Kushiel's Mercy (24 page)

“I will,” I said.

My beautiful, damnable mother settled her glorious gaze on me. “Thank you,” Melisande said simply.

Twenty

I
t was a pleasant day.

I would be lying if I said it wasn’t. I’d never understood how my mother had gotten so many folk willingly involved in her intrigues, but the truth was she was a charming and brilliant woman, unexpectedly candid and self-aware. One found oneself wishing to please her out of unthinking instinct.

To be sure, her household doted on her. It wasn’t just the members of the Maignard clan, of whom there were half a dozen. It was everyone. The Cytheran servants. The freed slaves, many of whom were her pupils.

I learned that my mother was a master in the Unseen Guild, and aspired to go no higher. Once, she had. She had learned of the Guild’s existence from Anafiel Delaunay many years ago, when he was distraught over the death of Prince Rolande de la Courcel and careless enough to confide in her. She had sought out the Guild on her own and risen quickly within its ranks. If her gambit with Skaldia hadn’t failed, or the attempt to assassinate Ysandre, she would have risen much, much higher.

Now she contented herself with dabbling. She bought slaves who struck her fancy and gave them their freedom, offering them positions within her household with generous pay. A few took their freedom and fled, but most stayed. In time, she made an offer of Guild training and far greater wealth to those she deemed quick-witted and loyal enough to be useful to her. Then she sent them forth to spy on her behalf.

Over the course of the day, I learned a few things about the Guild. I learned that there were indeed factions within it. Alliances were formed. Ephesium, looking over its shoulder at powerful Khebbel-im-Akkad, favored the rise of Carthage. Most of Caerdicca Unitas, remembering the lessons of history, opposed it and sought ties to nascent Skaldic states. I learned that the Guild’s origins lay in the east, and that their influence was weak in the western realms.

Mostly, though, I talked.

I talked for hours.

Many of the details of my life she knew. Her spies in Terre d’Ange—and their identities was one thing she
wouldn’t
divulge to me—had kept her well informed. But Melisande wanted to hear about my life from me.

And I found myself talking about things that surprised me. How the difficulty of being her son was compounded by measuring myself against the extraordinary heroism of my foster-parents. How I’d learned to let go of that for good when I’d accepted failure in Vralia. How I’d felt in Clunderry after Dorelei and I had learned to love one another on our own terms, watching her belly swell with our child. How I’d grieved for their deaths. How I’d gone from sheer hatred and a cold desire for vengeance to feel a measure of compassion for Berlik at the end.

When I’d talked myself dry, my mother was very quiet for a time. We were seated in her salon, drinking a cool white wine made on the villa’s grounds. Blue twilight was beginning to fall outside.

“You’re a good man,” Melisande murmured. “Elua knows, if I did one good thing in my life, it was binding myself to a promise to allow you to be raised by Phèdre nó Delaunay and that damned Cassiline of hers.”

“The only gift I would accept from you,” I said, remembering what Phèdre had told me. “I thank you for it.”

She glanced out the window. “It’s growing late. Will you pass the night here?”

There was a yearning hunger in the question, and fear, too. I found myself wanting to assuage both. I was in her debt. It would be easy, so easy, to offer the simple balm of my presence. And yet in the back of my mind there were black armbands and down-turned thumbs. There was a blood-soaked battlefield. Waldemar Selig had begun to skin Phèdre alive there.

“I can’t,” I said.

Melisande inclined her head. “I understand.”

And so I left to await word from Ptolemy Solon. The stable-lad that Leander had made blush brought the Bastard around. My mother escorted me to the courtyard herself. In the twilight, her beauty deepened. I thought about her likeness hanging in the Hall of Portraits at the Palace. In her youth, she’d had a beauty as keen and as deadly as a blade. Now, oddly, it cut deeper. Sorrow became her.

“I’ll see you on the morrow,” I said awkwardly. “No doubt you’ll wish to be a part of this intrigue.”

A wry edge returned to her voice. “No doubt.”

I hesitated, holding the Bastard’s reins. He was unusually compliant, still out of sorts from the lengthy sea voyage. “Mother . . . why did you name me Imriel? I’ve always wondered.”

