Isabelle espied the reflection of a man in a mirror who was not there in the real world: Felix. His espejismo had cut the emissary’s throat in the mirror. Saints, he could murder anyone in the room. His espejismo shook reflected blood from his blade as Grand Leon’s emissary crumpled to the ground. Felix in the mirror raised his blade to strike at Jean-Claude’s reflection.
“Jean-Claude, duck!” Isabelle shouted.
Jean-Claude threw himself flat just as the assassin stabbed where his reflection had been.
The swiftest guard rushed Isabelle, sword drawn. She lurched to the side. Too slow, but Julio flew in, hammering the guard in the jaw with one hand even while relieving him of his sword with the other.
Then the mass of guards was upon them, and Julio all but disappeared under a wave of crimson-clad guardsmen.
“Julio!” Isabelle screamed, but he emerged from the crush, gained a step of separation, and proceeded to demonstrate just what “greatest swordsman in Aragoth” actually meant. Back in the aerie, he had been exhausted, half-starved, and wounded, but his espejismo knew no such pains. He was what he believed himself to be. He moved like an angry wasp, evading every blow until he could drive home his sting. He stabbed one guard through the belly, reaped the legs out from under another, and shattered the jaw of a third with a punch that would have broken his own knuckles had they been made of mere flesh and bone.
The remaining guards learned caution, circling him like hounds on a bear.
“Se?ors, to me!” Julio shouted to the Hundred. “If ever you were loyal to Carlemmo, to me!”
Most of the Hundred had already produced hidden weapons from the folds of their garments. A handful rushed toward Julio, though to reinforce or betray him Isabelle could not guess.
Margareta seized Clìmacio and dragged him from the dais. More guards rushed into the room from all sides, racing to her aid. Isabelle took one step toward the retreating queen—she was the key—then something slammed into her from the side and tackled her to the ground.
“Traitress!” Kantelvar howled. He belted her in the face and cracked her head off the marble floor. “You could have been a saint!”
Stars exploded in Isabelle’s vision. Silvery mirrorblood ran from her nose, and her limbs were as saggy as old rope. A manifestation of will it might have been, but her espejismo could still be hurt or killed.
Kantelvar straddled her, grabbed her throat with one hand, and belted her with the other.
“Whore!” he screamed, giving her no chance to regroup. “I made you. I crafted you to be the mother of the Savior. You belong to me!”
Isabelle squirmed and fended off his blows with her crippled right hand, yanking at Kantelvar’s grip on her throat with her left, but nothing about her espejismo made her stronger than him.
“Off, cur!” A bellow of rage and a heavy thump. Kantelvar’s weight flipped from Isabelle’s back as Jean-Claude put a thunderous boot in his side. The artifex’s howls of outrage became a scream of pain.
Isabelle pushed to hands and knees and Jean-Claude scooped her the rest of the way up.
“Get you out of here,” he gasped. His face was white as suet, his clothes sticky with fresh blood. Isabelle’s heart wailed for him even as she forced her mind back to the fray, the guards, the dons. Julio and his loyal dons fended off a full dozen guards. Margareta retreated, towing Clìmacio.
“Get the queen!” Isabelle commanded. Control the head, control the body.
Jean-Claude changed direction with a lurch. Isabelle forced her wobbly legs to move.
Jean-Claude screamed and fell, a sudden gash appearing in his calf. A glance over her shoulder showed Felix in the mirror, his espejismo standing over Jean-Claude’s reflection, lining up for the coup de grace.
“No!” she shrieked. Time seemed to stretch and slow. Her espejismo had no reflection of its own, so she could not shield him in the mirror. She could do nothing but stand in horror as Felix snarled something wicked and—
There came a massive bang and the mirror shattered. Isabelle whirled to see a tall thin man bedecked with lenses striding out from a pall of gun smoke at the head of a squad of arquebusiers. A black sooty ribbon of smoke rose from the mouth of his long musket.
“Shoot any mirror with a sorcerer in it!” he bellowed.
“Go!” Jean-Claude moaned, clutching his bleeding leg.
Isabelle yanked herself from her paralysis and charged after Margareta. The queen was halfway to the back door, but she was dragging Clìmacio and Isabelle’s legs were longer. Reach and strike and push. Faster. Faster.
Margareta saw her coming, shrieked, and let go of Clìmacio.
Isabelle crashed into Margareta from behind, looped her good arm around the stout queen’s neck, and bore her to the ground. The woman thrashed like a stuck boar. Over and over they rolled until the queen ended up on top, her back to Isabelle. Her weight would have smashed the breath from Isabelle’s lungs if her true lungs hadn’t been elsewhere. She got hold of Isabelle’s arm to pry it loose. Isabelle couldn’t get a choking grip.
Isabelle reached for her maidenblade, but her right hand still ended in a wormfinger because the espejismo was a reflection of the soul, of who she believed she was, of who she accepted herself to be.
She’d reached for the knife, hadn’t she, expecting her spark-hand to be there?
She closed her eyes and opened herself to the truth given to her by her enemy. I am Isabelle. Greatest-granddaughter of Saint Céleste. I am a sorcerer. I am l’étincelle!
Isabelle’s bones buzzed as if touched by lightning. Her crippled arm sloughed away like a snake shedding its skin and revealed her luminous spark-flesh beneath, pink and purple glimmers in the maroon clouds that expanded to fill the space she claimed for her limb.
She yanked her maidenblade from its sheath and brought the point up under the queen’s throat. “Hold! Stop or the queen dies! All of you, stop!”
“Abomination!” Margareta said. “She’s an abomination.”
Fear churned Isabelle’s belly, for that was an accusation that might actually stick. “I am St. Celeste’s greatest granddaughter, now stop thrashing or my blade will bite deep.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Margareta said. “You need me—”
Isabelle whipped the maidenblade down and then jammed it up to its hilt in her rump. Margareta screamed.
“Tell them to stop,” Isabelle snarled. “Or I carve you a new arse.”
The queen howled, “Stop! Halt!” The nearest guards hesitated.
“Throw down your weapons!” Isabelle shouted. “Hold! The queen is mine!”
“Do what she says!” Margareta wailed.
Isabelle kept shouting, and slowly, the melee ground to a stop.
Isabelle’s gaze fell on Jean-Claude, who lay but a few paces away, It might as well have been a kilometer.
His face was pale, but he grinned at her. “Well done.”
Isabelle’s heart swelled with relief to see him alive. “A surgeon!” she shouted. “Someone get this man a surgeon!”