Kushiel's Dart (111 page)

While we dined, I spun the long story of our journeys, beginning with the death of Alcuin and Delaunay. Much of it, Gonzago knew, but he wanted to hear it firsthand. Tears filled his eyes at the start; he had, in deep truth, been very fond of Delaunay. To the rest of it, told in turns by Joscelin and me, he listened with a historian's tireless fascination. Afterward, he told us of his travels, and the knowledge he had gleaned. The Caerdicci city-states were falling over themselves to establish trade with the no-longer-isolated nation of Alba, jealous of the status enjoyed by Terre d'Ange and her ally, Aragonia.

By the time our meal was cleared and we were lingering over brandy, the apprentice Camilo's head was nodding, and Gonzago sent him to bed.

"A good lad," he said absently. "He'll make a fine scholar someday, if he can stay awake long enough." He rose, ponderously. "I've some gifts here for you, if he's not misplaced them," he added. "I brought a beautiful Caerdicci translation of Delaunay's verse . . . pity, I'd have looked up some Yeshuite texts for you if I'd known . . . and somewhat odd, beside."

"I'll fetch your bags for you, Maestro," Joscelin offered, heading for his guest-room. Gonzago sank back down with a grateful sigh.

"A long trip on horseback, for an old man," he remarked.

"And I thank you again for making it." I smiled at him. "What do you mean, somewhat odd?"

"Well." He picked up his empty goblet and peered at it; I refilled it with alacrity. "As you know, I was in La Serenissima for some time, which is where my friend Lucretius sought me. I have an acquaintance there, who charts the stars for the family of the Doge. Lucretius inquired for him there, explaining his business. He even had to show the letter, with your seal. They're all suspicious in La Serenissima." He swirled the brandy in his goblet and drank. "At any rate, my stargazing acquaintance eventually told him that I had gone on to Varro, and gave him the name of a reputable inn. Ah, there you are!" He seized upon the pack that Joscelin brought. "Here," he said reverently, passing me a twine-bound package.

I opened it with care, and found it to be the Caerdicci translation. It was beautiful indeed, bearing a tooled-leather cover with a copy of the head of Antinous, lover of the Tiberian Imperator Hadrian, worked upon it.

Joscelin laughed. "A Mendacant's trick, if ever there was one!"

"Truly, Maestro, it's lovely, and I thank you," I said, leaning to kiss his cheek. "Now will you keep me in suspense all night?"

Gonzago de Escabares gave a rueful smile. "You may wish I had, child. Having heard your tale, I have my guess; hear mine, and make your own. Lucretius and his apprentice bedded down at the inn, and in the morning, he found he had a guest. Now, he is an eloquent man, my friend Lucretius; he is an orator after the old style, and I have never known him to be caught short of words. But when I asked him to describe his guest, he fell silent, and at last said only that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen."

The nights were still warm, but I felt a chill all the length of my spine.

"Melisande," I whispered.

"Ask Camilo," Gonzago said bluntly. "I did, and he said that she had hair the color of night and eyes the color of larkspur, and her voice made his knees go weak. And that lad doesn't have a poetic bone in his body."

Reaching into his pack, he drew out a large bundle in a silk drawstring bag. "She said since he was carrying a letter from the Comtesse de Mon-treve to me, would he carry this to me, for the Comtesse de Montreve."

He handed me the bundle, and I took it with trembling hands, feeling it at once soft and heavy.

"Don't open it!" White lines of fury were etched on Joscelin's face. "Phedre, listen to me. She has no hold on you, and you owe her nothing. You don't need to know. Throw it away unopened."

"I can't," I said helplessly.

I wasn't lying, either. I couldn't. Nor could I open it.

With a sharp sound, Joscelin tore the parcel from my hands and wrenched open the silken drawstring cords, reaching inside to yank out its contents.

My
sangoire
cloak unfolded in a slither of velvet drapery to hang from his grip, rich and luxuriant, a red so deep it was almost black.

We all stared at it, saying nothing. Gonzago de Escabares eyes were round with perplexity; I don't think he knew what it was. I did. Joscelin did. I had been wearing it that last day, the day Delaunay was killed. The day Melisande had betrayed us.

"What in the seventh hell is this supposed to mean?" Joscelin demanded, throwing it down on the couch beside me. He gave a bewildered laugh, running his hands through his hair. "Your
cloak
? Do you have the faintest idea?" He looked at me, then looked again. "Phedre?" I did know.

Someone had aided Melisande, had helped her escape from Troyes-le-Mont. Whoever it was, they had never been found. Ysandre's suspicion, in the end, had fallen most heavily on Quincel de Morhban and the two Shahrizai kin, Marmion and Persia. If they were exonerated, it was only because there was no proof and it was too ludicrously obvious, all of them too canny to stage such a blatant ploy. But there was another reason, I knew. I spent that night atop the battlements, and never heard a sound. The guard at the postern gate was killed by a knife to the heart. He'd seen his killer; it was someone he trusted, face-to-face. And the guardsmen of Troyes-le-Mont didn't trust anyone who hadn't fought at their side. Certainly he would have challenged any one of the Kusheline nobles, approaching him in the dark of night.

Someone he trusted. Someone we all trusted.

And now Melisande was in La Serenissima, close enough to the family of the Doge to learn in a day that their soothsayer had received a visitor. Prince Benedicte's eldest daughter, Marie-Celeste, was wed to the Doge's son ... a near-incestuous knot of the deadly Stregazza, who had poisoned Isabel L'Envers de la Courcel.

Ysandre's nearest kin who were of the Blood.

