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Joscelin sat unmoving, then blinked, once. Something hard surfaced in his expression. “To see Melisande. Why?”

“Because.” I turned the delicate wineglass, watching the candlelight refracted in the fluted rim. It was exquisitely made. Serenissiman work, no doubt, blown on the Isla Vitrari. “What I have to tell her … it is about her son. And it is a matter between her and Kushiel. No one else.”

“Oh, Phèdre.” It was the sorrow in his voice that jerked my gaze back to his. “Do you have such a care for her pride? Even still?”

“It’s not only that. Not pride.” I shook my head. “Joscelin … you saw the children, the children we saved. And they were the lucky ones. I have to tell her that.”

“It is Kushiel’s justice,” he said softly. “You said so yourself.”

“Yes.” I drained my glass and set it back. “Did you think it just, when we found those children in Amílcar?”

He didn’t answer immediately. “It is not for me to judge.”

“Nor I. But I think … I think there is no one in the world who despises Melisande Shahrizai with the same purity of emotion as you.” My voice was shaking, a little. “And I think that when she learns that Kushiel has chosen to punish her by exacting payment for her sins from her son … I think that even Melisande deserves to hear it alone.”

Joscelin’s voice was harsh. “Do you think she would offer you the same compassion?”

To impart suffering without compassion
…

“It doesn’t matter.” I swallowed, hard. “Joscelin, I am not easy in my heart with this. I have served Kushiel all my life, and never questioned his will. I question it now. I do not see that the end justifies the means. And I am made to endure pain, to revel in it, not to inflict it. To deliver this news with you glowering over my shoulder … I don’t think I can do it.”

“I wouldn’t glower,” he said automatically, then sighed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eye-sockets. “All right. All right, all right. Do as you must, and I will wait in the Temple proper.” Dropping his hands, he looked at me with slightly bloodshot eyes. “Will it suffice?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.” He shook his head. “I think your compassion is wasted on Melisande.”

Thence the need for an
anguissette
to balance the scales
.

“I know,” I said miserably. “And mayhap you are right. But I can only act according to the dictates of my nature, not hers.”

“Love as thou wilt,” said Joscelin, and sighed again.

In the morning we went to the Temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea.

Poets and philosophers alike have written of the sense of strangeness that one encounters from time to time of a moment lived before; a place, a person, a chance word, that triggers something in one’s memory that says, yes, I remember, that is how it was, that is exactly how it was. So I have read, but I have never encountered such a thing save that there was reason for it. I felt it that day. I had been here before, in this city built on water, beneath the great golden domes of the Temple. Full many a time had I met the blank stare of the great effigy of Asherat, towering vast and stony above the altar, carved waves surging at her feet.

I brought honeycakes, the first time. The second, I usurped her voice.

It was a bargain we had struck, the goddess and I.

And I had come with Ysandre, who had the right to order me because she was my Queen; and I had come, last of all, with Joscelin, as I came now, amid the priestesses of the Elect, with their whispering blue robes and the veils of silver net that hid their faces, glass beads shimmering like wire-strung tears, bare feet moving soundlessly over the floor.

“I will wait,” Joscelin said to me, making a formal Cassiline bow, his hands clenched into fists beneath the steel mesh gauntlets of his vambraces. Amid the murmurous presence of the priestesses, the fierce soft pride of the Temple eunuchs with their ceremonial spears, he seemed an alien thing, hard-edged and masculine.

“I will return,” I promised. He thought me a fool; I know he thought me a fool for my compassion. Was I? I didn’t know. I followed the Elect priestess down the winding corridors, wondering.
What do you owe Melisande, that you must deliver this news yourself
? So Ysandre had asked me, and rightfully so. She was my liege and my sovereign, Ysandre de la Courcel; she had believed, when any other would have doubted. She had raised me up and given me every honor, given me the Companion’s Star to wear at my breast, called me her near-cousin. When I thought of courage, when I thought of loyalty, it wore Ysandre’s face as I had seen it on our return from La Serenissima, when she had parted the troops of Percy de Somerville’s army and ridden without faltering to the very walls of the City of Elua.

And when I thought of love, it wore Joscelin’s face.

Phèdre
!

But there was Melisande’s voice in my memory too, unstrung with shock, her beautiful eyes wide with fear after I had cracked open my skull against my cell in La Dolorosa. I had seen it, as I slumped to the floor.

