Kushiel's Mercy (81 page)

And likely me too.

The street opened. We had reached the outer edge of Elua’s Square. It was packed with soldiers. They were slower to move, but they did, giving way reluctantly at the name of Astegal of Carthage. I gazed above a shining sea of helmets.

Elua’s Oak.

It rose, vast and majestic, its spring canopy spreading over the Square. I’d stood beneath it as a boy when Ysandre de la Courcel announced an end to Phèdre’s sentence of penance and gave her blessing to the quest to free the Master of the Straits. I’d sat beneath it as a young man, beside a dry and empty fountain, suspected of treason thanks to Barquiel L’Envers’ machinations. Almost a year ago, I’d groveled at its roots, succumbing to madness. And only a few hours ago, I’d knelt beneath it and prayed.

I prayed now, sick and dizzy.

A wooden dais had been erected beneath the oak. There they were: Ysandre, Drustan, and Sidonie. Drustan’s sword was in his hand. I guessed the speech had already been given, the salutes exchanged.

“Make way!” Kratos called, forging a steady path through the crowd of soldiers. “In the name of Astegal of Carthage, make way!”

I followed in his wake.

Far behind us was the sound of a new commotion arising.

Joscelin.

No time.

No time for fear, no time for uncertainty. No time to try to explain what I was doing. I left that to Kratos. As we reached the oak, I draped my mount’s reins over his neck, kicked my feet free of the stirrups. I drew myself up and stood atop my saddle, swaying unsteadily. My heart thudded in my breast. I caught the lowest limb, hauled myself atop it. Below voices rose in furious argument.

“. . . sorry, your majesty, but he’s had a
vision
,” Kratos was saying, his tone stubborn. “Your men were too hasty.”

I inched along the thick branch, trying to hurry. To the juncture, to the fork. There was a mossy hollow there. I locked my ankles around the tree limb and plucked the dagger from my belt, probing.

Nothing.

The commotion grew louder. Joscelin was getting closer. I glanced down through the greening oak leaves. I saw Sidonie below me, her face upturned and puzzled. I stabbed at the crotch of the tree, prying away chunks of moss, chunks of bark. Bits and pieces of oak detritus fell like rain.

An arrow whizzed over my head.

“No!” Sidonie’s voice. “Hold!”

Moss and bark, moss and bark. And then . . . hardened mud. A crude mortar, packed in a hole, crumbling under the tip of my blade. I kept my head low and dug frantically. My dagger scraped against somewhat hard. I dug harder, prying out large chunks of dried mud. I saw the silver link of a chain glinting. “I have it!” I cried, sticking my dagger in my belt and yanking on the chain. It came loose as a single piece, a dirt-encrusted emerald dangling from silver links. “I have it!”

The crowd below murmured in wonder.

Joscelin’s voice rang out, hard and urgent. “Get him down from there! Whatever he means to do with that thing, do
not
let him do it!”

Too late, I thought. I clutched the chain in my fist and whispered the word.
“Emmenghamon.”

Nothing happened.

“Your majesty, it’s a trick,” Joscelin called. The soldiers were parting for him now. He reached the dais, breathing hard. “I’m sorry; Elua knows, sorrier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

I tried it again
. “Emmenghamon.”

“What passes here?” Ysandre’s voice could have frozen water.

“Imriel attacked me,” Joscelin said grimly. “And this man’s in league with him.” He pointed at Kratos. “I don’t know why, but they’re frantic to get their hands on that gem. We’ve been deceived. Somewhat is very, very wrong here.”

“Joscelin, no!” Phèdre’s voice, horrified.

“I’m sorry,” he said more softly.

My head pounded, sick and throbbing. I clung to the branch, clung to the chain, and tried to shut out their voices. I was saying it wrong. I had to be. I pictured Sidonie in the hold of Deimos’ ship, still disheveled from her sojourn in Bodeshmun’s rug, her lips working as she sounded out the Punic word.
“Emmanghamon.”

Nothing.

“Imriel de la Courcel.” Drustan’s voice, the umistakable tone of command. I glanced down to see a bank of arrows trained on me. Sidonie was still almost directly beneath me, gazing upward. “You will descend and place yourself in custody of the Palace Guard. Now.”

Sidonie.

Spirals and circles.

