An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  “You ask much of the unborn,” she said. “Such a heavy burden to put on babes not yet conceived, much less born. Their grandmother might not mind using them as a tribute, but the notion cuts their mother to the quick.”

  Grand Leon looked at her sharply, then shrewdly, his ghostly eyes glimmering like stars through a fog. He was, she realized, looking for the first time at Isabelle the person rather than Isabelle the princess, and she prayed to all the saints that bringing that facet of her being to his attention was not a mistake. Just because he was aware of women’s priorities didn’t mean he respected them. On the other hand, he had recognized all his bastards.

  “It is not out of the question that arrangements could be made with the mother,” Grand Leon said. “And I would suggest the mother consider all the alternatives. In l’Empire, she could be sure her children would be safe under the protection of a strong emperor, raised with Célestial culture, trained at the finest academies—”

  “And they would make all the best Célestial friends, who are the glue that holds kingdoms together,” Isabelle said. “And so Aragoth would be conquered, not by war, or even economy, but by culture.”

  “And does that seem insane to you, compared to what you have seen of Aragoth?”

  “It sounds … elegant, but it would make me a traitor to my husband, to make his children tools of a foreign power.”

  “Ah,” he said, and he scraped the underside of his chin with his thumb in a rare thoughtless gesture. “Your concern touches upon the nature of royalty and reality. Any decision we make, no matter how wise or foolish, bold or timid, will be paid for in blood and pain and suffering. If we order a road built, inevitably someone will die building it, and once it is finished trade will shift from one town to another, one man will grow rich while another will starve. If we are wise, we do more good than harm, but we can no more avoid causing harm than we can avoid growing old.

  “Your decision, like so many, must eventually be phrased in terms of whom to serve. If you try to do it the other way around, to decide whom to avoid betraying, you will be ineffectual and it will drive you mad.”

  Were these Grand Leon’s true beliefs or just a heap of steaming platitudes?

  “Dare I ask whom you serve?” she asked.

  Grand Leon beamed at her. “By the Builder, I thought Jean-Claude’s frequent praise of your wit was excessively effusive, but I see that he in fact fell short of the mark.” He must have seen Isabelle blanch at the mention of Jean-Claude’s name, for he let the matter drop and went on more neutrally, “I serve l’Empire Céleste. In my youth, I served myself and thought that l’Empire did too, but that is foolish. A man must die, but an empire can go on forever. The question of the moment is, whom do you serve?”

  Isabelle quailed before this question. The intensity of his gaze told her this was the fulcrum. If she spoke one way, he would confer a terrible authority on her, the right to bestow in his name all the might of l’Empire Céleste. If she spoke another, she would be relegated to the status of pawn. Either way, her whole future and mayhap the futures of countless others depended on her word … or his reaction to her word. Where did culpability begin or end? Did she really want to be the one to touch off a senseless war?

  No. Nor did she feel any particular loyalty to Julio. To her unborn children then? But no, a parent must raise a child, not submit to it.

  “I serve peace,” she said. That was the only cause in this whole mess worth fighting for. Peace for her children to grow up in. Peace to spare the suffering of tens of thousands.

  Grand Leon sniffed, one corner of his mouth twitched up, and she knew she had failed his test. How could Grand Leon respect anything so childish, so naive, so weak?

  “Really? Most men would have said they served me.”

  Isabelle’s knees weakened, but she couldn’t buckle. “I am not a man, and I serve peace.” She wanted no part of anything else.

  “An epitaph to be carved upon your gravestone, no doubt, but it’s an impossible task. Choose another.”

  Isabelle felt all futures slipping away, but she would not yield. Her voice came thick. “I think choosing another is your job now, sire.”

  “You defy me?” Grand Leon growled.

  “I answer you truthfully,” Isabelle said.

  “And what will you do when I put the negotiations for an alliance between Aragoth and l’Empire in the hands of my ambassador? He will bargain as I instruct him.”

  Isabelle’s vision grew blurry as hot tears welled up in her eyes. “I will continue to advocate for peace.” For all the good it would do.

  At last Grand Leon stepped back, and said, “Kneel.”

