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“He’s a good lad, isn’t he?” Ricciardo said, watching them go.

“Yes,” I said. “That, and more.”

My message was delivered by way of an anonymous courier, a stone-mason from one of the Scholae Ricciardo represented. We waited at Villa Gaudio for the man to make his slow return. Allegra took us on a tour of her gardens, where a few late-blooming blossoms lingered.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, glancing at Joscelin. “My lord Cassiline, this must be terribly dull for you.”

“No.” He gave her his best Cassiline bow. “Not at all, my lady Allegra. I am passing fond of gardens.”

I remembered how we had first come here together at Ricciardo’s invitation, when Joscelin and I had scarce been speaking to one another. Such a haven it had seemed! We had gardens in Montrève, too, although there are as many herbs as flowers. Richeline Purnell, who is my seneschal’s wife, tends them lovingly. Joscelin knelt in one for many hours contemplating his anguish and his Cassiline vows, the day I told him I was returning to Naamah’s Service to answer Melisande’s challenge.

That seemed a very long time ago.

Ricciardo’s stone-mason returned before dusk, bearing a letter with a single phrase written on it.

I swear it
.

The handwriting was shaky. It was not noticeable, not to one who didn’t know it well, not to one whose own hand wasn’t trained in the elegant formal script of D’Angeline nobility and adepts of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. I noticed.

Melisande’s hand had trembled as she wrote it.

My heart quickened within my breast and my breathing grew shallow. My blood beat in my ears, sounding out the Name of God, while a different name throbbed in my pulse. Blessed Elua, I prayed, let me be strong.

It was a sober meal we passed that night, and much of it due to my own distraction. Ricciardo and Allegra’s daughter Sabrina joined us, along with her husband. In the year we had been gone, their studious, even-tempered daughter had surprised them by falling in love with a poet, a minor son of one of the Hundred Worthy Families. They were wed now, and her belly just beginning to swell with their first-born. I noted the tender pride which with she carried herself and thought on the mysteries of life.

“You feel it?” she asked Imriel, inviting him to lay his hands on her. “It will begin to move, soon.”

His face was a study in solemn awe. “I helped Liliane to deliver a kid, once,” he told her. “It was backward, but it came out all right, because she was there. Brother Selbert always called on her to attend when a goat was birthing.”

“Well.” Sabrina smiled. “Then I know who to call upon, if the midwife has troubles.”

The goat-herd prince. I remembered the stories they had told of him at the Sanctuary of Elua, and the simple-minded acolyte Liliane whom animals trusted, and my heart ached. He should have had that life, should have grown to manhood there in the mountains of Siovale, fit and happy, scrambling over crags.

It should have been so.

But there still would have been Melisande.

We left for the Temple in the morning, travelling by a hired gondola. Ricciardo and Allegra would have gladly given their own vessels, their own guards to attend us, but I preferred it this way. If aught went awry, no taint of it would fall upon them. We travelled the waterways of the mainland and crossed to the islanded city, shivering a little in the cold air. I’d meant to procure new attire, but in the end, some whim made me wear my Jebean garb, Ras Lijasu’s finest gift, with a borrowed cloak flung over it, gold and ivory bangles at both wrists. Let Melisande, I thought, remember how far we had travelled.

It was a bright day despite the chill, and La Serenissima shone brightly under the wintry sun, and brightest of all the Temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea with its gilded domes. We disembarked at the bustling Campo Grande, where no one looked strangely at three D’Angelines in Jebean attire. I listened to the merchants’ cries as they hawked their wares in a babble of competing tongues, understanding more than I ever had before. In front of the Temple, the eunuchs stood impassive with their ceremonial spears. They had chosen to be unmanned, or so it was said. I thought of Rushad and Erich the Skaldi, and wondered how Uru-Azag was faring in the city of Nineveh.

“Well?” Joscelin laid a hand on my shoulder. Imriel stuck close by his side, unmoved by the marvels of the marketplace of the Campo Grande. The shadow of fear was back in his eyes. “Are you ready?”

“You’re sure?” I asked Imri.

He nodded slowly despite his fear, his jaw setting with a familiar stubbornness.

“Yes,” I said to Joscelin. “We’re ready.”

Eighty-Seven

“
IMRIEL
.”

