Kushiel's Mercy (7 page)

“Claude,” he said, rising and putting out his hand.

I clasped it. “My thanks. Let me know what arrangements you make. If you don’t mind, I’d like to train with your men, so long as it’s not L’Envers himself doing the training. I could use some lessons on fighting in the saddle.”

“Of course.” He smiled. “Sounds like you managed well enough in Vralia.”

I smiled back at him. “Oh, I was on foot.”

He stared. “On foot?”

I laughed. “I spent half my life being taught by Joscelin Verreuil. Would you expect aught else?”

“Apparently I did,” he said.

I left the encounter feeling better. I didn’t expect to earn the loyalty and trust of Sidonie’s guard, at least not easily, but I’d settle for a measure of respect, and I thought mayhap I’d won it today from Claude de Monluc. It wasn’t his job to protect me and I didn’t expect that either, but it would be good to feel confident that if there was a dagger hurtling toward my back, a guard would shout a warning.

And it least it hadn’t been a summons to speak with Queen Ysandre for failing to tell her about the Unseen Guild, although it made me uneasy that Sidonie hadn’t returned yet. I put the thought out of my head and sat down at her desk to complete my letter to the Master of the Straits.

I was just finishing when she returned. I glanced up, trying to decipher her expression. “Was she angry?”

“No.” Sidonie looked bemused. “She knew.”

I blinked. “She
knew
?”

“Mm-hmm.” She sat on the couch. I dusted my letter to Hyacinthe with sand and went to join her. “Phèdre told her everything before she and Joscelin departed on their mysterious errand.” Sidonie glanced at me with a flicker of amusement. “The one we don’t want to know about.”

“Do
you
?” I asked.

“Gods, no.” She rolled her shoulders. “We’ve got burdens enough, you and I.”

I shifted to rub her neck and shoulders. “You were gone a long time.”

“We had a good discussion.” Her voice was soft and low. “The first in a long time.
I
was angry. She should have trusted me with the knowledge.”

I pressed my lips to the nape of her neck, inhaling her scent. “Why didn’t she?”

“For many of the same reasons you didn’t, so she said.” Sidonie sighed. “Because it’s dangerous. And because there’s no proof and naught to be done about it without stirring the waters. Spies will be spies, she said. We have spies, too, you know.”

I blew in her ear. “Oh, do we?”

Sidonie wriggled. “Do you want to talk or . . . ?”

“Both.” I let go of her and reclined on the couch, folding my arms behind my head, smiling at her.

“Elua, you’re insufferable!” With an agile movement, Sidonie turned and stretched atop me, propping her elbows on my chest and resting her chin on folded hands. “Yes.” She gazed down at me. “We have spies, although not so extensive a consortium, and none successful enough to find your cursed mother. But you recall the situation in Carthage that Raul mentioned? Mother is concerned about it. Aragonia has been a loyal ally.”

“Carthage,” I echoed, shifting my hips so that my phallus, erect and aching in my breeches, pressed against the warm cleft between her gown-clad thighs. “Where an ambitious young general threatens war.”

“He’s not . . .” Sidonie writhed against me. “At this point, there’s no . . .” I unfolded my arms and reached down to grasp her buttocks, pulling hard. She shuddered and narrowed her eyes at me. “Why in the name of all the gods do you find it so perversely arousing to discuss politics while making love?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “But you want me inside you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Gods, yes!”

It had been this way between us since the beginning, and neither of us could say why. The desire between us was like an oil-soaked rag, ready to ignite at a single spark. And yet it was more than that, too. We reflected one another, the bright mirror and the dark. Sidonie sat back on her heels, undoing the laces of my breeches. I pushed her skirts up around her hips, tugged her underdrawers down. She took my throbbing phallus in hand, fit me to her slick opening. I pushed.

We fit.

She sank onto me, sighing. I filled her.

“So it was a good talk,” I said.

“Yes.” Sidonie rocked atop me, her eyelids flickering as I dug my fingernails into her buttocks. “I think . . . I think mayhap the truth of it is she was waiting to see if you would tell me on your own. About your mother and the Unseen Guild.”

I jerked my hips upward. “And I did.”

“You did,” she agreed. “Eventually.”

