He and Marie reached the end of the quay, or rather the beginning of the maelstrom of activity surrounding Isabelle’s ship. Longshoremen, porters, and sailors of all descriptions bustled about like so many oversized ants, but the crowd parted before him, and he led Marie toward Isabelle’s coach.
“Monsieur musketeer!” called a fruity voice. Jean-Claude turned to greet Hugo du Blain, whose sense of fashion still made extravagant demands on the silkworms of the world while offering no concessions at all to practicality.
The ambassador had Felix in tow. The dead queen’s ex-lieutenant stood at rigid attention, pinned in place by du Blain’s bloodshadow, his face a mask of despair and desolation. For having killed Grand Leon’s emissary, Felix had been condemned to replace him. Delivering him to Grand Leon would be du Blain’s task.
And what fate awaited Jean-Claude when he stood before Grand Leon at the end of this voyage? The only certainty was that he had to present himself to his master of his own free will and on his own two feet, or else risk bringing shame on himself, on his fellow King’s Own Musketeers, and on Isabelle.
Du Blain turned to Jean-Claude and said, “Jean-Claude, I began to despair of your arrival. His Imperial Majesty has a message for you.”
Jean-Claude’s stomach dropped and tried to hide behind his liver. Was Grand Leon going to condemn him at a distance without a further hearing? There was no reason not to. Why, after all, should he believe anything Jean-Claude had to say at this point?
Jean-Claude forced himself to smile and asked, “And what message would that be?”
Du Blain cocked a very odd smile at him. “He said, and I quote, ‘We don’t have that much horse shit.’ I don’t suppose that means anything to you?”
It took Jean-Claude several minutes to stop laughing. At last he wiped the tears from his eyes and said, “Tell him his command is my wish.” After all, what choice did he have?
The ambassador chuckled. “I will give him your words exactly.”
“Jean-Claude! Marie!” Isabelle hailed them, waving with her star-shot arm. One of Jean-Claude’s prouder moments during the many diplomatic sessions it had taken to establish Aragoth’s new government was convincing the Temple legate, the newly minted Aragothic artifex, that Isabelle’s l’étincelle sorcery was really nothing more than an unexpected by-product of the metal cap that sheathed her stump, a cap that had been bestowed on her by a Temple artifex. It certainly couldn’t be a noncanonical sorcery; she had after all been declared unhallowed by a Temple hormougant. Isabelle had squealed with delight when Jean-Claude had presented her with an official document declaring her new arm theologically benign.
That wouldn’t stop the fearful and the superstitious from condemning her, but it took away their official sanction to commit violence against her. No doubt the next elected Omnifex would choke on that designation, but those were problems for the future.
Isabelle rushed up and gathered both Marie and Jean-Claude in with extremely improper but heartfelt hugs. “Great news. Xaviera is up and walking!”
Jean-Claude grinned, and Marie said tonelessly, “That is good news.” The whole kingdom had been hanging on news of her recovery, as if her improvement were some sort of barometer for Aragoth as a whole. First she had followed her attendants around the room with her gaze, and then she had called for Alejandro. And then she had accepted a very small number of visitors, and now a month on she had finally left her bed. Nobody knew what she’d been through; even mentioning the Hellshard threw her into fits of hysterical shrieking. The first time that happened Alejandro had promptly thrown the horrid thing off the sky cliff and persuaded the Sacred Hundred to pass a law against torture in all its forms.
Isabelle went on to other news. “I’ve got an idea about how to approach that border dispute between Conde Sancho and le Baron de Soumans…”
Jean-Claude’s smile kept growing as she gabbled. Isabelle was in her element here. She’d finally found room to grow and she was filling it as rapidly as possible. If she had less use for him than before, it was only because she had grown so much stronger.
“The ship is just about ready to get under way,” Isabelle said. “Could you two help Gretl with my crates? There are volatiles in them, and I don’t trust the longshoremen not to stack them upside down. One burning ship was enough.”
Jean-Claude bowed and Marie curtsied, and they moved off through the press. Some of the workers were almost too eager to get out of the way. More than one of them made a sign against the evil eye at Marie.
Jean-Claude scowled; Marie was a fine young lady, but innocent in spite of her ordeal, and with an obvious link to Princess Isabelle. To a certain kind of mind, that would make her a target, and her strangeness would make superstitious fears easy to arouse into violence.
Jean-Claude rolled his shoulders to loosen them and checked his sword in its sheath. Anyone intending Marie harm would have to get through Jean-Claude first.