Lord Antionne’s expression grew a bit wooden, and Isabelle realized he must have thought she was asking him to cough up a trinket on the spot.
He said, “That was imported all the way from l’?le de Noire.” It was supposed to be a reminder of his successful trading ventures. His contacts on Craton Riqueza made him a useful man for a princesa of Aragoth to know.
“I will treasure it.” She propped up an awkward smile, an expression that fooled no one, she feared, but sometimes all one could do was move past the current awkwardness to the next awkwardness.
Marie, who hovered always at Isabelle’s side like an unquiet ghost, took the box and placed it on a table with Isabelle’s other presents. It was starting to look like a pile of bier gifts.
The business of the audience finished, Lord Antionne let himself out, and not before time. Never had she talked so much, said so little, or felt quite so lonely. As useful as all her newly affirmed acquaintances might have been, none of them were really interested in her for her own sake. They didn’t know her, and the one person who did remained conspicuously absent.
Jean-Claude had been missing since they parted on the steps of the library at the hour of Professor Isaac’s lecture. Could something have happened to him? The thought gave her jitters.
The only mention of him had come when her father had introduced her to a thin, pointy man whose doublet was festooned with dueling ribbons and whose face was marked with scars. “This is Captain Vincent. He will be the head of your new honor guard, a troop of reliable men, loyal to the family, and we will finally be rid of that damned musketeer.”
Isabelle’s stomach soured at the thought of being surrounded by a dozen of the comte’s spies at all times, extending his control of her far across the deep sky.
Her father must have seen the dismay on her face, for his lips compressed into a thin but satisfied smile. “Jean-Claude’s much vaunted, much flaunted authority does not apply in Aragoth, and I cannot imagine His Majesty would wish to sully l’Empire’s reputation by sending the sot to a foreign capital any more than I would wish to tarnish your appearance by including him in your entourage.”
“Fear not,” said Vincent in a voice of smoothed grit, like oiled steel. “I am sworn unto my death to protect you, and I have never failed in any charge.”
Isabelle wanted no more to speak to Vincent than to her father, so she merely nodded without enthusiasm. Somehow, she had never imagined her world without her fey but faithful musketeer ambling through it. The comte’s revelation only made it more urgent that she speak with him.
She finally reached a lull in her flood of petitioners. Her head ached and her energy was depleted down to the bone. She had tried to offer only small talk and social platitudes, but saints only knew what ammunition she had inadvertently given them all to hurl at her … and this was only a very small sample of what she would experience in a royal court.
Anticipating dinner, Isabelle sent Marie to fetch the right-hand prosthesis she used to feed herself, then sat in the wing chair and basked in the rippling golden rays of the late afternoon sun. The sunbeams diffracted through the beveled edges of the windows, forming tiny rainbows, an obvious demonstration of the principle of diversity in aetheric density. What does it tell us about the nature of light that it can be subdivided? What does that tell us about the nature of the Builder?
If at all possible, one of her first projects as princesa or queen would be to build her own university. That would give her much opportunity to rub up against the world’s brightest minds. She would have to dedicate at least one laboratory of her future university to the study of light. It seemed far too fundamental a thing to be left unexplored.
“Your Highness.” Jean-Claude’s jovial voice boomed from the glass-paneled double doors on the far side of the room, as if finding her here were a delightful surprise rather than a deliberate act.
She bounced from her seat and smiled at him in melting relief. “Monsieur musketeer, welcome. I trust you have heard my most excellent news.” She prayed it was excellent, because it was certainly forever.
He was dressed in a drab brown coat over his fine linen blouse. He doffed his white-plumed hat and made a leg for her, pointing the toe of his scuffed and dingy boots. Refusing to dress up when he entered the chateau was one way he tweaked her father’s nose.
He strolled across the room, his hound-dog eyes and drooping mustache looking genuinely puzzled. “News, Highness? I’m afraid nothing of any importance ever finds its way into these hairy ears.”
Isabelle laughed. “You are incorrigible. I know you’ve heard of my betrothal. You’d have to be considerably more deaf than a post not to have, but that’s not the whole of it. The artifex, Kantelvar, has promised to bring back Marie!”
Jean-Claude’s bushy eyebrows rose in true surprise. “Truly? That is wondrous indeed, but I have always been given to understand that such a thing is impossible.”
“He says he has done it before. He himself.”
Jean-Claude’s expression became thoughtful. “Did you ask him when, and why you, who have scoured every mountaintop and rabbit hole for news of just such a miracle, have never heard of it?”
With more than a little effort, Isabelle simmered her roiling enthusiasm down. “I didn’t think of it at the time, and I haven’t seen him since my audience with the comte.” And, if she was to be brutally honest, this was one assertion she didn’t want to challenge.
She asked, “But where have you been?”
He ran a hand through his thinning, graying hair and leaned against a white pillar. “I have been in my cups, of course, listening to a constant babble and gabble of rumor. Apparently there’s been an incredible transformation. A woman once feared as a witch has transformed into a beautiful princess, and she’s sailing off to become a good and noble queen of a distant land.”
Isabelle puffed a disbelieving breath. “Am I supposed to be flattered by this change of heart?”
Jean-Claude shrugged. “Their praise is offered with the same passion and sincerity as their slander, and should be taken just as seriously.”
Isabelle blinked, slightly stunned, but of course he was perfectly right. She’d have to think on that later. “But surely such gossip wouldn’t take you three days to collect.”
“True. Mostly what I have been concerned with were the rumors of your predecessor’s death and how mysterious it was.”
Isabelle’s mouth opened to respond before she fully grasped what Jean-Claude had said. She found herself spluttering. “Predecessor? Explain.”