Chapter XLVIII: Survivor
May 2, 1583
The mirror was a gilded masterpiece and, more to the point, it was a rarity reserved only for the highest in the court of the Infinite Castle. A perfectly spotless surface re-conveyed the image of the beholder with crystal clarity and unadulterated precision. Nonetheless, Jesca’s maiden attending to her mistress could not help but appreciate the flawlessness of her master’s visage. Despite the scrutinizing perfection of the mirror, it was still unable to find a single blemish on Jesca’s slightly tanned skin or her wavy blonde locks. Even her sky blue eye… Oh yes… eye.
“Lydia, what do you think of our guests?” Jesca asked with a curious tone.
The young attendant gazed upward toward the sky blue circle that sat on Jesca’s face opposite to the patched one. She replied with a sisterly smile. “You’re asking about the one who called you Isabella,” Lydia noted unabashedly. As usual, Jesca could count on her trainees to be more and more adept at psychology and motives.
Lydia noticed how her reply widened the grin on her mistress’s face and she continued to fasten the dress around her frame. “If you’re asking me if they were sincere, I know that at least that the Duke was.”
“But do you really think I am who they say I am?” Jesca asked almost too casually. Lydia knew better, however, and already the young servant could see how Jesca stared at the mirror. It was a poignant image, perhaps, for a woman like this one to look into her reflection and wonder who it is that she is staring at.
“It would make sense,” Lydia began tilting her head to one side as she rounded Jesca’s neck to style the hair on the opposite hemisphere, “after all, when the old Jesca recruited you, you had an innate talent that most of us here could only dream of mastering.”
The stylist felt her subject sit motionless at those words. It was as if something Lydia had said brought Jesca into a pensive stance. “Her dream is almost fulfilled,” the mistress said quietly to Lydia. “When she died she told me that I should not expect to bring Infinite Castle to peace and prosperity in my lifetime just as she had not expected it in her lifetime when the title of Princess was passed to her. But…” and here Jesca seemed to lose her voice in the quiet of the room. She persevered: “But we might actually succeed, Lydia. Infinite Castle might be a safe and clean place finally.”
The young woman apparently finished with her duties just as her mistress expressed that hope to her. She looked forward towards the mirror in order to catch a glimpse of that window of the sky within Jesca’s left eye. “I hope so too,” Lydia said after a moment, “and perhaps when that’s happened you can finally go back to who you used to be if what Duke Antonio said was true.”
Her mistress couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “Finding out who I was before our old mistress and Lex rescued me is important,” Jesca said with a sigh as she got up from her seat. The regalia studded on her truly expounded the sincerity of her inherited status. “But,” she added as she turned to face the young woman who had so expertly dressed her, “Infinite Castle is my home and I have a mission to do.”
Lydia resisted the urge to embrace her. Although this particular Jesca had only been reigning for a few months, she could feel the currents of the old mistress in her but mixed with a youthful zealousness that the old Jesca had already depleted by the time of her death. It’s true that this one was the youngest Jesca to have ever inherited the position of Princess for Infinite Castle, but already she displayed a kind of courage that Lydia could feel would last until her later days.
“Thank you,” Lydia managed to say with an embarrassed smile.
“After all,” Jesca said attempting to diffuse the well of emotion in the young woman, “I couldn’t see myself with a Spanish noble title. Haha, Jesca de Alba sounds completely silly to me, don’t you think?”
Lydia couldn’t help but laugh at that as well.
---
The Banquet Chamber of Infinite Castle was a rival for any official’s court in the Ming land. Surrounded by colourful wall paintings and wooden carvings that combined the earthy darkness of wood with a comforting redness, the rectangular chamber was also illuminated by western style lamps and candelabra.
Although the occasion was still a joyous one, the congregation gathered there was more muted. Heavier implications and confusion weighed on their minds. Lexington White, on his part, watched the Spanish delegation with some trepidation. Who was this man really, he asked himself, who had insisted just a few hours earlier that Jesca was in fact the deceased Spanish spy master? No, it was much more than that, he thought in his deepest thoughts. It was not just that prospect that bothered him.
“Did you see the way he looked at her?” someone said to his side. Nearly startled but never showing such surprise, Lex turned to find the young Lydia staring towards the foreigners. “It’s like he found a long lost lover,” Lydia added with a giggle.
Lex said nothing nor did his face move from being that stoically handsome pillar of strength. Lydia, like many of the younger members, was very adept at reading thoughts. It was perhaps this reason why his deepest insecurity was said in open air.
“Will the Princess be out soon?” Lex finally asked.
The attendant nodded happily as if anticipating the pride she had in the preparation of her mistress. Lex returned his gaze to the other side of the table. Although Jesca had insisted that she did not remember any of these foreigners, she also wanted to continue speaking to them and, thus, they were all to prepare for this banquet. It was a reasonable idea, Lex thought, but for some reason he hoped that she would have simply accepted the gifts and bid them farewell.
