Kushiel's Scion

Page 99

We spoke of the Duke of Valpetra, and the mortal demons of avarice, ambition, and vengeance that may possess men, as destructive as any supernatural force. We spoke, in hushed Eiran, of Bernadette de Trevalion and the devastating madness that lay seeking to wreak retribution for past sins in innocent blood, passing down hatred from generation to generation. And when we had done speaking of the past, we spoke of the future.
"Have you decided what you'll do about it?" Eamonn asked. "Will you accuse her?"
"No," I said slowly. "No, I think not."
"It's a hard thing, choosing to be the one to put an end to a blood feud." He picked up his whetstone. "Worth doing, though. So you'll wed Dorelei mab Breidaia, then?"
"In the late spring." I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, gazing at the campfire and trying to remember what she looked like. Dark eyes, Cruithne eyes. Sidonie's face surfaced in my memory. I pushed it away. "Will you come?"
"Mayhap." Eamonn ran the whetstone over his sword, head bowed and intent. His coppery hair spilled over the bandage that still bound his wound, glinting in the firelight. "It depends."
"On Brigitta?" I asked.
He nodded. "She may be awaiting me in Tiberium, or she may already be on her way to Skaldia. I don't know. But I will find her. And if I can come, I will."
I lay back on my bedroll, folding my arms beneath my head. "How did you come to conceive this great love?"
In truth, there wasn't much to tell; or at least little I didn't know. He'd known her for months before I arrived in Tiberium and hadn't bothered to court her. It had begun as a whim, spun out of idle intrigue after the day when they'd argued over Waldemar Selig in one of Master Piero's classes. But once it had begun, he found himself well and truly hooked. He began each day yearning to see her, ended each day hating to part from her. While I had been immersed in my affair with Claudia, keeping my secrets, they had spent endless hours together.
"We're a lot alike," he said.
I thought about Brigitta's scowl and ill-temper. "You're nothing alike, Eamonn."
He shot me an unreadable glance. "You don't know her, Imri. Not really."
"So tell me," I said.
The litany of Brigitta's praises was a lengthy one. He loved her fearlessness, her fierce pride, her determined independence. He saw through all the prickly defenses in which she cloaked her true nature, which shone forth to his eyes like a bright flame. She made him want to be a better man. Together, the two of them formed a greater whole.
I listened to his endless litany, to the rapt tone of his voice. And I listened to the hidden meaning, too. There were sides to Eamonn I didn't know; the secret self that lay beneath his cheerful exterior. Although we were as close as brothers and I had risked my life to save his, Brigitta had touched him in a way I never could. It lay beyond friendship.
I wondered what it was like.
Watching the stars, I tried to imagine it. What would it be like to love a woman so? I knew what it was to want. I'd wanted Claudia so badly it was like a fever under my skin. And there were other desires, too; deeper and darker than sheer carnal yearning. I had not forgotten Valerian House. I had known tenderness, too; the healing gift of Emmeline of Balm House. I had even yearned to share it with Helena Correggio. And I knew the compulsive allure of infatuation, ill-conceived and dangerous, complete with attendant jealousy, in the form of my cool and haughty royal cousin, Sidonie.
But love…
There was Alais, of course. The thought of her made me smile. She was the one person in my life I loved with a pure and uncomplicated simplicity. Even during her irritable adolescence, her spirit brought me joy. But that was different. There was no desire there, no hidden undercurrent.
I couldn't imagine all of those things combined into one woman.
And if they could be, it wasn't Dorelei mab Breidaia.
Well and so, I thought. I have made my choice, and I should be content that I'm alive to see it through. And so I listened to Eamonn dream aloud about his love, pushing away my envy and knowing that I would never feel as he did. Perhaps it was just as well. There were women in my life who cast long shadows.
My mother, wrapped in a tissue of myth and lies.
Phèdre.
Better to love a man, mayhap. Half-drowsing, I thought about Lucius' kiss and the unexpected desire it had evoked. I was glad he'd done it. It pitted a spark of brightness against the black tide of horror that was Daršanga. And I had come to love him.
You will find it and lose it, again and again.