A kiss, one kiss. It took all that I had to resist it.

She had only touched me once, since. And that with the point of a dagger. Joscelin’s dagger. I’d have let her kill me, if she could. She couldn’t.

It was the same, all the same. The gilt-hinged door, the priestess of the Elect giving the double knock and announcing my name in the soft, slurring Caerdicci dialect they use in that city. It was the same room, filled with slanting sunlight and the soft splashing of an unseen fountain. The sound of the door closing, leaving us alone, was the same. Even the fragrance was the same; a little deeper, in summer, of water and sun-warmed marble and flowering shrubs, and the scent, the faint, musky spice I would have known anywhere, could have picked blindfolded out of a crowd, the unique fragrance of Melisande, who stood waiting.

And the wave, the wave of emotion was the same, hatred and love and desire, cracking my heart to bits and grinding the fragments. Only this time, I saw the fear in her eyes. And this time, I knelt.

Twenty-Eight

“TELL ME.”

Melisande’s eyes closed, lids dusky with blue veins, shuttered against the pain. I have done such a thing myself. I have seen it in others. I had never seen it in Melisande. I had been right to come alone. Her lashes curled like ebony wave-crests. I am D’Angeline. I cannot fail to notice such things.

“There was,” I said, searching for words, “no conspiracy.”

Her eyes opened. “What, then?”

I told her.

What I had expected, I cannot say. She bore it; she bore it well. I do not think anyone who knew her less than I-and who that may be, I do not know-would have seen her flinch, would have seen the awful comprehension that filled the deep-blue wells of her eyes. It struck her hard. Any mortal enemy she could have outwitted, outplotted. Not this. Not random chance, and the shadow of Kushiel’s hand overhanging it.

“He is alive?” It was the first thing she said, the first she was able to say, forced between clenched teeth.

“I believe him to be so.” The marble floor was hard beneath my knees, the discomfort of it lending me focus. “The Menekhetan saw his value. He paid in hard coin. By that token, I believe Imriel lives.”

Melisande took a step, two steps. One hand reached out, entangled in my hair, wrenching my head upright. My neck straining, I stared upward, meeting her blazing eyes. I felt my breath shallow in my lungs, my heart beating fast and hard. I should have withdrawn from her, pulled away. To save my life, I couldn’t do it. She had been my patron, once; the only one to whom I ever wholly surrendered. In a way I shuddered to acknowledge, Melisande’s very touch was imprinted on my soul, and I felt her pain as my own. “You are sure?” she asked softly, searching my face. “You are very, very sure of this tale, Phèdre nó Delaunay?”

“The Carthaginians were put to torture,” I whispered. “My lady, I watched it. I asked the questions myself. I’m sorry. But I am very, very sure.”

She let me go and turned away. Bereft of her grip, I wavered on my knees. I gazed at her back, heard her murmur a single word. “Kushiel.”

“Yes.” My voice was hoarse, my throat thick with desire and compassion.

Melisande’s head bowed. Whatever else one may say of her, she never lacked for courage. I knelt in silence, knowing what she knew. I have lived through the
thetalos
in the cavern of the Temenos. I know what it is to confront blood-guilt. Never for a child of my birth. That I will never know.

“They will pay.” Her voice was flat, her hands fisted at her sides. “The Carthaginians, the ones who began it… they are dead men.”

“My lady.” I cleared my throat, found my voice. “It is done. Their heads were adorning spikes in the Plaza del Rey ere we left Amílcar.”

“So.” Her shoulders slumped; only a fraction. It was enough. I saw. Straightening, she crossed the room and opened the coffer, the same one that had held the Jebean scroll. “I promised you the name of a guide.”

I rose to accept it, unfolding in the single, elegant motion I was taught in the Night Court. Our fingers brushed as she handed me a scrap of vellum. I glanced down to see an unfamiliar name, an address.

“He hires out to guide caravans from Menekhet to Jebe-Barkal,” Melisande said without inflection. “I am assured that he knows where to find the descendents of Saba. I cannot swear it is true, but my information is good. There is only so much I can do, here.”

“Thank you.” The words sounded stupid. I felt stupid. She gave a bitter smile.

“You have done what I asked, Phèdre nó Delaunay. I was not wrong to choose you.” Her eyes searched my face again. “Tell me about the Queen’s delegation to Iskandria.”