“Eloquence of God.”
A smile touched her lips. Melisande Shahrizai tilted her head, regarding me in the twilight. “Because when you were born, for the first time, I understood it.
Love as thou wilt,
” she said, musing. “I have always adhered to the precept of Blessed Elua in my own way. And yet, until you were born, I didn’t truly know what it was to
love
another living soul. Beyond thought, beyond reason. And I thought, for once, that the gods were speaking clearly to me.”

I swallowed hard. “I see.”

She didn’t answer, only laid a hand on the back of my head. I bent toward her and felt the touch of her lips on my brow. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” I echoed.

I rode away in the gathering dusk, my thoughts in turmoil. Unlike Carthage, unlike Alba or even Drujan, there were no arcane arts practiced in Terre d’Ange. And yet, in the space of a single day, I had nearly fallen under my mother’s spell, born of nothing but her own singular presence.

It had been a pleasant day.

I wrenched my thoughts away, turning them westward. Toward Carthage, toward Sidonie. I wondered what the nuptial ceremony had been like. I tortured myself with thoughts of Sidonie, willing and eager in Astegal’s bed. I felt the spell of my mother’s presence dissipate, hard resolve settling in its place.

Still, her kiss lingered.

As I drifted into sleep in the widow Nuray’s house, I found myself wondering if I would ever see my mother again once I left Cythera. And I wasn’t sure what I wanted the answer to be.

On the morrow, I rose to find a summons from Solon awaiting, bright and early. I wasted no time, breaking my fast with a couple of ripe apricots, then riding over to the palace.

Ptolemy Solon was awaiting me in his library, which was one of the largest I’d ever seen. The main chamber was vast, with a high ceiling, tall windows at one end, doors at the other, and twin facing walls lined with bookshelves, ladders propped against each wall. There were alcoves with cubbyholes for scrolls, and smaller, locked chambers.

In the center of the main chamber, there were long tables suitable for study. Solon was seated at the head of one such table, a book of blank parchment and a pen and inkwell before him. My mother was seated at its opposite end. The vast space dwarfed him, while it seemed to suit her. Nonetheless, it was Solon who glanced up and bade me enter, brown eyes bright in his wizened face.

“Good morning, my lord,” I said, hesitating. “Mother.”

“Come.” Solon patted the table. “Sit. Between Sunjata’s tales of a great mirror being forged and the coming occlusion of the moon, I knew enough to guess at what Carthage intended. Not enough to be certain how it was done. I will need to hear everything you can remember about Carthage’s visit.
Everything
.”

I approached and took a seat. “I am most grateful for your aid, my lord.”

“I’m sure you are.” He shot an inscrutable look at my mother, who smiled and raised one brow. Solon gestured at a tray on the table containing a pitcher of water and an array of pastries. “Eat. Drink. Tell me everything.”

I helped myself to a cup of water, flavored with lemon and honey.

And I began to talk.

I told them everything, commencing with my letter to Diokles Agallon. Once again, I didn’t have anything to lose. There wasn’t much about the Guild my mother didn’t know, and I reckoned what she knew, Solon knew. I told them about Agallon’s reply, Carthage’s request. The discussions that had followed, Parliament’s vote. Carthage’s arrival, the exaggerated gift of tribute.

“Wait.” Solon halted me. “Describe the tribute-gifts in detail.”

I did to the best of my ability. I hadn’t been paying overmuch attention, being more concerned with Carthage, but Phèdre had taught me to train my memory well. I recalled Quintilius Rousse’s deep voice reading the manifest: gold, ivory, and salt, spices, and seedlings, Tyrian purple cloth, furniture.

“And there was the chalice he sent in advance,” I said, remembering. “And the painting presented at the banquet.”

Solon’s round eyes blinked. “Describe them.”

I described the carnelian chalice with its joined hands in which Astegal and Ysandre had drunk to one another’s health; the painting made of ground jewels depicting the two of them with their hands clasped in friendship. Solon pursed his lips, his pen scratching on parchment.

“Continue,” he said when I had finished. “From the point of their arrival.”

I told him about the banquet where the painting had been unveiled, Sunjata’s overture, the gilded coffer, and Gillimas’ veiled words about Cythera. I related Sidonie’s account of Astegal’s offer for her hand, his veiled threats regarding Aragonia, and Ysandre’s diplomatic refusal. My evening in the Night Court with Astegal and the other Carthaginian lords, and my near-smothering of Gillimas to force plain words of truth from him, watching my mother’s lips twitch.

