, rode next. Behind them came the handmaids’ carriage and yet more guards bringing up the rear.

  Outside the porte cochere awaited a mob of city folk, a throng of brightly dressed people hoping for a glimpse of their new princesa. Some waved ribbons and cheered. Others brandished icons of the Builder’s gearwheel eye and shouted unwelcome. Jean-Claude kept a wary watch on these. Just how much effort would it take some clever assassin to work a group of believers into a killing frenzy, murder by mob?

  Jean-Claude wished they could have dispensed with the street theater entirely, but it was important for the new princesa to be witnessed by the people of Aragoth. An enthusiastic populace could be a powerful impediment to courtly intrigues. Whoever plotted against a popular princesa became a villain in the eyes of the people, and wise nobles never forgot that the people were the foundation on which their towers rested. They did not want that soil shifting.

  The cavalcade trotted along the city’s main road, a serpentine path that meandered up the many-terraced slope to the citadel. Peasants and freemen filled the streets, parting only when the cuirassiers drew nigh upon them. Most of the buildings along this road were of dressed stone from the foundations to the first-floor windows and of pale stucco from there on up, often to a height of four stories. Despite the width of the street, Jean-Claude had to crane his neck to scan the rooftops, but he was pleased to see the silhouettes of royal crossbowmen standing watch at regular intervals, just as Kantelvar had promised. Muskets were a more fashionable weapon and better in a battle of massed ranks, but they were far too inaccurate for counter-sharpshooter work.

  It was all the security anyone could have hoped for, but Isabelle’s enemy was both crafty and bold. Jean-Claude rechecked his rapier and pistol, assuring himself for the thousandth time they were primed and ready. He sifted the onlookers with his gaze, playing a solitaire game of If I were an assassin, where would I be? In the crowd by the side of the road? It’s not the best angle. There are lots of people in the way, and how would I escape? A rooftop, wearing a guard’s stolen uniform? Easy to escape, but how do I strike? I can’t see my target from that angle. In a dark window? Do I want to be trapped in a building with hot-blooded pursuit on the way? Of course, a Glasswalker assassin need not be trapped anywhere there was a mirror …

  He was peering into a shadowed cleft on the right side of the road when the crack of gunfire erupted on his left, a thunderous bang that nearly stopped his heart.

  A hundred things happened at once. Time turned thick and gelatinous. Jean-Claude’s head swiveled, but even that simple movement was like swimming in molasses. Dark smoke and angry red sparks plumed from a second-story window. There was a gray flash of movement. Inside the coach, Valérie screamed. People in the crowd joined the chorus. The driver cracked his whip and the royal coach lurched forward, gathering speed. Half the mounted guard closed tightly around it as it hurtled up the street, a distraction that would draw off any further assassins.

  Jean-Claude whirled farther around to find Isabelle staring in the direction of the window. Unhurt, thank the Builder.

  “Go!” Jean-Claude shouted at Isabelle. “Remember your duty.”

  The mounted dignitaries urged their mounts into a gallop. Isabelle hurtled after them while the pikemen pressed the crowd back. Crossbowmen on the roof launched quarrels through the open window … but where were the other gunshots? Only a fool would rely on a single musket shot for an assassination attempt.

  Jean-Claude goaded his horse in the flanks and charged the building from which the shot had come. Peasants scattered before him. Soldiers already poured in the ground-floor entrances, and crossbowmen had leapt onto the roof.

  Jean-Claude stood up on the saddle—twenty years ago this would have been a lark—and pushed off, not quite a leap; grabbed the sill of the window from which the gunshot had come; and heaved himself up. Momentum was on his side. Gravity was not. He got his elbows up on the sill before his initial thrust ran out. The room was empty of life, though the burning stench of gunpowder lingered. There was a full-length mirror on the right-hand wall.

  Damn! Jean-Claude struggled to drag himself into the room. His feet scrabbled on the stucco. If only he were twenty years slimmer … he squirmed through the window until his bulk passed the tipping point and he toppled inward. He hauled himself upright just a heartbeat before the opposite door burst open and two Aragothic guards charged in.

  “Where?” barked the first guard, looking wildly around.

  “Gone,” Jean-Claude said, gesturing to the mirror. There was no other way out of the room. “Can one Glasswalker follow another through a glass?” Maybe they could launch a pursuit.

  “I don’t know.”

  Before Jean-Claude could invent any suitable invective, a beckoning finger of smoke caught his attention. The gray ribbon twined, like a snake charmer’s cobra, from a large clay pot by the mirror stand.

  Match cord!

  Jean-Claude turned and bolted for the window. “Bomb!”

  He leapt. A giant boot kicked him in the back, and the world turned white.