“Do you think it’s true, Master Lex?” the young Lydia persisted.
Lex cracked a little smile at the curiosity and looked at her curling a little joke. “Could you see your mistress as some heiress to an estate in Spain?”
Lydia bubbled childishly, “Maybe just a small castle in Zaragoza maybe.”
“A small castle in Zaragoza, huh?” Lex humoured the younger one, “maybe the one in Biel?”
Lydia giggled at the silly name. “Jesca de Biel, that one doesn’t fit either!”
---
Antonio seemed like he could barely stand these past few hours. To the others in his party, he always seemed either on the precipice of exultation or a strange depression. “She does not remember…” was the lugubrious undertones to Antonio’s jubilations. Despite watching the almost intoxicated demeanor of Antonio, Nia had her own emotions that were locked away behind the crossing of leather strapped arms along her stomach.
“How is this possible?” Renault had asked Nia earlier. She had explained that it would not be the first time agents would lie about whether or not they finished off their targets, but aside from that, she had no idea of the true story. Her explanation was half hearted, as was her stance even now. There was a tension that seemed to gulf her from the others and it was a discomfort that only her steely instincts could counteract.
“It’s entirely plausible that she’s suffering from some memory loss,” Renault had theorized to Antonio, “After all, the eye patch can’t be there for decoration. A head injury could do something like that.”
“If only we had Jakob here as well!” Antonio hysterically wished. He was checked by a comforting hand of the older Renault placed on his shoulder.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” someone announced, “The Princess of Infinite Castle.”
All eyes turned towards the hallway where the announcement had originated. Nia had not felt the same excitement as the others in that lady’s gorgeous apparel or her brilliance in the lighted atmosphere. Indeed, even with the patched eye it was no distraction to her beauty but Nia was not so affected.
Nia let her eyes wander to Antonio who watched with a nostalgic abandon. He was almost… pathetic. Nia tightened the arms across her stomach. Turning towards her seat in the same manner the others did, they all took their places. Despite her own dilemmas, Nia’s perception still substituted for her suppressed empathy. Staring at the rectangular distance between Jesca and Antonio, she could feel how harsh the disintegration of memory had affected them both.
---
With the gag in his mouth, the unfortunate guardsman at one of those myriad entrances to Infinite Castle could not pass his voice through the cloth oppressing his tongue and throat. The Ming operatives that held him down were stranger than those he had encountered on his incursions with the mistress deep into the Empire; no these were different. There was a different colouration to their eyes… and although hidden by cloth, he could see a hint of a common scar traced on one of their concealed cheeks.
“He wouldn’t tell us anything so we had to gag him,” one of the figures said from behind his mask in the native tongue of the region.
As that guardsman struggled against strong arms holding him against the floor, he quickly shifted his head to where his partner had been laying on the wooden planks hoping irrationally that he would somehow come back to life and warn the Princess. No, these agents’ aim was too true—and he would have thought himself lucky to have survived the initial volley of knives if he wasn’t sure that they simply wanted to keep him alive to get information from him.
Turning back upwards, he did not see the masked men looking down at him any longer, but instead a single European looking man began crouching down to his face. The strange movement of this weird person sent shivers throughout the young guardsman’s body and moist fingers started to touch his cheek. Unable to see the other person’s face clearly through the glare of the lamp from behind, his vision began to be consumed by the dark shadow of the man’s face.
“Little one,” he heard the man say in a terribly voice like one speaking from under water, “The Lord of Acid has sent me to find the Princess and make her suffer. You will tell me where she is.”
The gagged man quickly shook his head adamantly, but already his eyes were betraying his fear. It was not long before the one above him brought his face closer and, at first, it was as if a kiss was landed on his cheek, but immediately after his nose was filled with an unctuous, horrendous stench coupled by a sharp burning on where those lips had touched him. This was the stench of his decaying flesh.
---
Father Julio Montejo awaited the arrival of his contact with a quiet heaviness. The chamber which he attended was thick with the recent combustion of incense. The aura this room and, indeed, the entire building was wrapped in a mysterious coil that justified one of the city’s names as being Byzantium. Mysterious and mystical, his surroundings stood in contrast to his rational background among the brightly lit universities of Rome. Nonetheless, the old feeling of this Orthodox place weighed on top of him like a comforting blanket of sacred oils.
The door opposite the table opened and the young priest immediately stood to his feet. “Welcome back to Constantinople, Father,” was the welcome from a familiar face.
“Metropolitan Andronikos; it’s good to see you again,” smiled the young man.
Despite being of different rank and of different sides of the Christian coin, the two embraced and gave happy smiles at their reunion. “I take it that your return to Madrid was a successful one?” the Metropolitan said in a heavily accented Spanish.