“You needn’t look amused,” I said to her.

“He brought it on himself,” she said complacently. “A skilled Guildsman ought to know better than to mince words with a desperate D’Angeline in love.”

“Is he?” Solon asked her.

Melisande gazed at me. “So it seems.”

“A mother knows her child.” Solon gestured at me. “Continue.”

I told him everything I could remember about observing Bodeshmun’s preparations the day of the occluded moon. Solon halted me numerous times, pressing me for details. He brought out a book with symbols of the Houses of the Cosmos. I racked my memory, struggling to place them exactly as they’d been aligned on the great mirror in proximity to the mirrors on the City’s walls. His pen scratched furiously, sketching a diagram.

“Again,” he said when I had finished.

I told him again, this time dredging up the exact words he’d said to Sidonie. The brief bow he had accorded her. A green gem on a chain swinging into view.

Solon’s nostrils flared. “Describe it.”

I tried, but I’d seen it only briefly. All I could tell him was that it was the size of a child’s fist and multifaceted.

“Were there symbols incised on the facets?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I couldn’t tell. But I
did
see a flash of emerald green the next night, when it happened.”

He held up one hand. “Don’t rush. Continue.”

“After we visited Elua’s Square . . .” My voice faltered. “Truly, there wasn’t aught of significance until the following evening.”

“How can you be sure?” Solon asked.

My mouth was parched. I took a long drink of water. “Sidonie and I quarrelled. I was uneasy. I wanted her to beg Ysandre to call off the spectacle. She didn’t think it was possible without cause. We made up our quarrel that night.” I traced a water-ring on the table with one finger, remembering the feel of her moon-silvered skin against my bare flesh. I hadn’t thought about the fact that our argument might have played some role in this. “It was the first time we’d argued since we’d become lovers. Do you think it’s significant?”

“No,” Solon said gently. “I don’t. Continue.”

I relived the night of the spectacle for him. The endless dinner that had preceded it. The details of every dish I could recall. The carriage-ride to Elua’s Square, the throngs that packed the City. The moon’s slow, steady occlusion, and its eerie red hue.

The long wait, the crowds jostling around the mirror.

Sunjata’s whisper in my ear, following him.

In a dispassionate voice, I told him all I could recall. Standing pressed together beneath Elua’s Oak. The searing pain of the needle driven deep into my vitals, the rush of icy fire in my veins. Falling, the world whirling. Sunjata’s voice, telling me to seek Ptolemy Solon’s aid. An emerald glow, a flash of brightness. A gasp from the crowd. Sunjata’s hand tugging the ring from my fingers. Roots writhing like serpents. Sunjata’s voice apologizing for serving two masters. Telling me I was lucky my mother loved me. Telling me to go to Cythera.

And then the tide of madness swallowing me.

“Again,” Solon said.

I closed my eyes and told him again, shutting out the sound of his pen scratching, shutting out everything. This time, there was nothing new. When I had finished, I was drained. I opened my eyes. “Do you wish to hear about the madness now?”

Solon began to reply, then caught my mother’s warning glance. “No,” he said in a circumspect tone. “Later, perhaps. Tell me about the ring. Is it significant?”

Tired as I was, I almost laughed. Sidonie had given it to me before I’d wed Dorelei. When I’d struck out from Skaldia into the unknown in search of Berlik, I’d sent the ring back to Sidonie with a message that I would return to claim it. And when I’d been stuck waist-deep in a Vralian snowbank, bone-weary and frozen and ready to die, it was the thought of that promise that had kept me moving.

I’d reclaimed it in Alba. At long last, Berlik’s skull was interred, letting Dorelei’s spirit rest peacefully. Sidonie had taken the ring from its resting place on a chain around her neck. She’d undone the clasp and let the chain fall, slid the ring onto my finger. And we had made love like gods, filled with wonder and awe.

“Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes.”

“A love token?” Solon pressed. “From the Queen’s daughter?”

I stared at him. “What do you suppose? Yes.”

He shrugged. “I needed to be sure.”

“Be sure.” I turned to my mother. “What did Sunjata mean about serving two masters?”

A frown knit her graceful brows. “’Tis a long story. To shorten it, Sunjata is a journeyman in my service. But as far as the Guild in Carthage knows, he is a gem-merchant’s assistant who has been secretly recruited by a Guildsman named Hannon.”