“You were the one who didn’t want to face the cost of winning your mother’s blessing until we had to,” I reminded her.

“True.” Her pace quickened. “I need to not talk for a moment.”

A moment; many moments. I watched her face transformed with pleasure, alight and incandescent. It never failed to shock and thrill me, how utterly and thoroughly my cool, collected cousin was willing to surrender to complete abandonment. We hadn’t even begun to test the limits of it. I watched her ride me to climax, again and again, waiting a long time to join her.

“Mmm.” Sidonie collapsed on my chest. “Also a good talk.”

I ran a few strands of her hair through my fingers, watching her blurred, black gaze sharpen, coming back from wherever pleasure took her. “Do you suppose it will always be like this between us?”

Her lips curved. “Always?”

I nodded. “Always and always.”

Sidonie kissed me. “Gods, I hope so.”

Five

T
he months that followed were among the best of my life.

They weren’t perfect; Elua knows, nothing ever is. Not in my life, anyway. But this came close.

I’d won the respite I’d prayed for. The Queen had made her pronouncement; the gauntlet had been cast. I had countered. My letter to Hyacinthe was dispatched by courier; the Master of the Straits made a prompt reply. There was a debt of honor between us, he wrote. I had played a crucial part in Phèdre’s quest to find the Name of God and free him from his curse. I had ventured into the depths of distant Vralia to avenge his wife’s niece. Of course he would search for Melisande in his sea-mirror.

Word was leaked. The adepts of the Night Court were more than happy to comply. Gossip whispered in the bedchambers of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers made its way to the Palace Court and out into Terre d’Ange. The Master of the Straits himself was aiding my quest.

For now the realm was content to watch and wait.

And I was content to be with Sidonie.

We spent the better portion of our days apart. After their long talk, Ysandre didn’t exactly relent, but she thawed considerably. Sidonie had duties, many of them tiresome. Whenever Ysandre was otherwise committed, she stood in her mother’s stead, hearing suits brought by foreign dignitaries, the quarrels of members of the noble Houses, the complaints of the citizenry.

She had a good head for it. Although she was young—only nineteen, a year past gaining her majority—Sidonie had spent her entire life learning statecraft. She had an acute memory and the ability to recall in a heartbeat the most obscure detail of any legal or historical precedent she’d ever read—and she had read extensively. Supplicants thinking they stood a better chance of swaying the Queen’s young, untried heir were shortly disillusioned.

For my part, I did my best to take on the mantle of responsibility I’d long avoided. I was a peer of the realm, and I had estates I’d neglected all my life. I was a member of Parliament, capable of influencing decisions that had bearing on the whole of Terre d’Ange. I spent a great deal of time simply trying to inform myself. It seemed for every person reluctant to speak with me, there were two others eager to bend my ears in different directions.

Claude de Monluc kept his word, and much to my amused delight, Duc Barquiel L’Envers dispatched the Akkadian-trained captain of his own guard to teach the Dauphine’s Guard how to fight in the saddle. Since he didn’t know me by sight, I was free to take part, posing as a nameless guard among guards. I spent many hours on the drilling-grounds, learning the niceties of cavalry warfare: how to shoot a short bow from the back of a horse at full gallop, how ’twas better to slash and cut on a forward charge than risk lodging one’s blade, how to use one’s mount’s momentum to best advantage and avoid engagement, when to trust blindly to a rearward thrust.

The Bastard loved it. He had the makings of a good warhorse.

And I was good at it. I daresay I had been for a while; as I’d told Claude, I’d spent half my life being taught by Joscelin. Still, it would always be Joscelin against whom I measured myself, and there was no contest. He was better than me. He always would be. Once I might have cared. I didn’t, not anymore.

Heroism be damned. I wanted only to be sure Sidonie was safe.

Later, at Claude’s request, I asked Joscelin to teach the Dauphine’s Guard a few rudiments of the Cassiline discipline. Not all of it, of course. True Cassiline Brothers begin their training at the age of ten, and for ten years, they do nothing else. Claude’s men were skilled swordsmen in the traditional style, and it would have made no sense for them to unlearn everything they already knew to commit to a discipline that would take ten years to master. Still, there were some useful maneuvers that they could add to their repertoire, like the overhead parries for defending against a mounted enemy while on foot.

