An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  * * *

  The chaise rattled about halfway around the vast courtyard and dropped Jean-Claude off in front of the three-story edifice that was serving as Isabelle’s guest residence. He mounted the steps to the porch and met Valérie, who had come out to greet him.

  “Jean-Claude, welcome,” she said. Her voice was husky from crying.

  He doffed his battered hat to her. “Mademoiselle Valérie, good evening. Is Princess Isabelle here?”

  “She’s gone up to the masque. She begs you to stay and wait for her.”

  Jean-Claude grunted. “I will do better than that. I will meet her at the masque. There are people there I need to talk to.” Isabelle and Duque Diego chief amongst them.

  She escorted him into the house. Her face, ordinarily rosy and cheerful, had a gray color and wore a pinched expression. Her hands were knotted together before her belly. “Have you caught the man who shot Vincent?”

  “Not yet,” Jean-Claude said. “The investigation is less straightforward than I’d like.”

  “When you do catch him, spit in his eye for me.” After a moment she added, “You may not have liked Vincent, but I did.”

  Jean-Claude touched his hand to his heart. “You have my word, mademoiselle.” Vincent had been an ass, but he’d been an honest ass, and Jean-Claude could see why Valérie might find that attractive.

  She nodded in satisfaction and her hands unclenched. “Builder keep.”

  “Savior come.” Two servants helped him inside to one of the silent rooms—perhaps it was because of the noise of the city, but the Aragoths seemed to have a passion for quiet rooms—and poured him a steaming bath. The hot water stung like the Breaker’s own venom until the heat finally seeped deep enough inside him to start working on his muscles.

  He was just starting to loosen up when the door opened and Adel padded in, bearing a basketful of drying cloths and pots of ointment. “Good evening, señor musketeer. Are you enjoying your bath?”

  “Indeed, madam,” Jean-Claude said. “A bit too much, I’m afraid, but I am almost finished.” He needed to get up, dry off, get dressed in a silly costume, and attend Isabelle at the masquerade.

  He made to lever himself up, but Adel placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down. Water sloshed over the sides of the tub. “Not so fast. La princesa gave me explicit orders that you were to be well cared for. I would not wish to earn her displeasure by sending you off to meet her looking like last week’s laundry.” Before he could protest, she dug strong thumbs into his shoulders, bringing painful heat to the knots therein. He gasped in agony very close to ecstasy.

  “Mon dieu, woman, you have the hands of a saint.”

  She kneaded his tired muscles like bread dough. “I certainly hope not. I would hate to have them wind up in some reliquary when I am finished with them.”

  Jean-Claude laughed. “Fear not, good saint, your secret is safe with me. And I would love to endure your ministrations, but I really do have duties I must perform.”

  “And what would you do at the masquerade, protect Princesa Isabelle from disingenuous conversation? No one is going to assault her in the king’s presence. Far better for you to take care of yourself now so that you are ready when she does need you.”

  “I need to talk to people there.”

  “The masquerade will be going on until dawn, and the longer you wait, the drunker your quarry will be.”

  Jean-Claude grumbled at this logic primarily because it was irrefutable. He was exhausted. “Ten years ago, I would have just been hitting my stride at this time of night.”

  “Hmmm … the trade-off of age is supposed to be energy for wisdom. One hopes you have not been shortchanged.”

  “Did I mention you have the Breaker’s own tongue?”

  She laughed. She rubbed his shoulders and then let him out of the tub, but only far enough to lie on a table where she could cover him in heated blankets and massage his aching back.

  “You know, you really don’t have to take this trouble for me,” he said. The pleasure he took chopping the knees out from under the high and mighty was matched by his distaste for imposing himself on the humble.

  “Tame your worries. It is my pleasure to ease the hurts of one who works so hard to protect Her Highness’s interests, though you will weary me if you do not relax.”

  “My apologies, madam, but my mind cannot stop its tumbling.”

  “Then speak of pleasant things. Tell me of your princess as one who knows her well.”

  Jean-Claude released a long, slow breath. “Tell you of Isabelle? I do not have that much time. She is … wonderful.”

  “She is certainly very clever.”

