“Because you are special. You saved a kingdom and stopped a war. You gave me my life back, and my brother. We make a good team.”
“Tight allies in a narrow ditch, as Jean-Claude would say, but most of life isn’t like that—at least I hope it isn’t. Most of life is just getting through the day.” She paused, changing her tack. “A month ago I would have married you sight unseen. Except it wouldn’t have been you, just some vague dream of you; anything was better than what I had. Yet now that I’ve known you all of twelve hours, it seems I don’t know you at all.”
Julio pinched his chin in thought. He paced in a slow circle around the reflecting pool. When he reached his starting point he gazed into her eyes with such intensity that she felt suddenly naked before him. Her cheeks burned, and it was all she could do to keep her expression steady. No one had ever looked at her that way before.
“Yes?” she prompted, keeping the quaver out of her voice.
“One year,” he said. “You want time and I will give it to you. Time to think about children, time to decide what you want, time to hear other offers. Not for one whole year will I ask you to marry me. I can’t make the same promise for anyone else, of course, and I imagine that you will be besieged by suitors, but that is a risk I am willing to take if, at the end of one year, you will consent to hear my offer.”
Isabelle’s spirit lifted, ebullient, as the pressure of commitment withdrew.
“Thank you,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him in a great hug, grabbing her stump with her good hand for a firmer grip even as her spark-hand passed through him. How lovely it would be to have time to think, to reason, to get to know someone, to be friends.
And when he brushed his lips across hers, it was but a question, ever so politely asked. And because this was her time to do as she desired rather than as she ought, she parted her mouth for him. His lips caressed hers and her whole skin seemed on the verge of melting. Oh saints. She’d never felt anything like that before. Her toes curled in delight and she twined his dark curls around her fingers, luxuriating in the springy silk of them.
“All those men you say will try to court me,” she teased. “They’ll say you’re getting an unfair head start.”
“They would be right,” he said.
*
A thick, slow wind tugged at Jean-Claude’s hat and hair as he escorted his most recent charge along the quay overlooking the endless drop beneath the harbor of San Augustus. The greenish fog of the Miasma veiled the thunder-shot layer of the Galvanosphere, and below that the Gloom. His leg ached, and his skin itched madly from all his recent scars, but he was finally done with the cursed crutches. Yes, he’d probably always have a bit of a limp, but he’d be damned if he’d carry a cane like some decrepit old man. Elder. Graybeard. No. Not yet.
“Mind the edge,” he said to Marie, who had stopped to stare down at the catch boats on their daily drop into the cloudy shoals. She wasn’t really close to the drop, but he was in a mind to be careful with the white girl.
Pure white. The process that had relieved Marie of the bloodhollow curse and given her back her mind and soul had also drained her entirely of color. She was white from the soles of her feet to the fringes of her hair. The irises of her eyes, her lips, and her tongue as well. She made new snow look grungy by comparison. What’s more, she had no shadow at all. Darkness did not seem to stick to her unless she was completely immersed in it, so in all but the blackest night, she shone like the white moon, Kore.
It had been Isabelle’s idea to put Jean-Claude in her dark room to give her company while they both convalesced, and he had spent many hours telling her stories of the years she’d missed, and of Isabelle’s long hunt for a cure for her condition. She had proven to be a good audience, if a rather ghostly one. Her face never changed from its doll-like expression and her voice was a monotone. Yet she asked questions and drew his stories on. He kept having to remind himself that, mentally speaking, she was only twelve years old, though she was catching up quickly. She still had a perfect memory and could recall any conversation word for word.
“I’ve never seen so many boats,” she said in her hollow ghostly whisper. “There was never such a fleet on l’?le des Zephyrs.”
“This is one of the biggest harbors in the world,” Jean-Claude said.
Marie watched the ships and gulls wheel for a few more moments. The shouts of men, the rustle of wind grappling with ropes and sails, and the cry of the birds echoed up and down the harbor’s walls.
“How is your leg?” she asked in that same wispy voice.
“Subsiding nicely,” he said stiffly. What was the world coming to when young women were stopping to let him catch his breath?
She resumed her stroll, falling in beside him as if he were leading, and they progressed in companionable silence around the great curve of the harbor toward the dock where Princess Isabelle, newly minted special envoy of l’Empire Céleste in the matter of what was being dubbed the Grand Peace, made ready to set sail on her first diplomatic errand to sort out some disputes amongst border nobles.
Jean-Claude shuddered in his boots at the thought of another week aloft but dared not protest, lest Isabelle decide he was not required. With Príncipe Julio stuck like a barnacle to her hip, what need had she for poor old Jean-Claude? Once she got that idea in her head, who knew where it would lead?
About halfway around the long arc of the quay, they passed the gibbets. A long spar of rock extended out over the deeps. A row of cages hung beneath it, and in the farthest of these slumped the corpse of Margareta, the traitor queen. After her stint in the Hellshard, her trial had been little more than a recounting of the facts against her. By popular outcry, the newly crowned King Alejandro had been compelled to sentence her to death by exposure, rather than some cleaner, more humane execution.
Indeed, Julio’s and Clìmacio’s stated desire not to be forced to sentence their own mother to death was one of the official reasons Alejandro had been proclaimed king, and why his first act was to absolve them and the rest of their family of blame in the matter.
Jean-Claude had to admit that Isabelle was spinning a wonderful story to put the country back together, one where just about everyone could wash the blood from their hands and cleanse the stain from their reputations. He could not have done better. He could not have made the lies true. The student had surpassed the master. She doesn’t need me anymore. But that was what was supposed to happen, wasn’t it? Children were supposed to grow up. They were supposed to surpass their teachers. Otherwise, what was the point?
But then what happens to the master?