  It was all Isabelle could do to maintain her poise as she smoothed her skirt and sank to her knees in the traditional posture of submission. If le roi had held a sword he could have easily lopped her head off. It would not come to that—they still needed her to breed—but she dreaded whatever punishment he might devise. Her father had found endless ways to humiliate her, and Grand Leon was many times more clever.

  Grand Leon placed a hand on her shoulder, the cold fingers of a bloodhollow. “Princess Isabelle des Zephyrs, imperial cousin, we hereby grant you the position of special ambassador to the court of Aragoth, with full powers to make peace or declare war.”

  Isabelle blinked hard in surprise, squishing out her unshed tears, and looked up. “Majesty, I … don’t understand.” Was this some kind of cruel joke?

  “It means we give the negotiations for l’Empire’s part in Aragoth’s succession squabble into your hands. A civil war here would be a disaster. A winnable disaster from l’Empire’s point of view, but too costly by half. Peace, though, has possibilities.”

  “And what would l’Empire gain from peace?”

  Grand Leon gave the barest hint of a smile. “Our barons are a fractious lot, many of whom would happily see all the progress we have made turning l’Empire into a nation undone if they thought that by such calamity they could obtain one more square meter of land. Many of them have mortgaged themselves to the hilt to muster armies in anticipation of an Aragothic civil war. If they are forced to withdraw without conquest they will be broken on poverty’s wheel, much easier to control than if they are allowed to glut themselves on plunder. Hence, I need a negotiator who will fight for that peace until her last breath, and I give her the might of l’Empire to commit at her will. Certainly Margareta will want l’Empire’s armies at her side, and you know my terms.”

  Isabelle sensed the words he’d left unsaid. “Because you know I will do everything in my power to avoid actually making that commitment, because to do so will cost me my children.” She had been wrong to think he didn’t understand a woman’s priorities. He knew exactly where her jugular was.

  Before Isabelle could ponder her predicament, the soundproof door rasped open and a river of sound welled in like water through a cracked dam, a babble of voices that quickly became a flood, further churned up with the thud of marching feet.

  Isabelle turned where she knelt. What in the world?

  One voice rose above the rest: “I demand to see Princess Isabelle!”

  “Jean-Claude!” He was alive! Thank all the saints! Isabelle lurched to her feet, rushed to the double doors, and threw them wide.

  A quartet of guardsmen in various shades of livery, Aragothic and Célestial, bore Jean-Claude on a stretcher slung between two halberds. His face was smudged and bloody, his left arm was bandaged, and his right leg was in a splint, but his eyes lit up when he saw her. He was absolutely the most glorious thing she had ever seen. She plunged into the swirling pool of people surrounding him and threw her arms around his blue-coated waist. His age-thickened middle was reassuringly solid. “Thank the Savior! I was so … I thought you were…” Damn that taboo against expressing concern. “I will see you are granted great honor.”

  He folded his uninjured arm around her shoulders. “Highness, I already have the greatest honor I could ever want.”

 
Isabelle would have liked to bury her face in his middle and weep for pure relief, but that would not make a good show. A princess was expected to be, if not detached, then certainly decorous. A momentary outburst of joy was permissible; wallowing in it was not.

  Worse, saints help her, she had turned her back on le roi, a serious social blunder.

  Isabelle jerked back from Jean-Claude as if she were on a hook, turned, and curtsied deeply to Grand Leon. Had she just undone all the devious trust he’d placed in her? Some nobles could be so damned touchy about the fine points of etiquette.

  Jean-Claude’s head swiveled around until he caught sight of Grand Leon. He swept his hat in an approximation of a bow. “Majesty, please excuse me for bleeding in your presence, but someone just tried to shoot the princess’s coach and bomb me, which is rather backward of the way I would have done it, but I am thankful for his incompetence.”

  Apparently unperturbed, Grand Leon gestured for Isabelle to stand up. He gave Jean-Claude a look of very nearly paternal exasperation. “I can see that the decades have not blunted your enthusiasm for extravagant pain. I will want a full report on this latest calamity when you have rested, but for now, we forgive your dishevelment and order you not to exsanguinate.”

