“Let me guess: you want me to fetch Príncipe Alejandro for you, as if I knew where he was.”
Jean-Claude crowed inside at the thought. With a little luck and a well-greased tongue, he might walk out of here in DuJournal’s shadow with a mission to help him find himself.
“If you do not know, then you will find out, and when you do, tell Príncipe Alejandro that his beloved wife has been placed in the Hellshard, and will remain there until he submits to justice and confesses his crimes against the kingdom.”
DuJournal took a half step back, and his face went so pale that even the dust on his cheeks looked dark in comparison. An inarticulate gurgle rose in his throat.
Jean-Claude had heard of the Hellshard, a bit of quondam sorcery left over from the Primus Mundi. It was supposed to be an implement of unspeakable torture, and the mere mention of it had winded Alejandro. Unfortunately, the queen’s right-hand man also noted this, and with a flick of his wrist he impelled two pairs of guards to brace DuJournal and Jean-Claude’s arms up behind their backs. It was all Jean-Claude could do to resist twisting from their grip and making a fight of it, but there were ten of them, all professionals. Perhaps if he were ten years younger, he would have tried it, and if he were twenty years younger he might have succeeded, but four decades of hard use blunted any edge he had once possessed.
Instead, he let out a piteous whimper and slumped to his knees. “Mercy!” The guards relaxed their grip rather than be dragged down with him.
“Felix?” asked the queen.
The silver-eyed swordsman stalked toward DuJournal like a cat. “Surely you saw his pain, Majesty, when you spoke of Xaviera’s fate. No indifferent hireling is he.”
Jean-Claude said, “You put a woman in the Hellshard. Did you expect him to be indifferent?” His best chance of getting out of here was still in DuJournal’s wake.
“You were,” Felix pointed out, though without taking his mirrored eyes off DuJournal.
“I’m a well-known degenerate. Too many years of hearing bad news gives one scar tissue on the soul.”
Felix ignored him and pressed in on DuJournal until they were nearly nose to nose, or at least nose to chin, for DuJournal was that much taller. From a metal pouch on his belt, he withdrew a ring. It was the size of a splayed hand and looked to be made of a flat black stone. He brought it up to eye level. DuJournal’s gaze fixed on it.
Felix smiled a razor of a smile and said, “And would sir care to know that I put la princesa in the Hellshard myself? That I poked her hand through this key ring and watched her unravel like an old sock as it drew her in? Oh, how she screamed. ‘Alejandro! Alejandro!’”
DuJournal surged against his captors’ grasp. “Bastard!”
As quick as a striking snake, Felix’s opposite hand whipped out with a slender chain of dark, jagged-looking metal and looped it around DuJournal’s throat. When the two ends touched, DuJournal’s face blurred like fresh ink smeared across a page and then washed away, revealing another face, swarthy, strong jawed, and mirror eyed, beneath.
Felix stepped back and made a flourish like a sculptor unveiling a statue. “Behold, Your Majesty, my design has worked even better than I anticipated. Cold iron trumps glamour and reveals the bait as the prize. Sometimes the old methods are the best.”
The false Príncipe Julio cringed back in his seat, but Margareta leaned forward, her face stern but her eyes shining gleefully. “Well done, Felix. This is better than I could have hoped for. Truly we have the Builder’s own blessing.”
Alejandro settled but did not sag. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes burned. “Traitress. Murderess. Do not think you will sit easy on your stolen throne.”
“Silence. There is no one left to contend with. You will confess to treason and regicide before the Sacred Hundred or your wife will remain in the Hellshard until her very soul is flayed to ribbons.”
Felix held the stone ring up to his ear and said, “Even now I can hear her wailing.”
From there the negotiations proceeded with a gut-wrenching efficiency. Both players had seen the endgame and nothing remained but to play it out, and for Alejandro to hope for Margareta to make some inattentive mistake. He said, “And what guarantees do I have that you will release her if I do what you say?”
Margareta smiled thinly. “The Hellshard will only hold one person at a time.”
“Take her out now, hold her someplace else if you must, and I will do as you say.”
“You are in no position to bargain,” Margareta said. “You will do as you are told, and you will be grateful for our mercy. If you offer any resistance—any at all—we will leave Xaviera in there until her soul is rendered unto dust and blown away in the wind.”
Alejandro sagged, daunted if not defeated. “Assemble the Hundred,” he said.
Margareta leaned back in her seat. “In time. My husband is not dead yet, and it would strain credulity to punish you for an incomplete crime. You will be held in solitude until he breathes his last, which may yet be several days.”
“But Xaviera—” Alejandro cut himself off.
“There will likely be little left of her by then,” Margareta purred. “Unless, of course, you choose to expedite the matter. If so, you will be led to Carlemmo’s chambers and a dagger provided for the purpose.”
Jean-Claude had never seen such mortal horror on a man still standing upright. Alejandro might have absorbed defeat, even disgrace, but this wickedness overwhelmed him.
“My father—” he choked.
“Is dying anyway,” Margareta said. “Slaying him now does him a mercy, saves your pretty wife’s soul, and prevents the kingdom tearing itself apart in open war. It is in fact a noble sacrifice you make, one life for thousands.”
“Three lives at least,” Jean-Claude said. “Carlemmo’s, yours, and Xaviera’s, because if you think Margareta is going to let any of you live—”
A soldier’s boot slammed into Jean-Claude’s stomach. Pain doubled him over and he vomited on the parquetry.
While he was heaving his guts, Margareta said, “Dispose of him. The whole world will know how Grand Leon conspired with Alejandro in this murder.”
Jean-Claude forced himself to laugh. Margareta was an imaginative liar, but she was too impatient. More importantly, she thought she was better at it than anybody else.
Not so, Jean-Claude swore. Aloud he said, “Yes, go ahead and dispose of me. Slay the only man who can save your scheme from disaster.”
Margareta scoffed at him. “Kick him again. Harder.”
The kick was harder, but this time Jean-Claude was ready and curled himself around the boot. “Have you not wondered about your great enemy, the one who slew your pet artifex and Isabelle on the same night?” As close as he could figure it, Kantelvar had been the driving force behind Margareta’s schemes, perhaps nurturing her native ambition into the monstrous thing it had become. His sudden absence had been like stripping the muzzle off a vicious dog.
“Harder!”
The kicker aimed at Jean-Claude’s head, but he took most of it on his forearm.