“Hah. Conjurers and shysters are clever. Scholars and priests are learned. Composers and artists are inspired. Isabelle is brilliant. She looks at things and sees them in ways that no one else does.” And if he said too much more, he would implicate her in the heresy of engaging in pursuits reserved for men, so he changed the subject. “What about your Príncipe Julio?”
“When I knew him best, he was always very high spirited. Not just unafraid but eager for challenges. The quickest way to get him to do something was to tell him it couldn’t be done. And he was so competitive. He had to be the best at everything. Running, riding, shooting, fencing. He was always pushing himself past his abilities.”
“A typical boy, then,” Jean-Claude said.
“Oh, but it was frightening how often he succeeded. He taught himself to mirror-walk when he was only eight, when most children don’t even get their silver eyes until they are twelve or their instructions until they are fourteen. It scared the queen his mother half to death.”
“Mothers are inclined to be upset when their boys try to kill themselves,” Jean-Claude allowed. “I nearly drove my poor mam to fits.”
Adel laughed. “And you haven’t changed a bit since then, as I can see, but that’s not how I meant it. Queen Margareta wasn’t scared for Julio. She was afraid of him. More than once I heard her call him the Breaker’s child, and it wasn’t just a mother’s fits. She was terrified, like she’d found herself leashed to a great dog turned vicious.”
“And was he vicious?” Jean-Claude asked.
“Never that I could see. He was just intense. But he was always kind to me and his servants never feared him, not even the whipping boy.”
“They still use whipping boys here?” Jean-Claude asked, incredulous.
“Queen Margareta resurrected the practice.”
Jean-Claude asked, “And how often was this whipping boy plied in his trade?”
Adel hesitated thoughtfully. “Not very often. In truth, most of the transgressions for which he suffered were manufactured.”
“By whom?”
“Hmmmm…’Tis a delicate subject.”
“It goes no farther than my ears.”
“By the queen, then, if you must know. She couldn’t lash out at Julio, so she vented her wrath on poor Clìmacio.”
“And what did Julio think of that?”
“He hated it, but there was nothing he could do about it.”
“Ah.” Jean-Claude’s opinion of Julio rose at the idea that he was capable of feeling compassion for the lowly.
“What about Artifex Kantelvar?” Jean-Claude asked. “When did he become involved in the príncipe’s affairs?”
“Him, I do not know. He used to keep to his own palace up in the mountains. He never came to San Augustus until he showed up to officiate at Alejandro’s wedding. That was about five years ago.”
Jean-Claude wished he could draw some nefarious conclusion from that, but who better to officiate at a royal wedding than a Temple artifex?
Adel continued, “A lot of people think his Exaltation drove him mad.”
Jean-Claude grunted. Exaltation was the name of the ceremony in which some high-muckety yellow-robe got his limbs lopped off and replaced with metal bits to bring him closer to the Builder’s clockwork perfection. “I imagine they’d have to be mad to start with.” On further reflection he added, “Mad in what way?” And who would be in a position to judge?
Adel made a shrug that rippled down her arms and across his back. “It’s just gossip. Folk said he was always more interested in money than the Builder’s work—absolve thy sins for a fee. I heard he got one of the up-country lords to hand over a whole fief to pay off some scandal, then kicked all the farmers off it and put sheep on instead. He even had his own trade fleet.”
“More profit than prophet,” Jean-Claude said. Indeed, that didn’t sound much like the Kantelvar he knew, more slimy than cunning. “And now he’s different.”
“Oh yes, much more around town. Much more political. He even helped Duque Diego’s son get married to Lady Noelia, and that set off a feud between Duque Diego and Noelia’s uncle Don Blanxart, who had meant to marry her off to someone else.”
“Why is that important?” Jean-Claude asked. He had never needed to know Aragothic society before.
“Because Duque Diego used to support Príncipe Alejandro, but Don Blanxart is Xaviera’s brother, so Duque Diego was forced to either back down or switch sides.”
“So he switched sides,” Jean-Claude said. “Leaving us with a political mess today.”
“I don’t know all that much about it. I was more interested in the married couple.”
“And how are they doing?” Jean-Claude asked.
“He accused her of cuckolding him and had her thrown from the coastal rim.”
Jean-Claude’s heart thundered with outrage. Much too little much too late. “And was that villain ever punished?”
“He was tried before the king. Don Blanxart wanted him thrown in the Hellshard, but Carlemmo stripped him of his name and banished him instead.”
“A result I am sure made no one happy,” Jean-Claude said; it certainly sickened him. If all of this was true, Kantelvar was at least partly responsible for the tensions in Aragoth today. Was there anything he did not have his clockwork fingers in?
At last, Adel rubbed the last kink out of Jean-Claude’s back and changed the dressing on his leg. He felt like melting into the table. If only he could remain here for perhaps a decade. Alas, duty called, and after a suitable amount of time to let the good work set, she let him up.
“We must find you a costume,” she said. “Something fabulous.”
Jean-Claude bit his tongue on the first three suggestions that came to mind: a beggar, a donkey, and a dog. He wasn’t going just to tweak noses; he had to make Isabelle look good. “I will wear my high-court uniform—that’s the white one with all the silver trim—and a suitable mask. I doubt anyone else will be going as a musketeer.”
CHAPTER
Thirteen
The royal palace’s huge courtyard was filled with coaches of every shape and size. An army of drivers, footmen, grooms, and stable hands milled about, making sure the animals were both relaxed for a long stay and ready to go at moment’s notice.
Isabelle’s coach pulled to a stop in front of the Hall of Mirrors. It had taken longer to carefully bundle her and her acres of white silk into the coach than it would have taken her to walk the short distance, but a princess of the blood royal did not arrive on foot.