“Enough,” Margareta snapped, but Jean-Claude could see the gears of political triangulation mesh behind her eyes. “Princess Isabelle will be heard, but this court and this trial are not the place for it.”
Margareta turned her glower on Jean-Claude. She could hardly condemn him publicly for bringing her such a dreadful warning. “Your dedication to your princesa is laudable. Not so your discourtesy. Felix is an officer of this court and a member of the Sacred Hundred. No clayborn may challenge his word or besmirch his honor, much less lay a charge against him, no matter who that clayborn works for.”
Grand Leon spoke, his voice pitched to carry without the impression of shouting. “Jean-Claude has embarrassed us as well. Rest assured, he shall be punished.” He gestured at a seat in the gallery. “Jean-Claude, sit, stay, and be silent.”
Jean-Claude resisted the temptation to woof at him. His vision was sloshing from side to side. Sitting might help. He stumbled through the small crowd of dignitaries—what a show they were getting; he should pass around his hat for coins—and collapsed in the indicated seat next to the bedazzlingly bedecked Ambassador du Blain. Jean-Claude’s vision blurred and sound became like wind in his ears. He blinked a few times to clear his sight.
Margareta whispered in Felix’s ear. Felix marched out of court, though not without a backward glare at Jean-Claude. The Sacred Hundred and the visiting dignitaries all muttered to one another in low voices.
Grand Leon returned to his seat, which managed to be slightly taller than everyone else’s, and said to Jean-Claude sotto voce, “I distinctly recall giving you an order.”
“Yes, Majesty,” Jean-Claude said. “You gave me two orders. I was to go to the docks to await Isabelle’s arrival, but she is not arriving by the docks, which makes that order moot. Also you told me that if Margareta became a threat to Isabelle, it was my job to dispose of her, which I am in the process of doing.”
“How very much like a lawyer of you,” Grand Leon said. “Is this ploy worth your life?”
Jean-Claude said, “I gave you my life long ago, sire. If all I have left to give is my death, so be it.”
“I was not aware you had a poet in your soul,” Grand Leon said. “To go along with the lawyer.”
“The bastards have been squatting there for a while, mucking up the place,” Jean-Claude replied. “I’m going to start charging them rent. In the meantime, Isabelle will be arriving at the Spindle very soon, and she relies upon Your Majesty for protection.”
“I don’t suppose I can blame her for your disobedience.” Grand Leon made a subtle hand signal, and Ambassador du Blain took himself off.
Jean-Claude said, “I make no apologies, sire. To obey you would have been to betray you and bring your plan to ruin.” After a moment he added, “Though if you do find it necessary to execute me, I request that my funeral include a tower of horse shit burned in my honor.”
Grand Leon glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “In the tradition of a great hero being sent off with his preferred weapon?”
“Yes, sire.”
*
Towed by Julio, Isabelle slithered through the Argentwash. It was as if she had plunged into thin cold mud, a wet chill that swallowed her from crown to toes. She opened her eyes with a start and found herself in the mirror realm, dissolved in and carried along by a river of quicksilver. There was nothing to see but eddies and whorls of silver, nothing to hear at all. How in the name of all the saints did Glasswalkers navigate this?
Even counting time by the number of thoughts flitting through her mind, she could not tell how long it was before a pane of glass resolved itself before her, and beyond it an unfamiliar room, a round chamber, clad in marble with stately pillars holding up a domed ceiling. Its walls were lined with mirrors. The space her awareness occupied, the speculum loci, was quite literally the mirror image of the physical world before her. To her left, which was ordinarily her right, was a marble pillar, except that the back portion of it, the bit the mirror could not see, merely faded away to nothing. She reached out to touch it, just to see if it had any substance at all, but her phantom arm was gone, and in its place her old familiar arm of flesh and blood, complete with wormfinger.
She had no time to absorb this new fact before Julio pulled her forward. She had seen curds strained from milk, the colloidal liquid becoming solid. Now she knew what those curds felt like as they congealed into firmer matter. It was rather squishy. She would have stumbled to the ground and possibly splattered like a butter sculpture had not Julio’s arm snaked around her waist to hold her up.
A tepid breeze brought a whiff of brick dust and gun smoke. The distant blast of cannons rumbled like thunder across the city. Isabelle gasped and drew in a huge breath of air that didn’t seem to touch her lungs.
“My arm,” she said. “I got my old arm back.”
Julio frowned and said, “That’s still how you think of yourself, deep down.”
It was profoundly strange to know that her body had been changed and yet be unable to feel that it was true. Even so, this was an unexpected blessing. People might have found her wormfinger revolting, but at least it was easy to conceal.
“Princess!” called a voice in la Langue.
She looked up to see the Hugo du Blain, all frills and lace and fancy embroidery, hurrying toward her. He looked oddly distorted, almost lopsided. So did everything in the room.
“Ambassador,” she said. “I am pleased to see you.”
The ambassador stopped short of her by a respectful distance and bowed, sweeping a gaudily magnificent hat that could have doubled as a prizewinning arrangement of exotic flowers. The ambassador said, “I am delighted that you are alive. And you … Príncipe Julio, I presume. This is a surprise.”
“I am Julio,” he said.
“The real Julio,” Isabelle explained. “The one who resides under Margareta’s thumb is a fraud.” She needed to establish that fact early and often.
Du Blain nodded and continued, “And who is your other friend?”
Puzzled, Isabelle followed his gaze. Her face grew slack in astonishment, for where before had been Kantelvar’s head in a jar was a young man dressed in yellow robes with a black mantle embroidered with gearwheels. His young face was lined with deep grooves of pain, and his glassy eyes stared into the middle distance. Hands with knobby knuckles folded and unfolded spasmodically.
“Kantelvar,” she breathed. He was still alive in the jar when they brought his reflection through the mirror, but since he had no eyes to see himself with, his espejismo had emerged as he remembered himself, thanks to soul distortion. This must have been how his very first body had looked.
“Padre de Santos!” Julio said, his surprise at least equal to Isabelle’s.
Kantelvar’s glassy eyes fixed on Isabelle and he growled, in the Saintstongue, “Traitress!”