One word, nothing more; half-breathed, a plea, an involuntary prayer. If I could, I would have stopped my ears against the depths of emotion in it-pain, sorrow, remorse and a relief so keen it made my heart ache. I couldn’t bear to look at her.

Imriel stood still and tense within her chambers, his face bloodless beneath its tan. “Mother.”

Melisande glanced swiftly at me, and I had to look at her. “He knows,” I said. “Ysandre’s men told him. One of them lost a brother at Troyes-le-Mont.”

The knowledge was bitter to her. I watched her absorb it like a blow, the smooth eyelids flickering. Why was it that nothing on earth seemed to mar her beauty? Time had only burnished it; grief only deepened it. “I am sorry,” she said to Imriel. “Believe me when I tell you I am so very sorry for what you have endured.”

“Why?” He took a step forward, quivering with rage and tears. “
Why
?”

It was the question, the child’s eternal question, directed at last to one who had much for which to answer. Melisande bore it unflinching. “Oh, Imriel,” she said softly. “So many reasons, and so few. Would you know them all? It would be a long time in the telling.”

“People
died
because of you!” he spat.

“Yes.” Her voice was steady. “And people have died because of Ysandre de la Courcel, and because of Phèdre nó Delaunay, too. Messire Verreuil here has dispatched a good many of them himself. Do you despise them because of it?”

“No.” Imriel sounded uncertain. Joscelin shot a concerned look at me, and I shook my head imperceptibly. “That’s different.”

“It’s different because you know their story, their
side
of the story.” Melisande’s face was impossibly calm. “You don’t know mine. You have asked. Will you hear it?”

We were standing, all of us, at odd angles to one another, awkward and formal. Winter sunlight filled the marbled chambers and a pair of charcoal braziers provided warmth. In the background, the unseen fountain splashed. Imriel turned to me, tears in his eyes.

“I don’t want to know,” he said in Jeb’ez. “I shouldn’t have asked. Do I have to listen?”

“No.” I shook my head. “The choice is yours.”

“Is it true?”

I regarded Melisande, whose gaze had sharpened upon hearing her son address me in an unfamiliar tongue. “Yes,” I said to Imriel in D’Angeline. “It is true. Every story has two sides, even your mother’s.”

Joscelin shifted, but offered no comment.

Imriel stared at his mother.

There was no escaping the resemblance between them, nor ever would be. The shape of his chin, he’d got from his father, and the straight line of his brows. Everything else was hers-the elegant bones of his face, the clear brow, the generous, sensual mouth, the blue-black hair that fell in ripples rather than curls. And the eyes, Elua, the eyes!

“No,” he said finally, his voice harsh. “I know enough. I don’t want to hear more.”

Melisande inclined her head. “It is as you wish, Imriel. Remember it is there.”

He turned back to me. “Can we go, now?”

“Yes,” I said. “If it’s what you want.”

He nodded, his face sick and pleading.

“Then go with Joscelin,” I said gently. “You can make an offering to Asherat-of-the-Sea, who once saved my life. I will stay a moment, and speak with your mother.”

They went, Imriel placing his hand trustingly in Joscelin’s, Joscelin gave me a dour warning glance as they went, but never spoke a word. And Melisande watched them go, and I felt against my skin the bitter intensity of her longing. When they left, she sat down on the couch with a shuddering sigh, passing both hands blindly over her face.

“How is he, truly?” she asked me.

I remained standing. “Whole enough in body, my lady. He has nightmares.”

Melisande lifted her gaze. “Do I want to know why?”

“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t.”

She looked away. “And I am in your debt, twice over. Do I want to know what you endured to find him, Phèdre?”

“No.” I couldn’t rid myself of a terrible compassion. “No, my lady, you do not.”

“The kingdom that died and lives.” Melisande laughed without mirth. “Drujan. Jahanadar, the land of fires. Ptolemy Dikaios feared it, I know that much, and he is a learned man. It lies under the rule of Khebbel-im-Akkad now, had you heard?”

“No.”

“It seems they surrendered peaceably.” She eyed me. “Passing strange, when even the Khalif’s formidable army feared to cross its borders. So, I understand, did Lord Amaury’s men.”

I said nothing.

Melisande sighed. “What of the men who harmed my son?”

“They are dead.”

Her face hardened. “You swear to it?”

