Kantelvar had picked himself up from the ground and stood clutching his side. A silvery mist leaked from where Jean-Claude had kicked him.
He glared at Isabelle holding the queen. “Go ahead and kill her,” he spat. Kantelvar reeled about and shouted at the Sacred Hundred, “Kill the traitorous queen. Kill the changeling príncipe. Kill the regicidal heir. Kill the wretched abomination. Kill that limping churl, shat from his mother’s bowels.”
The guards, the Sacred Hundred, and all the witness milled uncertainly. Many of the bystanders stared at Isabelle’s spark arm. Several made signs against evil, and the whisper of “Abomination” reached her ears, but no one challenged her just now. That was a battle for later.
“Be quiet!” shouted Clìmacio. Rapier in hand, he stumped toward Kantelvar. “You filthy lying son of a goat.”
Kantelvar sneered at him. “Down on your knees, whelp. You are nothing but a whipping boy, sired by a cur and farrowed by a sow. I made you and I will unmake you, but not before you feel my lash! Your father was nothing but a—”
Clìmacio wailed and thrust with all his might. The blade struck true. Kantelvar gasped and looked down at the hilt sticking out of his chest, and then up at Clìmacio, whose face was contorted in panic and anger.
“You,” Kantelvar said. “You cannot. I made—”
Clìmacio twisted the blade and Kantelvar gasped. He sagged to his knees and began to melt. His body lost its color, becoming a grayish silver. Rivulets of his mirror-flesh ran away and turned to silver mist before vanishing completely. Within seconds, he evaporated, leaving Clìmacio in the center of the platform, shaking like the last leaf in a high breeze, his sword stuck in nothing.
Isabelle needed no air, but she blew out a long breath anyway. It was fitting that Kantelvar had been finally ended by one he had so cruelly debased. It was only ironic that Clìmacio thought he was defending a lie when in fact he was the true prince … or at least a true prince … to a certain value of true.
She said, “Well done, Your Highness. I am glad to see you have come back to yourself after all your mother and Kantelvar did to you. I have read Kantelvar’s secret books, and I’ve seen the truth. How your mother bore twins, not identical, and gave you to Kantelvar in return for his help in bringing her to power.”
Margareta heaved against Isabelle’s grip. The strangled squawk of pain and outrage from her throat did nothing to diminish the verisimilitude of Isabelle’s lie; quite the contrary. Every greater struggle made Margareta seem like a woman undone. Isabelle heaved her back down, drew out the knife, and put it to Margareta’s throat hard enough that it drew a trickle of blood.
Clìmacio stared at Isabelle with the same starved look as a beggar at a king’s feast. “You read that?”
“Oh yes,” Isabelle said. “Little did Margareta know that Kantelvar was going to make you a slave in your own house. You grew up thinking you were a mere whipping boy. Your brother never knew the truth, but your mother did. She loathed you and she beat you, trying to scourge away the stain of her own betrayal. She didn’t know that Kantelvar meant to give you your brother’s face in the end, to put you on the throne. Kantelvar wanted you to believe you were a pretender, so that you would murder both your brothers, rebel against your mother, and tear all of Aragoth asunder.
“But now your true nature has shone through. Your inner nobility shines. Now the balance of war and peace lies in your hands. You’re not a pawn anymore. You have an open move.” Isabelle’s mouth was dry by the time she finished crafting this confection of wishful thinking. Could such a fabrication support the weight of a single moment, much less the whole future?
“Lies,” Margareta whimpered, but so low and garbled that only Isabelle heard. “None of them are fit to rule. Julio is gutterborn, Clìmacio a fool, and Alejandro drove a knife through his own father’s heart.”
“Good lies,” Isabelle corrected softly, squeezing Margareta’s throat tighter. “Julio is a good prince, Clìmacio more perceptive than you think, and if Alejandro held the knife, it was you who thrust it in.”
Clìmacio licked his lips and said. “Go on.”
Isabelle said, “The question that faces you is, to which outcome will you lend your weight? Will you follow the path that Kantelvar and Margareta laid out for you, choosing war and death and destruction, or will you chose peace and prosperity? Will you release your brother, Príncipe Alejandro, from his shackles and repudiate the lies told against him?”
Clìmacio’s eyes narrowed. “In other words, will I take the path you choose for me, exchanging one master for another.”
“Say rather a fellow traveler on a common road.” She took note of the sword hanging loose in his hand. “You’ve killed your first man today, a just killing, but a killing nonetheless. Do you like the taste of it? Because war will provide an endless feast.” Take the chance, she willed him. Bite!
Clìmacio stared at the sword in his hand, and a look of dismay stole over his face. He turned to Príncipe Alejandro, still chained to the floor at the foot of the dais, and said, “And what does Alejandro say?”
Alejandro glared at Clìmacio. “Release my wife from the Hellshard.”
“Here,” Jean-Claude croaked, tugging the onyx ring from up what was left of his sleeve. “The key.”
Julio took the ring from Jean-Claude and hurried to the tall, black, hard-to-look-at spindle that hovered at the flank of the throne. He passed the ring over the needle point and swept it downward.
It seemed to Isabelle that the space within the circle was stretched tight, like the surface of a drum, and when the needle passed through it, it bent and warped and strained and finally popped. When that skin broke, the space around the spindle seemed to unwind, spiraling outward like a whirlpool in reverse, distorting everything around it to make room for a rapidly unfolding shape, the dark and haggard and harrowed Princesa Xaviera.
She manifested several inches off the ground and literally fell into Julio’s arms, where she hung trembling, a long, anguished moan escaping her. Her silver eyes, wide and staring, were tarnished almost black. Julio carried her to Alejandro. Clìmacio was releasing him from his chains with the same trepidation as a man setting loose an angry badger. The elder príncipe took his wife in his arms. She clung to his shoulders, sobbing uncontrollably.
Julio made his way to Isabelle, his face full of concern, and asked, “Are you well?”
“We still have this problem,” Isabelle said, squeezing Margareta’s neck for emphasis.
Julio held up the Hellshard key. “I think this is only fair.”