Isabelle asked Jean-Claude, “Are you well?”
Jean-Claude brushed at his arms as if dislodging spiders. “As well as any man may be after he’s been turned inside out and dragged through cold, gritty mud. Now I know what a hide feels like when it is tanned, and I lost my hat.” He held the hat up again and glowered at it suspiciously. “It disappeared beyond the mirror, but it was on my head when I got back.”
Don Divelo said, “You lost your hat’s reflection. When next you stand before a mirror with your hat on you will feel it on your head but not see it in your reflection.”
Jean-Claude shuddered like a damp dog dislodging water and muttered imprecations about sorcery. Someone pushed a chair toward Isabelle, but she declined it. There was no way for everyone to sit down, and being the only one to sit would put her head at the level of other people’s bellies.
Isabelle said, “Jean-Claude, pray tell us what you discovered.”
Jean-Claude held out his cup for a refill and got it, but he refrained from further imbibing. He said, “Thanks to Don Divelo’s excellent guidance, I was able to track down the person who placed the mirror aboard this ship. After much hard work and diligence, I extracted from this miscreant the name of the mastermind behind the plot to assassinate Princess Isabelle. His name is Duque Ramon de la Gallegos Diego.”
A surprised murmur quickly rose to a buzz as everyone started talking at once. Isabelle was acquainted with Diego’s name. He was King Carlemmo’s cousin by some degree, but she knew almost nothing else about him.
“But that makes no sense,” Don Divelo said, quieting the other Aragoths by dint of his noble status and courtly experience.
“Why not?” Isabelle asked.
Divelo said, “Duque Diego is a member of the queen’s faction.” At Isabelle’s uncomprehending look, he added, “Alejandro, the elder prince, is the heir apparent, but he is not Queen Margareta’s son. If he ascends the throne, she loses influence and so does everyone in her faction. The only way Diego wins is if Julio takes the throne, which he has no chance of doing if he is not married.”
“Perhaps he does not object to the idea of marriage so much as the match that has been made,” Vincent said.
“He has two daughters,” Santiago said.
“But he does not want them married to Prince Julio,” Divelo said. “Right now, the factions are about evenly balanced. If Diego married either of his daughters to Julio, that would bring him closer to Príncipe Julio, but it would add nothing to the weight of the faction. The ideal marriage must bring some extra weight to the queen’s faction to tip the balance of power in her favor. Before Princess Isabelle’s betrothal, it was assumed that Margareta would try to marry Julio to the daughter of one of her more powerful enemies and thus shift the balance of power. There were several of them just waiting for the right bribe to switch sides.”
Isabelle’s brows furrowed. “I was told that all the other candidates were unsuitable, too young, or too old, or too close in blood.”
Divelo said, “In politics fault is where you find it. There were several women, second cousins, who might have been chosen, had they not been vetoed by the Temple.”
“You mean Kantelvar?” Isabelle asked.
Divelo shrugged. “The bull came from the Omnifex. Whether Kantelvar wrested it out of him or not, I cannot say.”
Jean-Claude said, “Seems to me, Isabelle brings the entire weight of l’Empire Céleste to the queen’s faction.”
Divelo raised one hand, palm up, and made a balancing gesture. “Perhaps, although I must say the choice … pardon me, Highness, but the choice of an outsider is still … controversial. If it played well, it might add weight, or it might cause the whole side to collapse.”
“How does the king fit into all this?” Isabelle asked. “Whose side is he on?”
Don Divelo spent a moment rubbing his second chin before answering. “Until King Carlemmo fell ill, he seemed to favor Alejandro, or at least he tended to side with his elder son against his second wife on the occasions when their domestic disputes became political.”
“And what about Príncipe Julio?” Isabelle asked. “Does he have a part, or is he merely a pawn to these greater players?”
Divelo shifted his great weight uneasily and said, “When Julio was first told of the arrangement of his marriage, he was…” Divelo groped for a sufficiently neutral term.
“Less than enthusiastic,” Isabelle supplied; she was the only one in the room who politely could.
Divelo cleared his throat. “To be clear, he offered no disrespect to Your Highness, but he thought that the marital strategy his mother proposed was ill advised. He preferred a more conventional approach. Odd for a man who is so frequently unconventional, but he hasn’t been the same since his accident, and he seems to have capitulated to his mother on that topic.”
“What accident?” Isabelle asked, alarmed.
Divelo’s eyebrows lifted. “His hunting accident, last Hoarwinter. Has nobody told you? He and his squire were out coursing red deer in the Slatefinger mountains when they got separated from the hunting party and fell into a crevasse. The squire was killed and Julio was badly wounded, his leg smashed. By the time they got him out, he had the drowning lung. He lost part of his leg and much of his strength. It took him months to rise from bed, and the debility has made him more sullen and temperamental.”
Isabelle was appalled. Was she the one being sold damaged goods? No, that was not fair. A missing leg did not make a man any less a man, any more than a wormfinger made her less a woman. Yet such an injury had to come as a great shock to a man’s soul, especially for such a young man, two years her junior, who had not reached the natural apex of his physical prowess.
“I was told he was one of the greatest swordsmen in Aragoth,” she said.
“Before the accident, perhaps,” Divelo allowed. “Since then, he does not get about much. The leg, you see.”
Isabelle shook her head, trying to rearrange her as yet unsubstantiated imaginings of her future husband. Why hadn’t Kantelvar told her this? Sadly, the artifex was not here to be questioned.
“This is beside the point,” Vincent said. “Assuming that the musketeer has not been misled, the question becomes how to deal with Duque Diego.”
Divelo said, “Unless you have more proof than the testimony of this musketeer, I suggest diplomacy.”
“We should warn Queen Margareta,” Isabelle said. If the queen was Isabelle’s chief advocate in Aragoth, she had to be apprised of this treachery within her own ranks. She addressed Don Divelo directly. “May I trouble you to carry this news to the queen for me?”