Jean-Claude lunged, shedding his startled captors, and charged straight for Felix.
If only he’d been younger, he might have closed the gap in one swift lunge instead of three irregular lurches. If he had been faster, Felix wouldn’t have had time to draw his sword. Jean-Claude bull-rushed him. Felix dropped his tip and thrust. The point bit through cotton, silk, and skin. Pain washed up Jean-Claude’s arm as the blade ripped a gash. Blood spilled. Jean-Claude wrapped his arms around Felix and bore him through the doorway.
Steel rasped behind Jean-Claude, and somebody struck him square in the back. The blade that fetched up on his rib probably would have killed him instantly if he hadn’t already been moving away from it. He gasped in pain and tripped over Felix’s feet. Both of them went down in a heap.
They rolled over and over each other, seeking advantage. Felix wound up on top. His bony fist crashed into Jean-Claude’s face. The back of Jean-Claude’s skull bounced off the floor. His vision was nothing but blurry red, like blood smeared on glass.
Yet this was the Hall of Mirrors. Le roi must be here. “The princess!” Jean-Claude shouted as Felix hit him again and again. “Princess is alive! She is coming!”
“Stop!” roared Grand Leon, and a bloodshadow spilled across the floor. Jean-Claude recognized its icy touch lapping against his own shadow. Felix froze in mid-pummel, his eyes round and his mouth a silent scream as le roi’s bloodshadow seized him and held him fast.
The beating stopped. In the sudden absence of fresh pain, Jean-Claude jerked his trapped hand free and relieved Felix’s belt pouch of the Hellshard key in the process. The ring went up his sleeve like a rat into a rotten wall.
At the other end of the big blurry world, people were yelling.
“How dare you attack my captain—”
“… my musketeer!”
“… talking about the princess.”
“She is dead…”
Not dead, and Jean-Claude wasn’t finished yet. He had to make her safe. Slowly, achingly, he pulled himself from under Felix and to his feet. He found himself in a vast room lined with the largest mirrors he’d ever imagined, some of them twice as wide as his outstretched arms. On his left was a gathering of Glasswalkers, the Sacred Hundred, all of them on their feet.
Before him, Queen Margareta and the false Príncipe Julio, both in mourning black, stood atop a dais on which had been placed a casket, presumably containing King Carlemmo’s body. Clìmacio leaned on a cane. His expression was grim and closed, his silver eyes wary. Margareta’s whole posture was stiff and haughty. Behind them stood the throne, flanked by the floating spindle of the Hellshard. Black and oily, it repulsed sight, so that one could only look at it out of the corner of one’s eye. It was solid and real, but also missing, like an absence in the world. If just looking at it bent the mind nearly in half, how much worse must it have been for Xaviera, trapped inside?
At the foot of the dais, chained by the neck and wearing the dirty gray cassock of the condemned, knelt Príncipe Alejandro. His expression was resigned and his broad shoulders drooped with the weight of defeat.
Margareta stood on the dais, her arm outthrust, pointing imperiously at Grand Leon, her voice ringing, “Leon, you were invited to witness these proceedings, not to interrupt them. You have defied custom and courtesy, and you have dared deploy your vile sorcery against a Glasswalker in my house. I should have you expelled.”
The Sacred Hundred murmured in agreement. They might have loathed Felix to a man, but they rankled at any foreigner asserting himself in their hall.
All eyes turned to gaze upon Grand Leon in the form of his emissary, his great shadow billowing at his feet. He had stepped out from a gallery of witnesses, visiting nobles, and ambassadors and claimed center stage, as was his wont. Grand Leon’s bloodshadow eased Felix away from Jean-Claude and let him go. “Is it a defiance of courtesy and custom to prevent a murder? My musketeer may be guilty of trespass, but allowing your man to beat him to death would serve no purpose except to extinguish his message before it could be delivered, and I do believe he mentioned Princess Isabelle, who was to be your boy’s bride.”
Clìmacio bristled at being called a boy, but then he seemed in no hurry to interrupt the adults.
Jean-Claude took a step forward. The wound in his back complained at every shift of his balance, but he bowed to Margareta and said, “Your Majesty. If I may.”
“You may not,” Margareta said. “You have no right to speak here, and by sacred law I should cut out your tongue.”
“Let him speak,” called another man, a hoary old gentleman from the ranks of the Sacred Hundred. His hair was more silver than his age-tarnished eyes, and his voice quavered, but his manner was shrewd. “Only a fool or a tyrant silences a messenger because his message is unwanted.”
Margareta glared at him. “Order in the congress. You have not been called upon to speak, Duque Reyes.”
“Since when has that ever stopped him,” muttered one of the other Glasswalkers, by no means below his breath.
Jean-Claude didn’t waste the cue. “I beg your forgiveness, but I would not have interrupted this solemn ceremony except that the future of your line is in immediate danger. Princess Isabelle is alive, a ship has been sent to retrieve her, and she will arrive in the city within the hour.” That won a round of astonished whispers from the witnesses.
Jean-Claude continued, riding a glorious updraft of invention. “Unfortunately, there is a conspiracy afoot to assassinate her. A plot conceived and carried out by that man!” He jabbed a finger at Felix, no matter that the gesture sent spikes of agony up his arm. The wound was not deep, but it was long. “By murdering Princess Isabelle, he seeks to bring l’Empire Céleste into your war on the side of your enemies.”
“Outrageous!” Felix shouted. “This man was in league with the traitor Alejandro. He and his king would like nothing better than to see Aragoth dissolve into chaos so they can seize our ancient lands for themselves.”
That argument won a murmur of agreement from the Sacred Hundred. They were all too willing to pin the blame for their troubles on outsiders.
Jean-Claude turned his attention to the Sacred Hundred. They swam in his sight, but he refused to yield to his body’s pain. Isabelle needed him. “If that were so, se?ors and se?oras, then why would I be bringing Princess Isabelle here? Her supposed death was meant to give l’Empire ample pretext to invade. Her resurrection takes that cause away.”