I told her, and watched her pace, watched life return, her mind working as the first shock diminished, calculations moving behind her features. And Elua help me, but I loved her for it, a little bit. Even so …

“Melisande.”

It stopped her. She turned to look at me.

I shook my head. “You cannot do it. I know how loosely this prison holds you; believe me, I know. It gives me nightmares. If you go to Iskandria, if you leave this place …” I paused. “I will know it. I am here against my Queen’s wishes, against everyone’s wishes. There’s a death-sentence on your head, Melisande, should you abandon Asherat’s protection. And if you do, I will be honor-bound to do what I may to see you thwarted.”

“He is my
son
!” she spat, features contorting.

“I know.” Although my voice shook, I stood my ground. “And I am Kushiel’s Chosen, and in liege to Ysandre de la Courcel. I will go to Lord Amaury Trente, in Iskandria; I will go to Pharaoh, if I need. What can you do, now, that they cannot? Your resources are spread thin, and they will be spread thinner if you must needs evade capture. We have played this game before, my lady. Do you wish to set yourself against me?”

Melisande flung back her head, her bright, restless gaze raking the walls of her salon. Blessed Elua, even in despair she was splendid! I had not seen, until then, that it was a prison. I saw it, then, the subtle, gilded bars that confined her. She shuddered and grew still, contained. “You break my
heart
, Phèdre.”

“Yes.” A strange, dispassionate sense of calm overtook me. For once, at last, we stood upon even ground. I gazed at her, thinking on it. “You broke mine a long time ago, my lady.”

“Kushiel’s Dart.” She came near and laid her hand against my face. “Naamah’s Servant.” Her touch was cool, her expression unreadable. “In the beginning, I thought you were a toy, no more; a dangerous plaything. I daresay even Anafiel knew no different, though he taught you well enough. Later … later, I knew better. A challenge, mayhap; a gauntlet cast down by the gods.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Now?” Something stirred in the depths of Melisande’s eyes, behind her face, beauty honed by grief, a vengeful cruelty. Our history was written there in all its betrayal and hatred and violent ecstasy. Dispassion shattered, a momentary thing, transitory and fragile. Her voice lowered, honey-sweet; how had I forgotten its power? “Now.” My blood leapt in answer and my cheek blossomed with heat where she touched me. A familiar ache squeezed my heart, beat like a pulse between my thighs. I felt my lids grow heavy, my lips part. To feel it again, the heat of her, the press of her body, her breasts against mine, that cruel, expert touch; ah, Elua! I fought to keep from swaying forward. Melisande took her hand away. “Now, I don’t know, Phèdre.”

This time, her withdrawal hit me like a void; I nearly staggered against it, yearning toward her, the ache in my heart keening like a winter wind. I had done her a kindness, leaving Joscelin behind. She did me a kindness now and turned away, speaking over her shoulder.

“I never wanted a conscience. And yet it seems our lord Kushiel has seen fit to give me what I lacked at birth. If I have such a thing, it is embodied in you, Phèdre.” Melisande turned back, her features composed, hands folded in her sleeves. “I have heard tell of Lord Amaury Trente. A capable man, it is said, and loyal to the Queen, but not, I think, a clever one.”

“Clever enough,” I replied unthinking.

One corner of her mouth curled. “He would have gone to the Duke of Milazza to raise an army if Ysandre had let him. It was you who suggested the Unforgiven, was it not? I heard they knelt to you.”

It was true enough that I could not deny it. If Amaury Trente had had his way ten years ago, we would have led a foreign army onto D’Angeline soil. The Unforgiven … yes. It had been my idea. And they had knelt. I shrugged with a stoicism I did not feel. “They gave fealty in Kushiel’s name. They have much for which to atone.”

“Enough that the Royal Army let them pass unchallenged.” Melisande’s face was still and calm, a cameo carved of ivory. “You threw coins,” she said. Her brows quirked, a distant note of bemusement in her voice. “Coins.”

We had; silver coins, bearing the profile of Ysandre de la Courcel, clean and fresh-minted. They’d arched in showers from the slings of Amaury Trente’s men, fallen like silver rain. I remembered the soldiers’ perplexed faces, staring, glancing from the unprecedented bounty grasped in sword-calloused hand to the woman who parted their ranks, her face in calm profile, riding inexorably toward the walls of the City of Elua. “Yes,” I said softly. “We threw coins.”