She turned to her bodyguards. “Is this our man?”
Vincent, who had been pacing the deck, came up behind Isabelle and said, “Incredible! It is him exactly. I would not have believed such a thing possible.”
Jean-Claude, his face ashen with sky sickness, sat against the forward rail with his hat over his eyes. “If you do not believe in impossible things, you will have a hard time keeping up with Isabelle.”
Vincent glowered at Jean-Claude and then said, “Are you aware that she has offered to hire me as her bodyguard once my current contract has expired?”
Jean-Claude lifted his hat and squinted at Isabelle, who flinched. She should have consulted with Jean-Claude first. Would he think she didn’t trust him or meant to abandon him? Damn Vincent for bringing it up.
I’m sorry, Isabelle mouthed to Jean-Claude.
If he noticed her or not, she could not tell. Instead, Jean-Claude focused his attention on Vincent and said, “Were you wise enough to accept?”
Vincent, deprived of the reaction he was looking for, said, “I’m still considering it.” He returned his gaze to the picture and said, “You do realize it’s backward. If you ever see the man in the real world, the scar will be on the other side.”
Isabelle said, “True, but he’s more likely to come after me as an espejismo than as a real person; it makes his escape so much easier.”
CHAPTER
Nine
Jean-Claude had been long at work by the time day broke. The Solar’s disk, a reddish blob seen through the eastern haze, rose above what passed for the horizon. Isabelle had once tried to explain to him why the sky changed color like that, but she’d lost him after the bit with the aetherbottle and the prism. Jean-Claude was content with the fact that the Solar was far away and unlikely to attack.
The Santa Anna was only a few hours out from San Augustus. After Thornscar’s failed assassination attempt, the trip had been tense but uneventful, so much so that everyone’s nerves were stretched tight in painful anticipation. Being a guard was like being a racehorse left to stock up in its stall for days, only to be expected to run flat out at a moment’s notice. That was one of the reasons Jean-Claude usually chose to actively hunt Isabelle’s enemies rather than passively secure her person.
Artifex Kantelvar had preceded them to San Augustus by two days. Now one of the queen’s Glasswalkers brought him back to the fleet via mirror to discuss Isabelle’s security with Vincent.
Kantelvar’s espejismo was the oddest case of soul distortion Jean-Claude had yet seen, though his experience with the phenomenon was limited. The priest’s saffron robes had taken on a luminescent quality, as if they glowed with an inner light. Gone were his characteristic limp, his mechanical limbs, and the hump on his back. If not for the testimony of his Glasswalker porter, his knowledge of the flotilla’s passphrases, and his detailed recounting of shared history, Jean-Claude would not have believed he was the same person. Was this what the man had looked like before receiving the honor of having his limbs hacked off and replaced with clockworks? Jean-Claude had to suppress an urge to snatch off the artifex’s cowl and see if there was a real face behind it.
Instead Jean-Claude leaned against the chart room wall, paying heed but offering little comment while Vincent and Kantelvar hashed out the details of Isabelle’s security along the parade route from the dock to the royal enclave at the citadel. The plan was quite elaborate but did not deviate terribly much from the one they had discussed before leaving l’?le des Zephyrs.
The problem with such a script was that the enemy was likely to read it. All a potential assassin had to do was change a line or two to take himself from a bit part to top billing.
Vincent, dressed in the padded gambeson that would serve as the underpinning for his alchemetal armor when the time came for him to debark, tapped his finger on a map of San Augustus and spoke to Kantelvar. “How, precisely, is Isabelle’s coach armored?”
Kantelvar said, “The coach itself is made of ironwood, two inches thick and banded with steel. It would take a cannonball to penetrate it, and we have cleared the route of all artillery.”
Jean-Claude snorted, “Just how much unsecured artillery does San Augustus have lying around?”
“Normally, very little,” Kantelvar said, “but with so much trouble anticipated, the city’s nobles have taken to supplementing their traditional guard with foreign mercenaries. Officially they are all kept out of the city, but many of the units have been there for months, and the borders tend to leak.”
Jean-Claude’s eyebrows lifted, but it was Vincent who asked the next question. “How many of these sell-swords are there?”
Kantelvar said, “At last estimate, around fifty thousand, with more scattered about the countryside within a few days’ ride.”
“And the king allows this?” Vincent sounded incredulous.
Kantelvar made a circling motion with his right—no, his left hand. “It is the traditional duty of the nobles to raise regiments in times of trouble. In fact, it is the traditional justification for their privileged status. They can hardly be prevented from assembling troops in anticipation of a crisis.”
Jean-Claude said, “So, the war for Aragoth’s succession, Builder forbid it should come to pass, may well be won by a foreign general who may then decide not to give up his prize.”
“An unlikely outcome, but possible,” Kantelvar allowed. “It therefore behooves us to ensure that there is no succession debate, and that means delivering Isabelle safely into her husband’s arms and praying she gets quickly with child.”
Jean-Claude bristled at politics that treated Isabelle like a broodmare, but there was no benefit in arguing about it. One might as well protest the necessity of rain in farming.
“So an ironwood coach,” Vincent said, gathering the dropped threads of conversation. “What about the windows?”
Kantelvar said, “The windows in the front of the coach are false, just curtains over wood. Isabelle will sit there, facing backward. There will be a wedge-shaped mirror, warded to keep a Glasswalker from coming through, that will show her reflection out the rear windows so that the crowd can see her. To anyone outside, it will look as if she is sitting in the rear seat. You, Vincent, will sit behind the wedge mirror. In case of an attack, either you or Isabelle can slam the partition door shut, at which point it can only be opened from the inside or with a special key that is kept at the palace.”
Vincent twisted his mustache and said, “That seems adequate.” He turned to look at Jean-Claude and added, “You have been surprisingly quiet through all of this.”