  “Hah. Conjurers and shysters are clever. Scholars and priests are learned. Composers and artists are inspired. Isabelle is brilliant. She looks at things and sees them in ways that no one else does.” And if he said too much more, he would implicate her in the heresy of engaging in pursuits reserved for men, so he changed the subject. “What about your Príncipe Julio?”

  “When I knew him best, he was always very high spirited. Not just unafraid but eager for challenges. The quickest way to get him to do something was to tell him it couldn’t be done. And he was so competitive. He had to be the best at everything. Running, riding, shooting, fencing. He was always pushing himself past his abilities.”

  “A typical boy, then,” Jean-Claude said.

  “Oh, but it was frightening how often he succeeded. He taught himself to mirror-walk when he was only eight, when most children don’t even get their silver eyes until they are twelve or their instructions until they are fourteen. It scared the queen his mother half to death.”

  “Mothers are inclined to be upset when their boys try to kill themselves,” Jean-Claude allowed. “I nearly drove my poor mam to fits.”

  Adel laughed. “And you haven’t changed a bit since then, as I can see, but that’s not how I meant it. Queen Margareta wasn’t scared for Julio. She was afraid of him. More than once I heard her call him the Breaker’s child, and it wasn’t just a mother’s fits. She was terrified, like she’d found herself leashed to a great dog turned vicious.”

  “And was he vicious?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “Never that I could see. He was just intense. But he was always kind to me and his servants never feared him, not even the whipping boy.”

  “They still use whipping boys here?” Jean-Claude asked, incredulous.

  “Queen Margareta resurrected the practice.”

  Jean-Claude asked, “And how often was this whipping boy plied in his trade?”

  Adel hesitated thoughtfully. “Not very often. In truth, most of the transgressions for which he suffered were manufactured.”

  “By whom?”

  “Hmmmm…’Tis a delicate subject.”

  “It goes no farther than my ears.”

  “By the queen, then, if you must know. She couldn’t lash out at Julio, so she vented her wrath on poor Clìmacio.”

  “And what did Julio think of that?”

  “He hated it, but there was nothing he could do about it.”

  “Ah.” Jean-Claude’s opinion of Julio rose at the idea that he was capable of feeling compassion for the lowly.

  “What about Artifex Kantelvar?” Jean-Claude asked. “When did he become involved in the príncipe’s affairs?”

  “Him, I do not know. He used to keep to his own palace up in the mountains. He never came to San Augustus until he showed up to officiate at Alejandro’s wedding. That was about five years ago.”

  Jean-Claude wished he could draw some nefarious conclusion from that, but who better to officiate at a royal wedding than a Temple artifex?

  Adel continued, “A lot of people think his Exaltation drove him mad.”

  Jean-Claude grunted. Exaltation was the name of the ceremony in which some high-muckety yellow-robe got his limbs lopped off and replaced with metal bits to bring him closer to the Builder’s clockwork perfection. “I imagine they’d have to
be mad to start with.” On further reflection he added, “Mad in what way?” And who would be in a position to judge?

  Adel made a shrug that rippled down her arms and across his back. “It’s just gossip. Folk said he was always more interested in money than the Builder’s work—absolve thy sins for a fee. I heard he got one of the up-country lords to hand over a whole fief to pay off some scandal, then kicked all the farmers off it and put sheep on instead. He even had his own trade fleet.”

  “More profit than prophet,” Jean-Claude said. Indeed, that didn’t sound much like the Kantelvar he knew, more slimy than cunning. “And now he’s different.”

  “Oh yes, much more around town. Much more political. He even helped Duque Diego’s son get married to Lady Noelia, and that set off a feud between Duque Diego and Noelia’s uncle Don Blanxart, who had meant to marry her off to someone else.”

  “Why is that important?” Jean-Claude asked. He had never needed to know Aragothic society before.

  “Because Duque Diego used to support Príncipe Alejandro, but Don Blanxart is Xaviera’s brother, so Duque Diego was forced to either back down or switch sides.”

  “So he switched sides,” Jean-Claude said. “Leaving us with a political mess today.”

  “I don’t know all that much about it. I was more interested in the married couple.”

