Isabelle had not evolved a response before a familiar shuffling figure caught her eye. Kantelvar entered the hall without fanfare and made his way directly to el rey, who was holding court with his favorites. Kantelvar cut through the line and leaned forward to whisper a few words in Carlemmo’s ear.
Carlemmo nodded and made a little “go ahead” gesture with his fingers. The artifex limped around behind the throne and headed in Isabelle’s direction. He had worn clothes cut to show off his clockwork limbs and polished the quondam metal until the telescoping tubes, coiled cables, and ball joints gleamed under the alchemical lights. Everybody he encountered stepped quickly out of his way, and at least two made signs against the wicked.
Julio groaned at his approach. “So much like a winter wind he is, squeezing in through every crack and bringing a chill.”
“Highnesses,” Kantelvar said, bowing. “I see the intended couple have finally been introduced. I trust all is well.”
“Well enough,” Julio said tightly.
Isabelle’s bottled indignation leaked into her voice. “Indeed, Príncipe Julio has completely supplanted my expectations.”
Even shadowed by his hood, Kantelvar managed to give her a wilting look.
“What have you for me tonight?” Julio asked. “Some new and incomprehensible subterfuge, another wallow in the dregs?”
Kantelvar’s emerald eye gleamed balefully beneath his hood. “No, Highness, but, if I may, I have news for your soon-to-be wife.”
“I pray it is not as grim as most of your news,” Isabelle said. Or as strange as your secrets.
“Indeed not, Highness,” Kantelvar said, bowing to her as much as his crooked spine would allow. “I come to inform you that your musketeer’s meddling has cost my investigation in time and resources. May I humbly request that you require him to cooperate with me?”
Isabelle could think of few worse ideas than putting Jean-Claude under Kantelvar’s direction. “Jean-Claude is not mine to command. If you don’t want him treading on your toes I suggest you tell him where you intend to put your feet.”
“He is an impediment to discovering your enemies.”
In other words, he’s getting in the way of your schemes. “Nevertheless, he stays.” And the sooner she could speak to him the sooner they could drag this mad scheme of Kantelvar’s into the light of day.
“As you wish, Highness.” Kantelvar bowed himself out but lingered, like an unfinished chore, behind the dais, to what purpose Isabelle could not discern. She did not like having him there and had to resist the urge to fidget.
Another petitioner came, and ten-score more, until the last of Aragoth’s highest nobility had made their official welcome and the foreign dignitaries lined up for their turn. There was a dour, heavyset mercenary general from Oberholz, and a sleek, goateed one from Vecci, and several more from other surrounding states. So many of the Aragothic nobles had supplemented their native troops with foreign mercenaries in anticipation of a civil war that they amounted to about a third of the armed men on Aragoth’s native soil. It seemed a dangerous proportion to Isabelle, even with as little as she knew of warfare. She referred dinner invitations from both generals to her staff to sort out and schedule appropriately; if she accepted every dinner invitation she had received tonight, she would bloat up to the size of a leviathan.
The herald announced, “The mathematician Lord Martin DuJournal.”
Isabelle very nearly choked on her wine. For a moment, it was all she could do not to cough or sneeze the stinging liquid out her nose. The effort of holding it down brought tears to her eyes, blurring her vision and making it impossible to see the man who claimed the identity of her nom de plume.
The man announced as DuJournal had taken a quick step forward as if to assist her, but a pair of guards blocked his way. He was tall and lean, and he wore a mask of autumn leaves and stag’s horns, a depiction of the lord of the hunt. Behind his mask, his eyes were green, and beneath it, his mouth was framed by short whiskers the color of wheat.
I am DuJournal! The adventuring mathematician was hers, her alter ego, her creation. She was the one who had conceived him, gestated him in the womb of her mind, given him life on paper, and sent his adventures out into the world.
“Isabelle, are you poisoned?” Julio asked.
She shook her head. “It just went down the wrong way. Thank you.” She coughed into a handkerchief and glared into the imposter’s eyes. How dare you … whoever you are?
More importantly, why had this man chosen DuJournal for a disguise? To get her attention, clearly. She had never made any secret she was DuJournal’s publisher, but she always maintained that she had never actually met the man, instead receiving his manuscripts by post. It added to his air of mystery.
Had this imposter discovered her secret? If so, why announce himself to her in this way? Did he mean to blackmail her? The Temple would not hesitate to drag her right out of the ballroom to be blinded and deafened if they knew she had been engaging in forbidden scholarship … but this DuJournal could hardly expose her as the author of those books without also exposing himself as an imposter surely not welcome in the royal court.
Stifling outrage, she gestured the fraud forward. “Lord DuJournal,” she said civilly; she was good at civil. “What a surprise. I never expected to meet you in person. Your writings always expressed disdain for court life.” She wanted to have him clapped in irons. Alas, she would learn nothing from such a move. Far better to engage him, wrap his strings around her fingers, and tug them ever so gently to find out where they led. That was just the sort of thing Martin DuJournal would do, and she was not going to let an imposter beat her at her own game.
DuJournal bowed. “Your Highness, I would not have missed the chance to meet you even if this ball were being held in the Halls of Torment. Allow me to humbly thank you for your kind patronage of my poor works. I regret my greeting gift is not so grand as to be commensurate with your generosity, but if there is any little way in which I may be of service, it would be my honor.”
Clearly this was an opening not to be missed, but rage drove all inspiration from Isabelle’s head. “What do you imagine you can do for me?” No, that isn’t what I should have said—
But the fraud pressed on, undeterred. “No challenge so far is beyond my reach. After all, it was I who proved Holcomb’s Theorem, which was thought unsolvable.”
Isabelle’s hand clenched on the arm of her chair. Liar, I proved it. Me. Even with all her practice enduring abuse in her father’s court, it was a special effort to keep from springing from her seat and throttling him. Her father had hated her for something she wasn’t. The imposter was trying to steal something she was.
After a steadying breath, she said, “I shall think on it. Tell my secretary how you may be contacted.”