Jean-Claude made the ascent to the bar and thunked his elbows down like pitons to keep himself from sliding away. “What ho, demoiselle?” he slurred. “A pint and a pie for your best customer.”
The tapster, Demoiselle Planchette, was about ninety years old and might have been knotted together from old hawsers and sailcloth. She made a churlish snort and said, “I’ll let him know when he come in, belike. Now, what’ll you be having? Ain’t got no meat. Ain’t got no pies, neither.”
“A pint then, y’auld witch. And none of that piss you’re selling the sailors.”
“Ask for the moons while yer at it. Me special reserve got requisitioned two shiploads ago. Right now I’m making do on floor rushes and turnip peelings. This time tomorrow, it’ll be turpentine.” She slapped down a mug of something that was, he suspected, technically alcohol, but only because it had a good lawyer.
“What news of the ships?” he asked. “There’s naught left for any crew to pillage, unless they be termites to gnaw on the wood.”
“Doesn’t stop ’em from trying,” Planchette said. “Last I heard they were sending parties up t’hills to look for hidden caves full of food. Won’t find nothing but sheep camps.”
Jean-Claude shook his head. “I hope they don’t find those, either.” Any sheep a provender party found up there would end up as mutton, yet another blow to the poor folk here.
“If I was you, I’d be worried about your own job,” Planchette said.
“What do you mean?” Jean-Claude asked, lacquering his tone with worry. The more unnerved he sounded, the more Planchette was likely to tell him, after she’d had her fun with him, of course.
She gave a one-toothed grin. “Weren’t it you got sent here to watch the worm princess?”
Jean-Claude didn’t have to feign puzzlement or alarm. “Aye. Why?”
Planchette’s misty eyes gleamed with mischief, like candles in the fog. “Guess.” She had no malice in her, aside from the petty grudges all humans carried, but she could string out a tale until her customers died of thirst.
Jean-Claude’s pulse quickened, but he pulled his hat down to obscure his eyes and asked the saints for patience and calm. She hadn’t actually said Isabelle was in danger. She hadn’t mentioned the emissary. He would gain nothing, and more importantly Isabelle would be no safer, if he bolted out of here and ran to check on her.
“I’ve no idea, demoiselle. How should I?”
“From what I gather, ’twas an Aragothic courtier debarked this morning, all fancy-like in red robes lined with vermin.”
“As far as I’m concerned, all nobs are vermin,” Jean-Claude said.
“And here I thought you worked for le roi.”
“That doesn’t mean I like him,” Jean-Claude said. Respect was not the same thing as like; neither was admiration. How could one like a man who had ordered the burning of cities and commanded the assassination of entire families, even if he had been compelled by inescapable logic to do so? Even the inestimable Duchess Sireen, who loved le roi with the dedication of a martyr, called him a heartless cur.
“Any road,” he said. “What about this nob?”
“Yeah. He was one of them Glasswalkers with the silver eyes.”
Jean-Claude’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. As l’Empire Céleste’s high nobility were Sanguinaire, so Aragoth’s were Glasswalkers, descendants of a different saint line. They were capable of casting their reflections—they called them espejismos—from mirror to mirror and manifesting at the other end. He’d only seen it once, in the Célestial capital at Rocher Royale. An espejismo had stepped from a full-length mirror like he was coming through a door. It had been unnerving to watch, the glass rippling like water before settling back into a smooth plane.
“What was a Glasswalker doing on a skyship?” Jean-Claude asked. If one of that ilk wanted to visit l’?le des Zephyrs, all he had to do was step through a mirror.
Planchette said, “Come here to see about your princess I think. Least that’s what the coxswain said, though maybe he was trying to lift my skirt up.”
“What would an Aragoth want with Isabelle?”
“Didn’t tell me, but what does any man want with a woman her age?”
Jean-Claude scoffed. “That’s impossible. He’s a Glasswalker. She’s Sanguinaire, at least by blood. Bloodlines don’t mix.”
“Aye, but she’s got no sorcery, does she?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jean-Claude said. “Not if her family had been unhallowed for six generations would the Temple permit a cross.” So why didn’t his argument sound convincing even to his own ears?
“Temple’s not what it was,” Planchette said.
“I suppose I should go talk to this Glasswalker then,” Jean-Claude said as casually as possible. Coming here had been a mistake. He should have hunted the emissary down straightaway. “Do you know where he is?”
“I imagine he went up to the chateau with that other fellow.”
Jean-Claude paused. “What other fellow?”
Planchette’s smile grew even wider and more empty of teeth. “The other fellow is the one who brought the Glasswalker here.”
*
It was not until Marie had returned and packed up all of Isabelle’s paints that Isabelle’s mind spun down from the vertiginous heights of nonharmonic, countercyclical perturbations to the ordinary world of rude flesh and social morass. It was very hard to get up that mental mountain, but coming down was always a disappointment. Would that her body had no needs to attend and she could stay atop that peak forever, a being of pure mind and crystalline focus, grappling with a deeper and more beautiful reality.
She gathered up her new canvas. The color and proportion were good. She could come back in later with some glazes to enhance the depth and increase the luminosity. A glance toward the forum showed that Henswort was in good hands amongst his admirers, so she shoved off.
She wondered if Jean-Claude had made any progress on discovering the emissary’s purpose. She looked forward to hearing what he found out, though no doubt it was some business of her father’s.
She was more interested in Jean-Claude’s idea to have her fake a marriage to Lord DuJournal. It seemed like a mad plan, but why not? She had very little to lose.
Absorbed in thought, she ascended to the chateau and pushed open her door.
“Welcome, Highness,” came a flat, metallic voice from within.
Isabelle shrieked and nearly jumped out of her skin. Her tripod clattered to the ground. She wanted to bolt, but fear nailed her feet to the pavers.