Then I thought of Claudia Fulvia in her bedchamber ablaze with candlelight, kneeling on the bed and gazing at me over her shoulder, her heavy breasts swaying. And I knew it wasn't the same. I wanted that. I wanted carnal desire so intense it cleaved my tongue to the roof of my mouth, opened a pit beneath my feet. But I wanted aching tenderness and purity, too.
I wanted it all.
The dark mirror and the bright.
Laughing softly at myself, I drifted into sleep with Eamonn's voice still droning musically above me. I slept, and for the first time since the siege, dreamed of somewhat other than blood and war.
On the morrow, we reached Tiberium.
I had first entered the city as Imriel nó Montrève, impoverished gentleman scholar. This time, I entered it as Imriel de la Courcel, Prince of Terre d'Ange. There was no point in trying to hide it. All of Tiberium knew that a company had been dispatched to Lucca at the behest of the D'Angeline ambassadress. I'd learned from Quentin LeClerc that the decision had been made with unprecedented speed. The princeps had made his will explicit; the Senate had voted unanimously to endorse it. The consul of the citizen assembly had lodged a protest, and withdrawn it within a day.
So we entered with fanfare, and the people of Tiberium gawked at our company. A few of the bolder ones shouted out for news. One of LeClerc's men—Romuald, who'd warned me about the dam—called back the news of victory in Lucca.
There were cheers then. And the Tiberian citizens stared at Eamonn and me, nudging one another. They gazed with open curiosity at Gilot's casket, carried in the open cart. It was very fine, made of polished walnut and draped with a banner bearing the lily-and-stars insignia of Blessed Elua and his Companions. "Who died?" someone called.
"A hero!" I raised my voice. "A hero of Terre d'Ange." Beside me, Eamonn nodded.
We made our way to the embassy. A crowd followed us, many of them reaching out to touch the hem of Gilot's banner as the cart passed them. Tiberians are very fond of dead heroes, even D'Angeline ones. I clung to the memory of Gilot staring gape-mouthed around him on the quai in Ostia, and blinked back tears. The Bastard pranced and stomped, glaring around him with white-ringed eyes, forcing the onlookers to keep a wary distance.
At the embassy gates, the guards turned them back and we passed into relative quietness. Lady Denise Fleurais was awaiting us in the courtyard. Since it was a formal occasion, she bowed low in greeting. "Your highness," she murmured. "Prince Eamonn. Be welcome." We were made welcome; extravagantly welcome. Although the Lady Denise, with her shrewd diplomat's instinct, took care not to overwhelm us, the sudden immersion in luxury made for a stark contrast with the lives we'd been leading. Every amenity of the embassy was laid at our disposal. Our mounts were whisked away to the stables, Gilot's casket with carried with careful honor into a stateroom where it would reside until returning home.
The palazzo's private baths were cleared for our usage. Barbers and masseurs were sent to attend us in the unctuarium. While we soaked and luxuriated, Lady Denise's couturier measured our discarded clothing and made hurried alterations to near-finished garments intended for other clients. A leather-worker undertook to replace the cracked heels and worn soles of our boots. By the evening, we had been scoured and scrubbed, oiled and rubbed and combed, and in Eamonn's case, shaved. We were clad in clean, unworn attire, the fabric soft against our skin. Our newly resoled boots shone with polishing.
It felt good.
And it felt strange.
I sat down at Denise Fleurais' table in the small salon where we had dined before. The table was draped in white linen so pure it was dazzling in the candlelight. All the accoutrements on the table gleamed with polishing. I rested my fingertips on the edge of the table, feeling the fine weave of the cloth, and gazed quizzically at the backs of my hands. They were clean and familiar again. My hands, well-shaped and sinewy. The knuckles were no longer swollen, and only a few deep nicks remained. The squarish nails had been trimmed and buffed. I'd once heard Phèdre remark in an unguarded moment that I had my mother's hands.
I turned them over. They were still callused, a ridge of thick skin along the base of my fingers. I stared at the whorls inscribed there.
"Are you all right?" Denise Fleurais asked gently.
"Yes." I hid my hands beneath the table. "I'm fine."
"Good," Eamonn remarked. "I'm famished."