I wrapped the chain around my right wrist and drew my dagger. I fished Bodeshmun’s talisman from my purse. I took a few slow, deep breaths. Quick. I’d always been quick. I would have to be very, very quick. I whispered a little prayer to Blessed Elua and his Companions and felt a measure of my dizziness and nausea abate. It was a small mercy, but I’d take it.

I inched back out onto the limb, swung my leg over and dropped.

The guards moved swiftly toward me. I moved faster. I grabbed Sidonie, putting the edge of my dagger to her throat and setting my back against Elua’s Oak. “No one move!”

No one did. The horror and loathing on their faces went through me like a spear. Sidonie’s body was rigid against mine, trembling a little. Whether with fear or fury, I couldn’t tell.

“Sidonie,” I murmured in her ear. “I know you don’t remember it, but you once promised to trust me beyond all reason. And I swear to you that all that I am, all that I possess, including this gem-stone, is yours.” With my left hand, I held Bodeshmun’s talisman before her face. “I need you. I can’t do this alone. Forget your memories. Look into your heart. And if you find somewhat there, some lingering spark of trust and love that owes naught to reason, I beg you to speak the word written here.”

She went very still.

“Don’t!” Ysandre snapped. “Don’t you dare!”

Sidonie reached for the talisman. I let her take it, keeping my blade at her throat. No one dared move as she studied the scrap of leather.

“Always and always,” I whispered. “That was the promise.”

Her body shifted. I lowered the dagger and let her turn to face me. If my words hadn’t reached her, I was a dead man anyway. But she was still between me and the guards and I heard Drustan order his archers not to attempt to shoot over his daughter’s head. Sidonie’s dark, dark eyes searched mine.

“Emmenghanom.”

It was faint, so faint! I could barely hear it, couldn’t make out if her pronunciation differed from mine. For the space of a few heartbeats, I thought it must not have. I thought that we had failed, that we’d gotten it wrong. That her knowledge of the Punic alphabet had been too imperfect, that Ptolemy Solon had been mistaken after all, that we’d failed to fulfill the terms of the spell. And then I felt the chain wrapped around my wrist quiver. Sidonie made a startled sound and dropped the leather talisman.

The talisman was smoldering, the edges black and curling.

The emerald was glowing beneath the dirt that encrusted it, the symbols of the Houses of the Cosmos etched into its facets shining whitely.

“Move away from him, Sidonie!” Drustan shouted. “Step away!”

She didn’t budge. I could feel heat from the demon-stone rising. The silver chains wrapped around my wrist were growing warm. I dropped my dagger and unwound the chain.

“I think you’d all better get back!” I called. “It’s too late to stop this!”

I swung the chain like a goatherd with a rope lariat. The demon-stone left emerald trails of brightness lingering in the air. Circles upon circles. I meant to scare them, and it worked. They scrambled, pushing and shoving, trying to flee in a panic. Pressing outward, clearing a space. The chain was beginning to burn my palm. I prayed to Elua no one got crushed, and tossed the gem and chain into the empty space.

The emerald glare intensified. The gem spun on the trampled dirt, the chain lashing in circles around it. The silver links turned ruddy with heat. Brighter and brighter. The air grew hot and dry and hard to breathe.

The demon-stone burst.

I heard the sound of the first crack and moved without thinking, spinning Sidonie against the oak tree and shielding her with my body. The sound when it burst was like a splintering thunderclap, loud and deafening. Tiny shards flew outward with tremendous force. I felt a spray of them pierce me from behind, lodging in my flesh, needle-sharp.

And then the world roared.

It was a roar of fury, a roar of triumph. A roar of freedom. It seemed to suck all the air from Elua’s Square. A hot, dry wind rose—rose and rose. Spiraling. I warded my face with one arm, turning to peer behind me. I could see people struggling to flee, could see their mouths open to shout. I couldn’t hear anything but the roaring. But mostly I saw
it
.

It gathered itself out of dirt, sucking up the trampled soil. Desiccating it, pulverizing it, rendering it as fine and dry as desert sand. A whirlwind of earth. Through slitted eyes, I watched it grow, rising into a column fit to rival the height of Elua’s Oak. I watched it sprout horns, wicked and curving, shiny as mica. I watched a dark maw gape open in the whirlwind’s midst, revealing jagged fangs the color of old bones.

It grew and grew.

And then it stopped growing. It spun in one place. The dirt spun; the horns and maw didn’t. High in the sky, at the apex of the whirlwind, the wicked horns dipped. Toward us, toward Sidonie and me.