  Isabelle was befuddled. This seemed more like the reunion of two old friends than the tense confrontation between a musketeer and the monarch who had exiled him to l’Île des Zephyrs all those years ago. Maybe this was one of those mysterious male traditions she always found so baffling.

  Jean-Claude’s bearers made to set him down on a sofa, but the Aragothic handmaids, who had surged in with the rest of the crowd, rushed to cover the embroidered fabric with a rough cloth to prevent Jean-Claude’s wounds from seeping on it.

  Don Angelo emerged from the swirl of people and bowed to Grand Leon. “Your Majesty, we have recovered your musketeer.”

  “Hah!” Jean-Claude scoffed. “Do you know what they tried to do to me? They tried to sic a surgeon on me. Builder be praised I woke before he sawed any bits off.”

  Don Angelo wore an expression that suggested a man sucking on a lemon. “In his … delirium, your bodyguard threatened to shoot King Carlemmo’s royal surgeon.”

  Grand Leon’s eyebrows twitched in suppressed amusement. “Did he?”

  Jean-Claude’s face was ashen and haggard, but he seemed to be trying to cover up his weakness with more than his usual abrasiveness. “I’d be doing el rey a service if I did. Doctors kill more soldiers than bullets. The only reason we don’t take more of them to battle is we can’t get them to operate on the enemy first.”

  Don Angelo replied tartly, “Perhaps Célestial surgeons are in the habit of killing their patients. It is not so in Aragoth. At any rate, the surgeon managed to get the shrapnel fragments out of your leg, clean the wound, and stitch it up before you awoke and started bellowing.”

  Isabelle, who was too wrung out for any more excitement, raised a mollifying hand. “Thank you, Don Angelo, for granting my humble request to find Jean-Claude. It seems my faithful guardian is still quite distressed from his pain. I think he will calm down more quickly without so many people around.” She made an ushering motion and took a step toward the door. Don Angelo, perforce, retreated, drawing stretcher bearers, handmaids, and other assorted hangers-on in his wake.

  Isabelle said, “You may give my thanks to the surgeon, and you may both expect Jean-Claude’s personal apology, once he returns to his senses. For now, I think a little peace and quiet is in order.”

  Yet before she could push the door closed, Kantelvar shouldered to the front of the throng with Marie in tow. The comte’s visage had withdrawn from Marie’s features.

  Kantelvar said, “Highness, if I may be permitted.”

  As much as Isabelle didn’t want a room full of people, it seemed unnecessary to yank Marie from Kantelvar’s grasp and slam the door in his face, so she stood aside to let them both in before closing the doors on the crowd.

  Kantelvar handed Marie off to Isabelle and bowed to Grand Leon. “Majesty. If I may be so bold as to question your musketeer.”

  “Jean-Claude is wounded,” Grand Leon said. “I would not have him overtaxed.”

  “As you wish, of course, but the longer we wait to question him, the more time our enemies will have to cover their trail.”

  “He did a pretty thorough job of that with the bomb,” Jean-Claude said, shifting uncomfortably on the sofa. “There was a gunshot from a second story. I leapt in through the window, hoping to surprise the shooter, but he was gone when I arrived. He escaped through a mirror.”

  “Are you sure?” Kantelvar asked.

  “I came in through the window. Two of your soldiers came in the opposite door. There were no other methods of egress. So, yes, he must have been a Glasswalker, unless there is some sorcery that allows one to walk through walls.”

  “Not that I know of,” Kantelvar said.

  Jean-Claude waved this away. “However he got out, he left a bomb behind. I saw the fuse smoke and jumped out the window. The wall shielded me from the worst of the blast.”

  “Builder be praised,” Isabelle said. Ever since she’d seen him lying on the street, she’d felt as if she were drowning. Now she could breathe again.

  Jean-Claude smiled at her. “The next thing I knew, the damn doctor was pecking at me like a vulture. I fought him off, commandeered some soldiers, and made my way here.”

  Isabelle said, “Savior be praised that you were so alert and quick. But why did the assassin leave a bomb?”