There was an abundance of food. I hadn't reckoned myself as famished as Eamonn, but as soon as the soup course arrived, I found my appetite. For what seemed like the better part of an hour, we ate our way steadily through course after course—sorrel soup, fish in a galantine sauce, goose stuffed with dates and almonds, all washed down with glass upon glass of good Namarrese wine. By the time we finished with custard tarts in a flaky pastry, my belly was groaning.
Lady Denise watched us with amused indulgence. Although she had no children of her own, she was familiar with the appetites of young men. Picking at her own plate, she drew the story of the siege from us. Eamonn told most of it, in between chewing vigorously and swallowing enormous bites of food.
When it came to the mundus manes and Gallus Tadius, her expression turned somber. She didn't question it, though; not even the portal opening. I supposed she had seen things in Menekhet that had inured her to doubt. A Drujani bone-priest, for instance.
"I'm sorry," she said when Eamonn had done. "If I had known…"
I wiped my mouth with an immaculately clean linen napkin. "How did you know, my lady? Quentin LeClerc said there was a message."
"Yes." She drew a much-folded scrap of vellum from a purse at her girdle and handed it to me. "This."
I unfolded it. The parchment had been used before and scraped clean. It was thin and a little greasy. It bore only a few words written in Caerdicci, the ink blurred and difficult to read by candlelight. Lucca is under attack. I fingered the ragged edges. "Who brought it?"
She shook her head. "He didn't give a name. The guard at the gate said he looked like a peasant. He took the message and turned him away."
I raised my brows. "And yet you believed."
"I didn't dare do otherwise. Better to believe in error and be made a fool than risk the alternative." Denise Fleurais smiled briefly. "The Queen would have my head if I'd let harm come to you when I could have averted it, and I daresay I'd rather answer to her than Phèdre." Her expression turned somber again. "I thought a small delegation would suffice, since Lucca's attackers would have no reason to quarrel with Terre d'Ange. I was wrong."
"You couldn't have known. Obviously, whoever sent this had no idea the Duke of Valpetra wanted vengeance on me. I didn't know it myself." I ran the ball of my thumb over the parchment, wondering if it contained a hidden message. I gave her what I hoped was a disarming smile. "May I keep this?"
"Yes, of course."
There was no hesitation, no trace of guile. I tucked the scrap away. "Thank you, my lady. For this and for securing Tiberium's aid. You must have been most persuasive."
"Ah, well." With a self-deprecating gesture, Lady Denise spread her hands. "Queen Ysandre may be displeased with me after all once she learns what I had to promise the princeps. It will cost dearly. But the matter seemed urgent, and Deccus Fulvius was most helpful in securing the Senate's support."
"He's a good man," Eamonn offered.
She nodded. "Yes, he is. He has a message for you, too, Prince Eamonn; or at least his wife does." A hint of amusement returned to her voice. "From a young Skaldi woman? It seems she wished it held it in safekeeping and out of D'Angeline hands."
"Brigitta!" His face kindled, then fell. "She's gone, then."
"Is there word from Terre d'Ange?" I asked.
"Not current, no." She turned to me, sympathy in her gaze. "There are two letters that arrived while you were gone, but they would have been sent some weeks ago. I'll have the chamberlain bring them to you in your chamber. There hasn't been time since the news from Lucca arrived."
I remembered the letter I'd written there. "Was my missive sent?"
"Yes." She was quiet for a moment. "Prince Imriel, I dared not send word until I knew you were well. I will send it on the morrow, if you wish, but I suspect you will be your own best message. There is a ship standing by at Ostia, ready to transport you."
Ah, Elua! I'd nearly forgotten. They must be going mad there, wondering if I was dead or alive. I should leave; tonight, tomorrow at the latest. Already, it was growing late in the season to make the passage. But there were a few things I needed to do ere I left Tiberium. I rubbed my face with the heels of my hands and sighed.
"Give me a day," I said.
Lady Denise inclined her head. "Of course."
Chapter Sixty-Six
As matters transpired, I couldn't have departed on the morrow. By dawn, there was a summons awaiting us. The princeps of Tiberium had received word of our return, and we were bidden to an audience with him.