I looked at her.

She gazed back at me with awe.

We had freed a demon.

The world roared again. There was a rushing sound. When it moved, it moved quickly. It passed over the Square, passed over the City, scouring everything in its path with a blast of fine-ground dirt. In its wake, it left abraded skin, terrified and weeping folk. A deafening absence of sound. It passed beyond the walls of the City without slowing and continued. Moving south, going home.

Gone.

Eighty-Three

I
n the aftermath of the
ghafrid
’s passage, Elua’s Square was hushed.

The folk of the City were frightened; many were injured. And all of them were awakening from a malevolent dream to a terrible, terrible truth. The looks on their faces nearly broke my heart.

“What have I done?” Ysandre said. She was speaking for everyone present. Her voice shook. “Elua! What have we
all
done?”

Drustan fixed me with his dark gaze. One side of his face was bleeding, scored by myriad gashes from flying gem fragments. Here and there, shards of emerald glinted amid the tattooed whorls. “Not all of us.”

Now that it was over, I was trembling, too. My head ached and I stung in a hundred different places, shards embedded in my own flesh. Gods, it had been a near thing! “It was a spell,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. And you didn’t do it. We were able to break the spell in time.”

His gaze shifted to Sidonie. “Both of you.”

“Barely,” she murmured, her face pale.

“Does that . . .” Ysandre shivered. “Does that mean it didn’t happen as we believed?” A faint note of hope crept into her voice. “You didn’t go to Carthage and wed Astegal? Was that all part of the falsehood?”

“No,” Sidonie said gently. “I wish it were.”

The sound of mourning arose in the Square, breaking the hush. Some folk were still silent and shocked, but others began keening. I saw soldiers on their knees, rocking back and forth, burying their faces in their hands. I looked at Phèdre. Her eyes were closed, her face shuttered. Joscelin was staring at his hands, turned palms upward. I looked away.

“Alais,” Ysandre whispered in horror, the full realization striking her.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It didn’t happen.”

The Queen of Terre d’Ange shook her head. What Ysandre was thinking, what she was feeling, I couldn’t imagine. I felt sick at heart remembering what I’d said and done in my madness. Ysandre de la Courcel had declared war on her own daughter. On her own nation.

The keening grew louder. I watched Ysandre gather herself with a profound effort of will. She and Drustan exchanged a glance. He nodded, knowing her mind. They bore the same burden of guilt.

Ysandre stepped to the dais. “People of Terre d’Ange!” They quieted. She took a deep breath. “In the presence of all here assembled, I declare myself unfit to sit the throne. I relinquish the throne of Terre d’Ange to my eldest daughter and heir, Sidonie de la Courcel.”

Ten thousand hungry eyes turned to Sidonie.

This, neither of us had expected.

“No.” Sidonie’s voice was quiet, too quiet. She squared her shoulders and raised her voice. “No. I do not accept this charge. I, too, fell victim to Carthage’s wiles. I, too, fell beneath the spell’s influence. I fell farther and harder than anyone. I stand before you here today only because Imriel de la Courcel rescued me from it, as, in the end, he has saved all of us.”

A poet’s tale.

I glanced at Kratos and saw tears streaking his broad face.

“Blessed Elua is merciful,” Sidonie said. There were tears on her face, too. “He does not join hearts without a purpose. We have all been spared this day. We have all been granted mercy and redemption this day. I acknowledge my mother’s wishes. I will serve as regent for a month’s time. And as such, this is my order to you.”

They hung on her words.

“Go home,” Sidonie said, and though her voice was soft, it carried. “Let those with a chirurgeon’s training among you come forward to tend to the wounded. Everyone else, I bid you go home. Go home and do penance. Go home and mourn at what very nearly happened. Go home and give thanks that it did not. There is a tale to tell here, and it will be told in due time. Now we need to grieve, all of us. We need to regret. And yet let us always remember, the gods had mercy on us. In the end, love prevailed.”

She reached for my hand.

I took hers and squeezed it hard.

No one cheered. It was too somber a moment and they were too dazed by what had happened. By the demon’s passage, by the dawning horror of what they’d nearly done. Here and there, a number of folk yet knelt, rocking and wailing. Still, it gave many of them purpose. I saw them take heart from her words.

For the moment, it was enough.