Oh, I knew. My hands closed on a fold of the
sangoire
cloak, feeling the rich velvet beneath my fingertips. I could smell, faintly, Melisande's scent. Why had she kept it? I couldn't answer it, my mind shying away from the question. But what she meant it for now, I knew well enough.

A challenge, an opening gambit.

I touched my throat, bare of her diamond.

Somewhere in that deadly coil of La Serenissima, a plot was hatching. It was a long way, a very long way, from Ysandre's throne in the City of Elua. But intrigue has a long reach, when thrones are at stake. Someone, at Ysandre's right hand, concealed poison at their heart.

And I could find them out.

That was what the cloak meant, of course. Melisande knew full well how I had served Delaunay, Alcuin and I. He'd let her know as much. Like her, he was a master, and could not bear to be entirely without an audience . . . one solitary witness, who could appreciate his artistry, the tremendous scope and complexity of his undertaking. Whoremaster of Spies, his detractors called him, when the halcyon days of Ysandre's wedding and D'Angeline victory had passed.

Witness and opponent, Melisande had chosen me as her equal.

I was an
anguissette
and a sometime Servant of Naamah, that much, the world knew; trained to observe, to remember, to analyze. Not many knew that. Even those who did put little stock in it. I had been at the wrong place at the right time, nothing more. I nearly believed it myself, and sometimes, I think, it was true.

Others would find it easy to believe.

Who would the gatekeeper have trusted?

I could count them on my fingers. Caspar Trevalion, Percy de Somer-ville, Barquiel L'Envers; a half a dozen others. No more.

I could find out, as I had found out that Childric d'Essoms served L'Envers, as I had found out that Solaine Belfours was Lyonette de Trev-alion's puppet. People will speak before an
anguissette
, careless as with no other, not even the pillow-talk of the Night Court. I stroked the velvet pile of the
sangoire
cloak. Delaunay had sent all the way to Firezia to find dye-makers who could recreate it. We'd lost the art, in Terre d'Ange. That didn't happen often.
Such a beautiful color
, Melisande had said, once.
It suits you
.

It would be easy, so easy, to begin again; I was born to it, I thought, blinking away the red wash that hazed my vision. Joscelin began every morning with the smooth execution of the Cassiline forms drilled into him since he was ten, that deadly, private dance he now performed in the gardens of Montreve, while members of the household watched with covert admiration.

And I, I channeled my gifts and their awful yearnings into my studies, which I was loathe to abandon. No reason to do so, truly. What texts I had, I could easily forward to the City; aught else, I carried in my own skull. And there were Yeshuites aplenty in the City, to carry on Seth ben Yavin's teaching, and the Royal Library, and booksellers, too. And the bequest of Delaunay's house, largely unspent, enough to buy a home in the City, a modest home. Montreve.

There was Montreve, but it would continue; I was fooling myself, if I thought it needed my hand. It had its own staff and holdings, and I need never doubt the loyalty of Purnell and Richeline, happily installed, making of it a home such as his parents had at Perrinwolde, in the absence of the Chevalier and his Lady, Cecilie.

I could always come back. I would, too. I loved it here. Almost as much as I had loved being Delaunay's
anguissette
, bright star in Naamah's crown. Joscelin.

Ah, Joscelin, I thought, and could have wept. My beautiful boy, if not so chaste; truly, I had an ill-luck name. How many times had I proved a trial nigh beyond bearing, how many times had I promised; this is the last? The old priest—he was the same, I was sure of it—had said it.
You have stood at the crossroads and chosen, and like Cassiel, you will ever stand at the crossroads and choose, choose again and again, the path of the Companion
. My fault, my doing. I sank my hands into the deep, heavy fabric of my
sangoire
cloak. So many times I had worn it; so many assignations, always blind to Delaunay's purpose, obedient nonetheless.

It would be different, to do it knowing. It would be different, carrying the secret of my own purpose locked within the vault of my heart, playing counter to Melisande's deadly game. It would be harder.

My heart beat faster at the prospect, and the tide of desire surged within my blood, relentless and unending. How close need I get, before someone's careless lips spilled the secret, revealing their lord or lady to be the traitor of Troyes-le-Mont? For there were Ysandre's ladies-in-waiting, too, those three who had dared to follow her into the teeth of war. I knew their names and faces, locked in memory. Who knew, but that one of them was Melisande's last line of defense?

She always rewarded generously those who had served her. I touched my throat, still bare. No matter; her generosity too was emblazoned on my skin, the finial at the nape of my neck that completed my marque, forever etched by Master Tielhard's exquitely painful tapper, hers, her doing. A gown of sheerest gauze, studded with diamonds. They had bitten deep into my flesh, when I knelt for her.

They had bought me my freedom.

Melisande.

They might cost her freedom yet.

If I had lost my mentor, still, I was not without resources. I had the friendship of the sovereigns of two nations, the Lady of the Dalriada, the Royal Admiral. I had the kindness of a revered scholar of the University of Tiberium to aid me, the goodwill of the Yeshuite community, and a standing claim with one of the
kumpanias
of the Tsingani. I had friends high and low, and the enduring love of the successor to the Master of the Straits, my dearest friend.

And I had the Perfect Companion.

"Phedre?" Joscelin repeated my name, the question still in his voice, echoed in Gonzago de Escabares' perplexed gaze. So much thought, to have passed in the blink of an eye. I drew a deep breath and looked at Joscelin's face, familiar and concerned; against all odds, beloved.

No more dire prophesies, I had laughed, not reckoning with what I was, with what the priest had named me, sure and true. Kushiel's Dart and Naamah's Servant.

Love as thou wilt, and Elua will ever guide your steps.

"I'll tell you," I said, "Tomorrow."