  “And how are they doing?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “He accused her of cuckolding him and had her thrown from the coastal rim.”

  Jean-Claude’s heart thundered with outrage. Much too little much too late. “And was that villain ever punished?”

  “He was tried before the king. Don Blanxart wanted him thrown in the Hellshard, but Carlemmo stripped him of his name and banished him instead.”

  “A result I am sure made no one happy,” Jean-Claude said; it certainly sickened him. If all of this was true, Kantelvar was at least partly responsible for the tensions in Aragoth today. Was there anything he did not have his clockwork fingers in?

  At last, Adel rubbed the last kink out of Jean-Claude’s back and changed the dressing on his leg. He felt like melting into the table. If only he could remain here for perhaps a decade. Alas, duty called, and after a suitable amount of time to let the good work set, she let him up.

  “We must find you a costume,” she said. “Something fabulous.”

  Jean-Claude bit his tongue on the first three suggestions that came to mind: a beggar, a donkey, and a dog. He wasn’t going just to tweak noses; he had to make Isabelle look good. “I will wear my high-court uniform—that’s the white one with all the silver trim—and a suitable mask. I doubt anyone else will be going as a musketeer.”

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  The royal palace’s huge courtyard was filled with coaches of every shape and size. An army of drivers, footmen, grooms, and stable hands milled about, making sure the animals were both relaxed for a long stay and ready to go at moment’s notice.

  Isabelle’s coach pulled to a stop in front of the Hall of Mirrors. It had taken longer to carefully bundle her and her acres of white silk into the coach than it would have taken her to walk the short distance, but a princess of the blood royal did not arrive on foot.

  The footman opened the door and Isabelle poured out in a cascade of lace, like the foam at the bottom of a waterfall. Her gown was trimmed with silver and vented to show layers of crimson beneath. Her wig was done up in an elaborate coiffure threaded through with strands of rubies and pearls. For her face, she had chosen the most diaphanous of all possible veils, barely more than a wisp of fabric, and, for the sake of the masquerade, a “mask” of paint in the form of a white Solar burst centered on the bridge of her nose, its rays spreading up to her hairline across her eyes, over her cheeks, and down to her chin. She must make the Aragothic court’s first, critical impression of her a good one. Tonight and forever hereafter, she represented not only herself, but all of l’Empire Céleste, and l’Empire did not trip over its own skirts.

  Isabelle’s personal guard, Vincent’s men bedecked in l’Empire Céleste’s blue and gold, fell in behind her as she mounted the red-carpeted steps. She wished Jean-Claude were at her side. She clung to his assurance that she could manage her own affairs, despite all evidence to the contrary. If she couldn’t handle this social venue on her own, then she had no business being here no matter what Grand Leon’s, Margareta’s, or Kantelvar’s schemes required.

  Her mind was still a whirlwind as she rearranged the facts surrounding her betrothal to fit the new context of Kantelvar’s breeding program. The emerging pattern was girded with corpses. Kantelvar had shoehorned Isabelle into this marriage by having her selected as an alternate to Lady Sonya de Zapetta—the less controversial choice—but in order to ensure that her wedding came to pass, Lady Sonya had to die. Kantelvar had blamed that on Thornscar but only after Isabelle’s ship had been attacked. Could Kantelvar have murdered Lady Sonya? Yet even that would not have been enough to secure this marriage.

  Presumably Julio had been part of the conspiracy’s breeding plan, his history as distorted as hers. His birth had only come about because an artifex had helped arrange Margareta’s marriage to Carlemmo after his first wife died, and now Carlemmo himself was dying, a necessary prerequisite for Julio’s ascent and a civil war. Did Julio have any idea of the part selected for him? Did he approve of it?

  If Kantelvar’s conspiracy was consolidating all the bloodlines, including those of the ghostbred saints, like Saint Céleste, they would have had to manipulate pairings going back hundreds of years at a minimum. How many other lives had they bent and twisted to this singular end? It was a great mural painted in blood, a great play choreographed to try to force the prophecy to come true. It turned Isabelle’s stomach, but she had not an iota of evidence to prove any of it, nothing except the book, and that could mean anything. If she tried to put it forward as evidence, Kantelvar could claim she’d stolen the book and modified it or even printed it herself.