It was . . . fun.

With the sense of an extended truce in what Sidonie called the Battle of Imriel settling over the Court, a spirit of revelry returned. Drustan mab Necthana arrived later than was his wont. Sidonie and I attended his reception together. After that, daring young nobles began to throw private fêtes, inviting us to attend together. Julien Trente was the first, although I happened to know it was Mavros who put him up to it, reckoning it wouldn’t have been seemly for House Shahrizai to be the first to celebrate. But after Julien came Lisette de Blays, who was one of Sidonie’s ladies-in-waiting, a pretty young Namarrese noblewoman with an impudent sense of humor.

After that there were others. It became somewhat of a fashion. Sidonie and I weighed the invitations with care, seeking to accept only those that were sincere and genuine, begging off on those who merely sought to create spectacle. In public we were circumspect, even in the midst of frivolity and license.

Betimes it wasn’t easy. Whatever the nature of the fire Blessed Elua had lit between us, it continued to burn unabated. It had survived time, distance, enchantment, and grief, and it survived familiarity, too. There was an invisible cord binding us together. In the midst of a crowded room, I always knew where she was. If I closed my eyes and listened hard, I could almost feel her heart beating, drawing mine as inexorably as a lodestone draws iron.

I could make it quicken with a single whispered word in her ear and watch the pulse beat faster in the hollow of her throat. And all it took was one laden glance under her lashes, and my blood ran hot with desire. Still, we never acted on it in the presence of others.

Alone, it was different.

The nights were ours.

After we talked of exploring love’s sharper pleasures, I turned to Mavros for counsel. If there is one thing the Shahrizai understand, it is discretion. I trusted Mavros enough to arrange a private Showing for us featuring adepts of Valerian House and Mandrake House engaging in love’s sharper pleasures. It was customary to attend the Night Court for such things, but there were other arrangements that could be made, private townhouses with pleasure-chambers.

“Do you really think this is necessary?” Sidonie asked me.

“I do,” I said. “For both of us.”

“It frightens you,” she said softly. “Still.”

“A bit.” I was honest. “I saw too much darkness in Daršanga. Death sown in the place of life.” The mere mention of the place made me swallow, tasting bile and worse. “For a long time, it made me fear my own desires. It’s different with you. But I need to be sure this is somewhat you truly wish to explore, because if it’s not, if we do and you discover the reality’s nothing like the fantasy, and you want naught to do with it . . .” I shook my head. “I promise you, I’ll wake screaming in the middle of the night, dreaming of the Mahrkagir. Only it’s
my
face he’ll be wearing.”

“I know.” Sidonie took my hand. She was one of only three people I’d ever told the whole truth about what befell me there. “I’ll go.”

I gazed at her. “It doesn’t frighten you at all, does it?”

“No.” She smiled a little. “I told you, I trust you.”

I squeezed her hand. “That’s what frightens me.”

Sidonie raised her brows. “Trust
me
, then.”

She was right, of course. In the Night Court, there were elaborate contracts spelling out what was or was not permitted during the course of an assignation. That was part of what I wanted her to see and understand. Still, in the end, the essence of the exchange was trust, the surrender and acceptance of it. The more complete the surrender, the more wholehearted the acceptance, the more powerful the exchange.

And that, no mere Showing could teach.

We went, though.

It took place in the townhouse Mavros had rented. It was much like the Showing I had attended with him at Valerian House, only more discreet. The staging area was behind a veil of sheer, transparent silk. It was dimly lit, but the viewing area was completely dark. None of the adepts performing would be able to see who watched them. There were no attendants, only Mavros, serving as the host.

Sidonie and I fumbled our way to one of the reclining couches, trying to hush our laughter. We took our places. I slid my arms around her, resting my chin on her shoulder. I wanted to be able to feel her every reaction.

“You may begin,” Mavros called.

We watched.

It was the same, but different, so different! The only other time I’d attended such a Showing, I’d been abominably drunk, wallowing in misery. And even then, it had been good. Now . . . Elua have mercy, it was so much more.

We watched the pair of Valerian adepts enter the staging area and kneel,
abeyante
, heads bowed and hands clasped before them. We watched the Mandrake adepts stride onto the stage. “Strip,” one ordered ruthlessly.