DuJournal eventually heaved Jean-Claude onto the bench seat of the very same coach that had stolen him from the royal citadel, then lifted the team to a quick trot. To Jean-Claude’s dismay, the Solar was rising; he had been out all night. The light came up from the direction of the harbor today, painting the world with broad strokes of rose and cream.
The thugs had taken him far down into the city, because even with the right of way granted to a royal coach, it was almost full light by the time the citadel loomed into view. Jean-Claude squinted ahead and was happy to note that his vision seemed to be clearing up at last; the looming blur before him resolved into the royal citadel’s gatehouse.
Two guards detached themselves from their posts. “?Alto! ?Quien va alla?”
Martin reined to a stop. “It is I, Lord Martin DuJournal, returning stolen property”—he thumped the coach—“and, not coincidentally, the most excellent Jean-Claude, His Célestial Majesty’s musketeer.”
The first guard’s eyes rounded and he faced Jean-Claude. “The musketeer? Se?or, your papers, please.”
Jean-Claude leaned forward apprehensively. “Why? What is the matter?”
“We must identify you, se?or. Please, no offense is meant.”
Jean-Claude patted his belt for his pouch, but it had gone missing. “Blast. They must have been stolen when I was waylaid.”
“I will vouchsafe for him,” Lord Martin said, presenting his own passport. The guard examined the papers with due diligence and entered them in his logbook.
“Something is wrong,” Jean-Claude said. “Guards are never this meticulous until after disaster strikes. Has something happened to Isabelle?”
The guard returned the papers and favored them with an ironic look. “I gather she has mislaid her favorite musketeer. She’s got the whole royal household and half the city guard looking for him.” He bowed them through the gate.
“Cheeky bastard,” Jean-Claude muttered, not disapprovingly, as DuJournal piloted them through the gate tunnel.
No sooner had they entered the courtyard than a frantic acolyte burst from the Temple complex to the right side of the vast square. “Help! Help! The artifex! Somebody help!”
Jean-Claude hesitated, for he recognized Kantelvar’s adjutant from his last trip to Kantelvar’s demesne. As much as Jean-Claude needed to return to Isabelle’s side, this looked like a situation disinclined to wait on his convenience. He jabbed his finger toward the Temple. “Go!” But DuJournal had already snapped the reins and whistled the horses into a quick trot.
By the time the carriage rolled to a stop at the foot of the Temple steps, a crowd had gathered, and two yellow-cowled sagaxes were half-guiding, half-pursuing the frantic secretary back inside. Jean-Claude dismounted, caught his balance, and then lurched through the press. A trio of Temple guards wearing yellow tabards and carrying halberds were forming a cordon, demanding the crowd move back and announcing unconvincingly that there was nothing to see.
Jean-Claude headed straight for the man in the middle, who raised a hand to thwart him. “Se?or, I apologize but—”
“King’s business!” Jean-Claude declared, stepping smartly around the outstretched hand.
DuJournal caught up with him at the doors. “You’re going to earn that poor fellow a demotion.”
“Then maybe he’ll learn to do his job.” Jean-Claude followed the sagaxes and the secretary up a staircase to Kantelvar’s office. Jean-Claude’s chest tightened with more than mere exertion. As much as he disliked the artifex, he’d be no use at all dead.
The sagaxes pushed open a tall, narrow door graven with images of cogwheels, axles, and springs. Jean-Claude slipped in after them.
Inside, the clerics stood aghast, staring at Kantelvar’s desk. Jean-Claude squeezed between them, and there lay Kantelvar—at least, Jean-Claude surmised it was he by his robes—spread-eagled across the massive wooden surface. He had been hacked to bloody pieces; his clockwork arm and leg were missing. Blood overflowed the desktop and made a great puddle of the floor. It was still wet. This had happened recently, within the hour.
“Can anyone confirm this is Kantelvar?” Jean-Claude asked, startling the artificers, who had been too transfixed to take notice of him.
“Who are you?” asked one of them indignantly.
“The one asking intelligent questions. How can you be sure this is he when he never takes his cowl off?”
“Not in front of outsiders.” The artificer skirted the blood slick and leaned over to lift the cloth from the corpse’s face. He revealed the waxy gray visage of a corpse with a hole through his right eye socket all the way to the back of his head.
Jean-Claude recoiled. “What is that?”
“That is Kantelvar,” said the second sagax.
Jean-Claude shuddered deep inside. Perhaps there were worse fates than growing old. He turned to the secretary. “How did you find him?”
The man stammered, “I-I just came in to deliver some papers, and there he was.”
“Was the door locked?”
“Yes, but—”
“Who has keys?”
“He does, and I do, and so does the lord chamberlain.”
“Is there any other way out of here?” Just because Jean-Claude didn’t see another door didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
“Not that I know of.”
Just then, a dull thud stunned the air, like the distant impact of a giant’s hammer. It reverberated up through the floorboards, shaking dust from the rafters and rattling the mechanical devices littering the shelves.
“What in the Builder’s name?” DuJournal muttered.
“That sounded like a mortar shell,” Jean-Claude said. It had been twenty-five years since he’d last felt one detonate, but it was a sensation not easily forgotten.
An alarm bell sang, a desperate warning. Fire! Fire! A dozen more bells joined in, a symphony of urgency and terror. Jean-Claude hurried to the window. Across the square, smoke and flame belched from the windows of Isabelle’s residence.
“Isabelle!” Jean-Claude’s heart twisted in a horrible knot. He bolted from the room and all but toppled down the stairs. DuJournal took his elbow and hustled him out the door and into the coach. They shot across the square in a rattle of hooves. People vomited from the princess’s building, coughing and gagging from the smoke. Jean-Claude debarked and fought his way upstream, his wounded leg crumpling at every step. “Isabelle!”
Two women stumbled through the doorway. Jean-Claude recognized Adel, who was coughing and sputtering and half-carrying Olivia, whose face and hands were burned to blackness.
“Adel! Olivia!” Jean-Claude reached to help her support Olivia.
Adel fell to her knees in a paroxysm of hacking. Olivia reached up with one hand that was little more than bone and grabbed Jean-Claude by the collar. Blood and serum sprayed from her lips along with the words, “Princess. Room.”