  No one outside the Temple knew what was in the Fragments, and she had no way of knowing who within the Temple was part of the conspiracy. She needed the blood ciphers. She would have to sneak back to Kantelvar’s sanctum and recover that chest of quondam clockworks. Jean-Claude would help her. He would have some idea of how to drag the conspiracy into the light of day.

  With difficulty, she forced her attention to the matter at hand. She had a great deal of business to conduct this evening. First, she had to meet Carlemmo and plead with him to pick a successor. Surely if he cared about his grandchildren, he would not oblige his sons to fight each other. She also wanted to take Duque Diego’s measure. Kantelvar had pointed him out as an enemy, blamed him for Thornscar’s attack, but was it a true warning against a real enemy, or was he trying to cut her off from potential allies? It might possibly be both. But the most important meeting of the night, the one that held the most promise and terror, would be with Príncipe Julio.

  The very thought of meeting a stranger and calling him betrothed filled her stomach with razor-edged butterflies. What would he be like? Why had he ignored her? Was he a dupe in Kantelvar’s scheme or a partner? Did he have any affection for the brother he seemed destined to fight? Too many questions. She levered herself forward with the knowledge that a single truth was less overwhelming than a thousand formless fears.

  The two-story-tall, peaked double doors of the grand entrance had been thrown wide. Inside, every wall and pillar was lined with silvered glass, which made the vast space seem even larger and more crowded and distorted than the reality. The marble floors were done in a pleasing abstract design of white, black, and gold tile. Overhead, dozens of alchemical chandeliers blazed, their harsh light cutting night’s shadow into tiny slivers that scuttled about under the cover of ladies’ skirts.

  As Isabelle crossed the threshold, her skin tingled with the light touch of sorcery. The building, she had been told, was warded against unauthorized magic; only those specifically permitted by the king coul
d work their sorcery here. As a consequence, a mirrored hall full of Glasswalkers was actually one of the least sorcerous places in the kingdom.

  A line of musicians in purple livery raised long trumpets with pennons bearing the symbol of the Aragothic crown and blew a silver-throated fanfare. A herald raised his voice. “La Princesa Isabelle des Zephyrs, of l’Empire Céleste!”

  Inside, a hundred conversations hushed. Isabelle emerged into a wonderland of fantastic costumes, of glittering faeries and sulfurous demons, fiery dragons, fierce gryphons, and other rare beasts. The competition for most ostentatious display of wealth and talent had reached a sartorial crescendo, straining toward a climax of silk, satin, and stitches.

  The Comte des Zephyrs had hosted his fair share of feasts, balls, and ceremonies, and Isabelle had thought them grand to the point of gaudy, but they were as nothing to the tableau before her. It was as if she had stepped into a world of demigods, where reality was rearranged at whim, and it was all she could do to keep from gawking like some provincial milkmaid. I am l’Empire, and l’Empire does not gawk.

  The sea of fantastic frippery parted before Isabelle, and a pair of young ladies stepped into the aisle. They curtsied and then proceeded slowly and decorously before her, strewing flower petals from large baskets as they went. The crowd made a collective leg to Isabelle as she passed, as if she were a stiff breeze causing a field of grass to bend. When had she acquired such force? She fought to keep herself from scurrying forward to release the tension; l’Empire did not scurry. This courtesy wasn’t really directed at her, but rather at the powers she channeled through her blood and rank.

  At the far end of her long walk, on his throne atop a broad dais, King Carlemmo waited. He was not a tall man, but he had a powerful frame that had been withered by disease, leaving a frail and bony husk. His skin—what she could see of it—which should have been swarthy, was a sickly shade of gray. From a gold chain about his neck hung a reliquary of Saint Cerberus, a quondam metal cylinder in which the living eyes of the first Glasswalker saint were held, a symbol of sorcerous divinity. Around his crown, he wore an elaborate headpiece in the shape of a skyship of the line, a calculated reminder of how Aragoth’s power and wealth derived from her formidable navy.