“I was able to meet with my master, yes,” Julio confirmed immediately procuring a letter from the table and handing it to the Metropolitan. Andronikos motioned for Julio to sit down as he himself handled the paper and took his own seat.
Breaking the seal of the Lord Chancellor of Spain, the Metropolitan also noticed that it was a different coat of arms adorning the imprint of the signet ring. Julio anticipated the curiosity and explained. “I’m afraid that our friend Cardinal DeWitt… has gone missing. That is his nephew’s insignia. He is handling the Lions and the Chancery while they search for his uncle.”
“Missing? So your prediction was right,” the Metropolitan curiously said while reading the official document.
“Yes, there is definitely a double agent working in the Silent Room, but I managed to meet with Jakob, the Cardinal’s nephew, in quieter venues,” Julio eagerly explained while holding out the mirror he had used.
“Still using that old trick, hm?” Andronikos chuckled after glancing at the object. He returned his attention to the paper though and a frown recaptured his serious features. Although Andronikos was perhaps not exactly an elderly clergyman, he nonetheless sported a beard and moustache that would have made many Eastern iconists proud to have represented.
Despite their age difference, it was a welcome friendship—there were not many Eastern clergy who had any warm relations with the West especially now that the Ottoman Sultan had decided to appoint clergymen who were completely against union with the Latins. Fortunately, there were some concerns that still brought both parties together.
“So what did you tell Don Jakob?” the metropolitan asked curiously as he kept reading the long document.
“Well, I explained to him about the appearance of the strange cult we’ve been tracking here and I also told him about your information on their involvement with the Sultanate. I think he understands that they mean to go for the Key that you have in your guardianship.”
“And did he believe you about your double agent theory?”
“Well, when I first explained it to him, it was as if he already knew that someone was leaking information but when I told him that information about the Timepiece was being leaked to the cult agents here nearly since one year ago, he seemed almost excited that I was able to tell him. It was like some huge weight was lifted from him.”
After the explanation, it did not raise any eyebrows from the metropolitan. Instead, there was that grim expression once more stapled across his features. “No help will come for decades,” Andronikos said sighing and sliding the paper on the desk.
Taking up the parchment, Julio sped through the Latin text. “This can’t be right…” Julio read. He skimmed through the explanations of the thinned operative status with the war in the Far East and the troubles at home.
“I can’t blame him, I suppose,” the metropolitan said as he ran his fingers through his own eyebrows soothingly. “We did not expect the Ottomans to even know about the Key of St. Andrew anyway. We too thought we were safe here in Constantinople right under the nose of the Sultan.”
“Well… There is another way…” Father Julio said looking up slightly.
“What do you mean?” the metropolitan asked with a squint.
The young priest gave out a small laugh before teasing, “My dear Andronikos you must really be getting old, your memory isn’t as good as it was before!”
“We’re going to have to make an emergency landing!” one of the pilots screamed above the ring of alarms.
“Activate the backup programme!” Miss Obidos yelled back as she held onto the doorway into the cockpit. Already, the Siberian landscape was coming closer and closer to the view of all on that station of the aircraft.
“It’s no good; the entire memory core has totally disintegrated! None of the programming is making any sense!” the pilot responded as the shaking craft continued to destabilize.
“Just land us somewhere! And get the speeders ready!” was Miss Obidos’s response before holding onto the walls as she found her way back into the main cabin.
---
Commander Georgiev watched the dark apparition of the House trail through the Siberian sky with his camouflaged binoculars. Putting the visual aide down, he motioned to the rest of his squadron to begin moving. “Take the next pass and make sure to scout ahead. The hostages may have beacons on them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a trap.”
“Yes, sir!” one of the lieutenants acknowledged before motioning for the other vehicles to begin moving.
As the Commander placed the binoculars upon his steady face again, he could not help but marvel at the beauty of the craft that was now pummeling towards the earth. It would survive, he thought, an object like that was meant to be a survivor.
“We’ll be in position in ten minutes at most,” someone from within his vehicle explained in Russian accented Spanish. “Would you like me to refresh you on the terrain?”
The Commander grinned while still holding the eye pieces to his face. “It’s been decades since I’ve done operations back here in Russia, Pavel, but that doesn’t mean my memory is as bad as yours.”
His lieutenant returned a smile to his commanding office although Commander Georgiev could not see him. “Perhaps,” the lieutenant began, “but here in Siberia, mountains and forests disappear and regrow in different places. Even your memory might not be enough.”
Placing down the binoculars quickly and shooting a glance down to his subordinate, both were exchanging silly grins. “It’s good to be working with you again, Pavel,” the Commander said.
“You too, sir. It’s not often we graduates of the Milevski Academy get to go on a ‘field trip’ such as this.”
The Commander let out a small chuckle. “Let’s get a move on then, Pavel; we don’t want to be left behind by our own men.”
“Yes, sir!”
Chapter XLIX: The Disintegration of Memories (coming soon)