  “A trap for anyone who tried to chase him,” Jean-Claude said. “Or to blow the mirror to pieces to prevent another Glasswalker from trailing him, if that’s even possible.”

  “It is,” Kantelvar said. “If the pursuer is very skilled. It’s a moot point now; any clues that might have been in that room are either vanished or destroyed.”

  Grand Leon said, “And that, I believe, is all we need to know for tonight. Kantelvar, walk with me awhile and let us leave these good people to recover from their noble exertions.”

  “As you wish,” Kantelvar said.

  Only once they were gone did Jean-Claude allow his posture to sag. “Thank the Savior.”

  “Tonight, Vincent was the Savior,” Isabelle said.

  Jean-Claude winced. “I heard. I cannot say I liked him, but I did not wish him dead. Dead people are no fun to pester.”

  “Hah!” Isabelle laughed in spite of herself, and the involuntary spasm knocked a question loose inside of her. “Do you think he died for nothing? I wasn’t even in the carriage.”

  Jean-Claude took a moment to answer, and he spoke carefully. “He died maintaining the illusion. The illusion was what was keeping you safe, so, no, he did not die for nothing.”

  Isabelle resisted the urge to sit down. The new stitching in her gown was already warping in directions it ought not. Pieces of it were threatening to slough off. “So what do we do now? All our clues vanish as fast as we find them, and we learn nothing.”

  “That’s not entirely true. We know the killer has an accomplice; someone had to put that mirror in that room for him.”

  “And the bomb. Unless he set them both up in advance, then went and left his body somewhere else while his espejismo returned via the mirror. It would, as you say, reduce the circle of people in on the plot.”

  “True.” Jean-Claude rubbed his forehead in obvious exhaustion. “But I will look for an accomplice anyway. Just as soon as I can walk.”

  “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “It hurts, but it’s stopped bleeding, and the surgeon did get all the bits out, I’ll give him that much. Thank the Savior for leather and silk. Cotton and wool get all tangled up in the wound. You can’t get them all out, and the wound festers around them. Silk and leather, though, they don’t break up so much. They’re easier to get out.”

  He was babbling, plainly at the end of his rope but not willing to let go. He didn’t know how to quit, so he just kept going while his int
ernal spring wound down.

  “Stand down, soldier,” Isabelle said. “That’s an order. And get some sleep, because I will not rest until you do.”

  Jean-Claude’s mouth opened as if to protest, but then he nodded and said, “Your wish is my command, Highness.”

  CHAPTER

  Eleven

  The morning after the cavalcade, Isabelle met Queen Margareta in an airy courtyard with terraced sides overflowing with greenery. Garden trees, shrubs, and flowers filled the enclosure with a sweet, mossy, heady perfume. Harp music came from somewhere deep in the bushes.

  Isabelle crossed the courtyard at a decorous walk, bracing herself for the audience. Kantelvar lurched along at her side, bearing the scroll that held her freshly inked ambassadorial credentials.

  After meeting the queen’s espejismo on the Santa Anna, Isabelle had wondered how true her imperious image was to her incarnate reality. In fact, the flesh-and-blood queen was shorter and stouter than her espejismo, but not grossly so; the biggest change was in the quality of her skin, which in reality was somewhat oily and porous, not the color of milky starlight she had so ardently projected. Do you think of yourself as a celestial being, Majesty?

  A small court of ladies, officials, and entertainers attended her. The only one Isabelle recognized, by dint of the silver tiara in her braided black hair, was the queen’s stepdaughter-in-law, the crown princess Xaviera, whose lean, heart-shaped face was marred by a rigid expression that suggested a statue brought almost to life. It was generally hard to tell what the Glasswalkers were looking at with their silvered eyes, but Isabelle felt the pressure of Xaviera’s gaze the instant she came into view.

  Isabelle had been informed by her Aragothic handmaidens that the crown princess was far too mannish, blunt, brash, and bellicose. Isabelle was instantly intrigued—she sounded like a kindred misfit spirit—but her curiosity was tempered by the likelihood that they were destined to be on opposite sides of a civil war.