  CHAPTER

  Ten

  The sound of the blast jerked Isabelle’s head around. Smoke and fire belched from a gaping hole in the second-story wall. Bits of wood and plaster rained all over the cavalcade. Sparks wafted skyward and then faded and died, like damned
stars reaching for paradise. Alarm bells pealed.

  The street rang with the sounds of panic, shouting, and running. Most of the onlookers had stampeded, leaving trampled bodies in their wake, and no assailants had appeared to replace them. But where was … Oh Savior, no!

  On the cobbles below the window lay a crumpled figure. His white hat and silver trim shone in the angled afternoon light.

  “Jean-Claude!” Horror ran like snowmelt through her veins. Not him. Anyone but him. She wheeled her horse around.

  A strong hand grabbed her upper arm, and a ruddy-faced lieutenant barked at her, “Get these women out of here.” He pointed in the direction of her ladies’ carriage.

  Isabelle opened her mouth, her lips agape for one endless moment as she stared at an endless fall.

  Your duty is to see to it that, no matter what else happens, Jean-Claude had said, the princess reaches the palace in one piece. She had to get herself to the palace. She must not fail him.

  She wheeled her horse and gave it the spurs. It leapt to a gallop. He heart felt ripped from her chest. She caught up with the ladies’ carriage and gave the beast its head, trusting it to keep up with its herd, not trusting herself to keep going. Going when all she wanted to do was turn back. Not him. Please. Never had she wanted so much to disbelieve her senses.

  The wind in her face scrubbed Isabelle’s eyes clean, but she could not seem to breathe. No. No. No! But she had to get the princess to safety.

  Damn the princess. What good was she? Useless, broken, crippled.

  It was only her imagination that Jean-Claude’s hand was on her back, keeping her balanced, pushing her on.

  The handmaidens’ carriage rattled beneath the citadel’s gates and across a courtyard the size of Windfall before it finally lumbered to a stop. The lathered horses stamped in their traces. Isabelle all but fell from her horse and had to grab the bridle to keep herself upright.

  Guards crowded around the armored coach, lifting Vincent from the cabin. His shining breastplate was pierced and stained with blood. His head lolled like a newborn’s. Valérie stood nearby, half wailing and half sobbing, her white dress soaked in blood. Several royal Aragothic servitors tried to calm her. “Princesa, please…”

  A man wearing the sash of the king’s chamberlain exchanged verbal broadsides with the guard captain in overheated Aragothic.

  Isabelle gathered what remained of her wits, shouldered into the press around Vincent, and knelt at his side. How could anyone have that much blood in them? His haughty expression slumped like a candle in the sun.

  Several sets of hands grabbed at her. “Get off, soldier!”

  Isabelle shook the hands off. With her good hand she ripped her helmet and wig from her head and tore off the false mustache. “I am Princess Isabelle! Stand back.”

  Vincent’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of her voice, and his gaze focused briefly on her face. “Mademoiselle. Thank the Builder.” Blood was on his lips, and his voice gurgled. “Tell your father, I served him … defend you with my life … Valérie.” His eyelids lowered halfway as the light of his soul guttered to a last whiff of vapor and departed on the breeze.

  “Vincent!” Valérie shrieked. She fell to her knees and seized him by the collar. His blood oozed between her fingers. She folded in on herself and wept.

  Isabelle backed away a step to let her grieve. He was gone, stolen by an assassin’s musket ball. A musket ball meant for me. And if it hadn’t killed him, it would have killed Valérie. All these people had chosen to stand between Isabelle and bullets.

  Sobs welled up in Isabelle’s body, but she choked them off. This was not the way to honor the fallen. She swallowed the slime of grief and said, “You lived for my father, but you died for me.”

  “Highness, please, come this way.” The chamberlain gripped Isabelle’s shoulders and pulled her away, but she resisted being absorbed into the converging mob of her handmaidens.

  She wiped tears from her cheeks with her sleeves and spat out the first question that floated into her consciousness. “Jean-Claude. What happened to him?” The memory of his crumpled form was burned in her mind like sun glare on her eyes.

  “Who is Jean-Claude?” the chamberlain asked, trying to usher her away. “You must come away; this is no place for a lady.”

  “No place—” Isabelle’s shock and horror turned a corner into anger. She shrugged off his hand. “They were shooting at me! That was my place, and he took it.”

  “As was his duty,” the chamberlain said. “Your duty was to let him.”

  He was right, and Isabelle loathed him for it. She bit down a bilious surge of undeserved invective and snapped, “Find out what happened to my musketeer, Jean-Claude.”

  “By your command, Highness,” he said by way of a sop to her nonexistent authority.

  “Who are you, by the way?” Isabelle asked.

