The question in Jean-Claude’s mind was whether Isabelle’s marriage to Príncipe Julio represented a full-scale change of alliance, or if the arrangement merely increased le roi’s bargaining leverage with the Brathonians. As a King’s Own Musketeer, this was a question Jean-Claude could reasonably ask of his master—Which way do you want me to jump, sire?—but what if le roi said Isabelle was to be a sacrificial pawn? It was not an answer he wanted to receive. Better to stick to the same orders he had been following all her life, the command Grand Leon had never bother to rescind: protect her.
The towering pillars of the Hammer and the Anvil loomed larger and larger until they filled the entire forward sky. The mouths of hundreds of massive gun emplacements yawned like wolves baring their fangs in warning. As the ship entered the channel between the towers, the shadows of the fortresses spread across the deck and seemed to swallow the wind. The sails grew limp, and the rigging thumped and banged with shifting tensions. Jean-Claude swore he could hear the muttering voices of the murderous guns embedded in the stone to either side of him. His skin prickled in gooseflesh despite the afternoon’s warmth. What if the assassin had suborned a gunnery officer? He could blow the Santa Anna to flinders before they knew what hit them.
It seemed to take a very long time, but finally the Santa Anna emerged into the harbor proper. It was a veritable maze of long, thin piers, each supported by its own squadron of aetherballoons, stretching toward the center of the harbor, like a great spiderweb. Longshoremen and sailors scurried along those pathways like so many ants, to and from the hundreds of skyships, stacked three levels deep in places, that rocked at their moorings. Immense treadmill-driven wooden cranes lifted and lowered goods and supplies up and down the cliff face. Warehouses were built right into the stone sides of the shaft. The whole thing looked like a colony of gigantic cliff swallows. Colored lanterns hung in a variety of patterns at the ends of the piers, guiding the harbor pilot as he steered the Santa Anna to a berth reserved for royal ships.
*
Jean-Claude kept his face perfectly straight when a woman emerged from Isabelle’s cabin wearing Isabelle’s dress, her white wig, and a concealing veil. She was about the right height, but under so many layers, even Jean-Claude couldn’t tell if she was an imposter or not. When Vincent, dressed in his finest uniform complete with a shiny new alchemetal helmet and cuirass, took her arm to guide her down the gangway, she was careful to fold her right hand with her left, just as Isabelle did with her prosthetic fingers. Had Isabelle been unable to find a volunteer for this charade? But no, this gowned figure did not have Isabelle’s careless walk.
Jean-Claude straightened his own rarely worn dress uniform, a bright blue tabard with a golden thundercrown, a coronet made from jags of lightning, and sparkling silver trim, and took his place at the back of the column of debarking passengers, just in front of the first group of Aragothic officers and ahead of the two-score troops. Worry crept into his heart as he failed to lay eyes on Isabelle. Presumably she had donned her soldier’s uniform and was waiting for an opportunity to join the throng. Had she, working with only one good hand, been able to put the unfamiliar clothing on? Of course, she would have had at least one lady to assist her. Had she already debarked the ship, or had she had some inspiration and run off to do some other mad thing? One could never assume with Isabelle, though one could trust her.
Surrounded by Vincent and his guards, the decoy, her handmaidens, and Marie debarked onto a graceful jetty that was built like half an arched bridge and supported in part by thick cables strung from pillars onshore. The mechanics of the arrangement entirely eluded Jean-Claude. The important thing, from his perspective, was that it wasn’t moving.
Yet when Jean-Claude stepped onto the jetty, his knees buckled, and he slumped against the railing. He cursed his treacherous body; after nearly three weeks being sloshed about like the dregs of Templeday ale in that rickety wooden deathtrap, his legs had forgotten how to handle unyielding wood. Captain Santiago and his officers brushed by him, cool and confident, apparently unfazed by the transition from ship to shore.
“Need a hand up, good sir?”
Jean-Claude looked up at a slightly built young soldier with a waxed mustache, brown hair, and eyes like pools of summer sky. Thank the Builder.
Jean-Claude forced himself upright despite the fact that the world kept washing up and down. “No, thank you … Sergeant.” Isabelle’s uniform had acquired frogging since the last time he’d seen it. He impelled himself into the line of offloading marines. Isabelle formed up next to him so that they made their own rank.
Jean-Claude noted the stripes on her uniform sleeve. “I see you’ve been promoted.”
“That was Darcy’s idea; her father is military and she says sergeant is a very useful rank. High enough that nearly everyone listens when you bellow an order, low enough to avoid attracting much attention.”
Jean-Claude touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgment of this point, but added, sotto voce, “You’d better walk like a sergeant then, a little march, a little swagger, and for the Builder’s sake, don’t fold your hands in front of you.”
Sergeant Isabelle checked her hands and said, “This feels very … odd.”
“It takes practice. For now, just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”
At the foot of the pier, a group of dignitaries had gathered to greet the woman playing the part of Isabelle. There were several Aragothic nobles, and a trio of Temple sagaxes in lieu of an artifex. Kantelvar was not present. His espejismo had retreated to his body in the palace to direct security from that end.
“I hope I don’t have to remember any of those people’s names,” Isabelle muttered as her handmaiden accepted formal greetings on her behalf.
“You can always have your doppelganger introduce you. Which lady is it, anyway?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Hmmm … a little shorter, just as slender, and has a sense of humor … Valérie.”
“Very good,” Isabelle said. “She also speaks Aragothic. I’ve caught her reading over my shoulder a few times. I think she might have some interest in learning.”
Jean-Claude and Isabelle moved with the crowd of soldiers who were fanning out along the quayside. Another, larger group of royal soldiers in red-and-black uniforms, the processional guard, stood arrayed in a small but well-decorated plaza before them. The compressed size of the venue made the numbers look greater than they actually were. All the civilians who must ordinarily have given this place its function had been cleared out.
The greeting ceremony took remarkably little time for a royal event. Jean-Claude supposed there would be longer introductions later when a larger number of important people were present. Then the gathering rearranged itself, and the Aragothic dignitaries led Valérie toward the coach. Jean-Claude and Isabelle struck out toward an equestrian queue where horses were waiting for visiting riders.
On their way, they crossed paths with the sagaxes, talking in low voices amongst themselves.
“… must not have children,” one of them complained, “it’s an abomination.”