Kushiel’s Dart

Chapter Ninety-Six

It is one thing to visit a country estate, it is another to inherit one. Even with the very capable aid Cecilie had bequeathed me, it took the better part of a year to settle into the rhythms of Montrève, to gain the trust and goodwill of its folk, who were understandably perplexed at how a Siovalese holding had passed into the possession of a City-bred Servant of Naamah.

Montrève itself was beautiful, a green jewel set in the low mountains. To Joscelin, born in Siovale, it was nearly a homecoming. We rode the length and breadth of it together, and fell in love with its simple charm, its rugged hills and green valleys, the unexpected pleasure of a meadow. It is sheep country, there, and it transpired that I was rich in flocks.

The manor-house itself was all quaint elegance, with touches of Eisandine luxury; Delaunay’s mother, I guessed. It had small, brilliant gardens, rambling with colorful flowers for three-quarters of the year, grown wild for lack of tending. Richeline Friote made these her especial care.

And there was a library, where Anafiel Delaunay had spent his boyhood study, immersed in the Siovalese love of learning. I found his name one day, scratched with a knife-point into the wooden surface of a reading table, and had to fight back tears.

Joscelin’s love of the land, my love for Delaunay; these things, I think, along with the good nature of the Friotes and the bold, cheerful manner of my three Chevaliers, won over the folk of Montrève. Once we were at last ensconced, I began to write letters, and Phèdre’s Boys leapt at the chance to play courier, crossing the realm with correspondence. I wrote to Ysandre, with gratitude, to Cecilie Laveau-Perrin and Thelesis de Mornay, with small tales of our doings, to Quintilius Rousse and Gaspar Trevalion, with greetings; and always, with a plea for news. I wrote even to Maestro Gonzago de Escabares, in care of the University of Tiberium, and Remy was gone months on that adventure.

And I bought books, and in L’Arene, Ti-Philippe found Taavi and Danele, owners of a prosperous tailor’s shop in the Yeshuite quarter.

That spring Joscelin and I rode to visit them, and held a happy reunion. Impossible to believe that scarcely a year ago we had met on the road, where they had saved our lives. The girls had grown taller, and our Skaldi pony, still with them, had grown fatter. If they would still accept no reward, I repaid them as best I was able, with a sizeable commission for livery. The insignia of Montrève was a four-quartered shield, with a crescent moon upper right and a mountain crag lower left. That was ever the standard we flew at the manor, but for Phèdre’s Boys, I added my own devices: Delaunay’s sheaf of grain, and the sign of Kushiel’s Dart.

We returned from L’Arene the richer in renewed friendships, and with one addition: Seth ben Yavin, a young Yeshuite scholar who stammered and turned red in my presence, but was nonetheless doggedly persistent in his teaching.

All that spring and well into summer I studied with him, and the days slid by like water. Sometimes Joscelin joined us, but not always; the lure of the mountains was stronger, and he would rather, he declared, learn it from me. As I gained some small proficiency, Seth began to forget I was an anguissette and sometime Servant of Naamah, and grew more at ease in my company, arguing and debating happily.

It was good to have my mind challenged and occupied, for it kept me from restlessness. We had not spoken of that, of what would happen when Kushiel’s Dart began to prick. I was an anguissette; it would. But for now, even I had had a sufficiency of pain.

When deep summer began to give way to early fall, Seth begged leave to depart, having family duties to resume. He left with Fortun to accompany him, a generous purse of his own, and another to accompany a list of books and codices he felt I might need, and for which he promised to search. I had a long way to go in my studies, but I knew enough to begin my quest.

The leaves were beginning to turn gold when Gonzago de Escabares arrived.

He came unannounced, with a lone apprentice tending him, two horses and a well-laden mule between them; a little greyer and stouter, but otherwise unchanged. I threw myself on him with a cry of joy, and he laughed.

"Ah, little one! You’ll give an old man the fits. Come, I’m near starved to the bone. Didn’t my Antinous teach you aught about hospitality?"

I led him into the manor, talking all the while, I am sure, while Joscelin looked on with polite bewilderment and ordered their horses stabled, and the mule unpacked.

Seth ben Yavin had been a paid tutor; Maestro Gonzago de Escabares was my first genuine guest. In an unexpected state of nervousness, I nearly drove the household staff mad with half-brained requests, until Richeline calmly and firmly ordered me to attend to my guest and leave the arrangements to her.

Over wine, which the Maestro quaffed heartily, and an array of cheeses and sweetmeats, which also met a quick end, I learned that he had been traveling in the northern city-states of Caerdicca Unitas, learning of the upheaval along the Skaldic border. An old colleague of his in Tiberium had received my letter, and he decided to pay a visit, bringing an apprentice who wished to learn of de Escabares' method of studying the world.

It had been his plan to return home to Aragonia and begin drafting his memoirs, but upon receiving my letter, he had determined to come first to Montrève, which lay nearly on his way.

"I would have sent word, my dear, but I would have outpaced it," he said, eyes twinkling. "We traveled like the wind, did we not, Camilo?"

His apprentice coughed and hid a smile, murmuring something about a rather slow breeze.

I laughed and patted Gonzago’s hand. "I’m just glad you’re here, Maestro."

After they had retired and rested for a time, we dined, a meal of sufficient rustic splendor that even the Maestro was content. For my part, I ate little, overwhelmed with grateful pride that such hospitality was mine to offer. I knew full well all credit was due to the household of Montrève, and not me; but they had done it on my behalf, investing their pride in mine, and I was grateful.

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 Mendicant’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 Montrève to me, would he carry this to me, for the Comtesse de Montrève."

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. "Phèdre, 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. "Phèdre?" 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. Gaspar Trevalion, Percy de Somerville, 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 Trevalion’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 Montrève, 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.

Montrève.

There was Montrève, 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 exquisitely 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.

"Phèdre?" 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."