  The man took a step back, composed himself, and in the midst of the chaos, took a deep bow. “I am Don Angelo, Your Highness. And my job will be much easier to do if you go inside your residence, where it is safe.”

  Four new guards surrounded Isabelle, and she allowed herself to be marched up a flight of wide, shallow steps toward what she guessed was the entryway to her residence. No place had ever felt so strange and foreign.

  She pivoted, trying to orient herself. The staircase had deposited her on a colonnaded portico flanked by an elevated arcade that ran the width of this building. Far across the vast courtyard, the rest of the cavalcade trickled in the main gate. She searched the crowd for Jean-Claude but saw no sign of him. He had lain so still … she wasn’t ready to face that. She would never be ready to face that. He had always been close to hand, always willing to lend an ear, even when he was pretending to be staggering drunk.

  Was there no one left of her inner circle? Even Marie would be a comfort right now.

  Marie! She’d been in the coach with Valérie and Vincent. Isabelle broke from her escort and hurried back to the coach, pushing past a host of people who thought they knew better than she which direction she ought to be going. She leaned inside. There sat Marie, covered in blood, staring straight ahead, unmoving and unmoved by the carnage. Thank the Builder.

  “Marie, attend me,” she said, her voice rough with relief.

  Marie clambered out of the carriage, leaving behind a clean spot on the bloody upholstery. There was blood on the seat behind where Vincent had been sitting … which there should not have been, unless … yes, there it was, a hole in the seat cushion. The bullet had gone completely through him, but alchemetal was supposed to be proof against musket balls. And that wasn’t all. The bullet had first come through the carriage’s open window, shattered the mirror behind which he had been hiding, and kept right on going.

  “Highness!” Don Angelo said. “Please come away from there.”

  “Of course,” Isabelle said, but the cold, clicking, analytical part of her mind could not let this mess go unscrutinized.

  She pulled out her maidenblade and probed the hole in the fabric for the bullet, but it had gone all the way through the padding and into the boards. Finally, she withdrew from the coach, but only to slip around its back end.

  There, bulging from the wood behind Vincent’s seat, was the bullet. It had made it almost all the way out. Had it carried just a little bit more force, it would have plinked down in the street somewhere and been lost.

  She plied her maidenblade and prized the slug from its resting place. It was surprisingly small, shorter than the first joint of her wormfinger, and cylindrical except where the front end had been squashed and flattened, like a mushroom cap. It was made of some bright hard metal. It was scored along its sides at an angle, as if it had been torn with tiny claws.

  “What are you doing?” Don Angelo asked.

  Isabelle returned her maidenblade to its sheath and tucked the slug in her belt pouch. What was she doing? Nothing she cared to explain. A bullet shouldn’t have this much … punch, she thought, but it was a hunc
h based, she feared, more on not wanting to believe what had just happened than on any objective truth. And it was not the sort of thing to interest a proper princess in any case. After the barest hesitation, she replied, “I am going inside, where we can all pretend it is safe.”

  * * *

  The chamber into which Isabelle was introduced—her receiving room, she was told—was richly appointed with upholstered chairs, polished companion tables, and ornamental tapestries. What it lacked were windows and mirrors. Nor were the guards on the doors ornamental. This was meant to be a secure place.

  What had no doubt been intended to be a serene and gracious welcome by the female staff had already been thrown into disarray by Valérie’s bloodstained arrival. The poor decoy had been settled in a chair, and a half-dozen olive-skinned, raven-haired Aragothic women hovered around her. Everyone looked up and goggled when Isabelle, in boots, trousers, and military jacket, marched in.

  Her male escort, swept along in her wake, tried to follow her, but she said, “Women’s quarters. Out!” She made a sweeping gesture and the men retreated. The doors clicked shut. Isabelle wanted to follow the men out, to race back into the city and look for Jean-Claude, but she had duties. Some idiot had given these women into her charge.

  The Aragothic women looked back and forth between Isabelle and Valérie in confusion, but all the Célestial handmaids, even Valérie, curtsied to Isabelle.

  “Rise,” Isabelle said. “Except you, Valérie. You sit down. Are you hurt?”

  Valérie sat but did not settle. The veil had been pulled from her face. Sweat and tears had made a mess of her makeup, but she seemed to have reached an exhausted interlude in her weeping. “Vincent was terribly angry when he figured out he had been duped. He swore he was going to gut monsieur musketeer, but I … I talked him into the coach.” Fresh tears welled from her eyes, and Isabelle would not have blamed her if she broke down, but after a few deep breaths she said, “And everything was going well. And then there was this terrible bang, and glass went everywhere, and he jerked in his seat, and his eyes went very round. He looked surprised.” She shook her head as if trying to dislodge a biting fly. The other handmaids wrapped their arms around her shoulders and made soothing noises.