“Yes.” I thought of Imriel, checking time and again to make certain that the Kereyit Tatar warlord Jagun was dead; and I thought of Mahrkagir’s heart beating beneath my hand, his brilliant, trusting eyes as I positioned the hairpin against his breast. “I swear to it.”

“You took my son to Jebe-Barkal.”

“Yes.” I crossed over to the low table where a tray of refreshments sat ignored, pouring myself a glass of wine. My mouth was dry with fear. “I did.”

“Why?”

Her gaze was sharper than Kaneka’s hairpins. I kept my face neutral as I sat on the couch opposite her and sipped my wine. “Do you know, he followed us? He pulled one of your own tricks, my lady, trading cloaks with a Tyrean serving-lad. Elua knows what Lord Amaury made of it when he discovered it.”

“You could have sent him back.”

“Shall we play a game?” I asked softly, curling into a corner of the couch. “Yes, my lady, we could have. But it would have cost me a season’s wait, while my friend Hyacinthe, my one true friend, descends slowly into madness. That’s why I went, remember? That’s why I accepted your bargain. And in the end, Imriel too had a part to play.”

“You found what you sought.”

I gazed at Melisande, feeling the Name of God present on the tip of my tongue, sounding in the throb of my blood. It was there, written in the immaculate geometry of her features, in the framework of bone and the flesh that sheathed it, a fearful beauty. “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

Never, never show your hand. It is the first law of barter, of games of skill. And it is not my strength, which lies in
yielding
. It was hard, so hard to wait, to hold her gaze. But I did, and it was Melisande who looked away first. “And now you will give my son to Ysandre,” she murmured.

I took another sip of wine. “That, my lady, depends upon you.”

Her eyes blazed, and the color rose in her cheeks. “What do you mean?”

“I will tell you,” I said, “what I offer. And I will tell you what I require in return. I am willing, my lady, to adopt Imriel into mine own household. And as such …” My voice caught in my throat. “Ah, Melisande! I can’t make him love you. You poisoned that well yourself, long before he was born. But I can promise that he will be left free to make his own choices, and I will not turn him against you, not wittingly. If you wish to correspond with him, I will see your missives delivered. Whether or not he reads them is up to him. One day, he may be willing to hear your story. If it is so, I will let him. I would allow him choice. That is what I offer.”

“Ysandre would never permit it.”

“She would,” I said, “if I claimed it as the boon she owes me. I hold the Companion’s Star, my lady. It was seen and witnessed by the flower of D’Angeline nobility. It is the one thing Ysandre cannot refuse.”

Melisande studied me. “Why?”

I touched the hollow of my bare throat, where once her diamond had lain. “Why did you pay the price of my marque, so long ago? Why did you set me free?”

A distant smile flickered over her features. “To see what you would do.”

“Even so.” I nodded. “I would see what Imriel would do, what he would become, were he free to choose. After what he has endured, it is the least he deserves. But I have my own safety to consider, and that of those who are beholden to me.”

“The Cassiline,” Melisande said dryly.

“Among others,” I said. “Yes, Joscelin first of all, but there are others. Ti-Philippe, my chevalier … you remember him, my lady? His comrades were slain on Prince Benedicte’s orders. And there is Eugenie, my Mistress of the Household, and others, in Montrève … my seneschal, Purnell Friote and his wife Richeline, and others, too many to count. I am fond of your son, Melisande; passing fond. But while you plot against the throne, we are all in danger of being accused of conspiracy. I will not jeopardize them on his behalf. I require safeguards.”

That was the lie, the bluff. I delivered it unblinking, and Melisande’s gaze searched my face. “You said there was a price,” she said at length.

It was all I could do to keep from sighing with relief.

“Two things,” I said, holding up two fingers. “One: You will swear to me, in Kushiel’s name, that you will do naught to jeopardize the lives of Ysandre de la Courcel and her daughters. Two: You will make no attempt to leave this place, but will live out your days in sanctuary, seeking only penitence and not worship.”

Melisande laughed.

I waited.

“Ah, Phèdre!” Leaning forward, she brushed my cheek with her fingertips. Her touch stung like a lash, and I closed my eyes against it. “One,” Melisande said tenderly, her voice redolent of smoke and honey. “Two conditions have you set me, Phèdre. Do you take my son, and raise him without teaching him to hate me more than he does now, I will grant you one. Only one. And the choosing of it is yours.”