I saw, as we sparred, that Joscelin was careful on offense, taking only the obvious openings I afforded him, pressing them hard enough to make me aware of my errors, but gently enough that he did not injure me unwitting. Wooden or no, our practice-swords carried a considerable sting at best; at worst, they could crack heads.
And I saw, too, what Joscelin did not realize. Mindful as he was, waiting for my attack, he was slower to parry on his left. Although his broken arm had long since knitted, his speed lagged.
Sweat dripped from my brow into my eyes; impatiently, I shook my head. I had forgotten Phèdre in her study, reading my mother's letters. I had forgotten that I didn't want to spar. I circled, paying heed to my footwork on the slate tiles of the courtyard, waiting for a chance.
When it came, I feigned an error, leaving myself open. Joscelin moved to press me. I took a quick step backward, feinted left, and spun. He parried and missed, and I came around hard, completing the circuit of my inner sphere and leveling a hard blow with the edge of my wooden blade against his upper left arm. He winced, left hand going numb, losing its grip on the hilt. His sword, wielded in his right hand, swept up and past my guard, the wooden tip coming to rest beneath my chin.
Feeling the point dent my skin, I laughed. It was the first time I'd ever breached his guard to provoke an unintended attack.
"Very clever." Joscelin smiled, lowering his blade. "You'd have had my arm off."
"Well, you'd have had my head," I replied. "Did I hurt you?"
"Gave me a bruise to remember," he said, flexing his hand and shaking off the stinging residue of pain. "That will teach me to be soft on you."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Joscelin shook his head. "It means you're learning and improving. Anything that might save your life one day is worth a thousand bruises." He grinned. "Which is likely what my future holds. You've got a lot of promise. You're quick, and you think."
I felt my face flush with pride at the praise. "Thank you."
Joscelin regarded me with affection. "Feeling better?"
To my surprise, I realized I was. I was hot and tired and sweaty, but the lump of tension that had sat heavy in my belly since the Queen's Courier had delivered her missive had grown smaller. "Yes," I admitted. "A bit."
"Good." He nodded toward the manor. "Let's go wash up."
Inside, I scrubbed down at the washbasin in my room, stripping off my shirt and plunging my whole head in the cool water. It felt good. Most of my clothing had already been packed for travel, but I rummaged in the clothes-press and found a clean, loose shirt of unbleached cotton, well worn and much mended. It was one I wore for mucking about in the kennels with Charles. I'd not worn it yet this summer, and I was pleased to find that the sleeves were inches too short.
Thus fortified, clean and dripping, I went to find Phèdre.
The door to her study was open, but I paused before speaking. She was seated at her desk, gazing at nothing, her chin propped in her hand. A pile of unsealed letters sat beside an open coffer on the desk before her, neatly refolded.
"Phèdre?" I asked hesitantly.
She lifted her head. "Come in, love."
I entered and pulled a chair over to sit across from her. "Was there… anything?"
"No." Her voice was gentle. "Nothing to hint at her plans. Nothing to suggest you might have known, or might know now."
"Oh," I said. "Good."
Phèdre gazed steadily at me. "Do you want them?"
I shrank under her gaze. It was hard to hold, sometimes. Lypiphera, one of the Hellenes in the zenana called her; pain-bearer. She looked weary, her eyelids shadowed and bruised. I wondered whose pain she bore today and suspected, with an uncomfortable certitude, that it was my mother's. "No," I said. "I don't… no." Ducking my head, I fidgeted with a loose thread on my too-short sleeve. "What does she say?"
"A lot." A wry note crept into her voice, coaxing a reluctant smile from me. "Imri, it's not for me to say. Her words were written for you, and if you ever wish to understand your mother better, you'll read them." She was silent for a moment, then added, "If you're wondering if she attempts to justify her deeds, no, she doesn't. She does say that there is much she would have done differently, had she known what would happen to you."
I looked up at her. "But that wasn't her fault."
It was true, though I was surprised to hear the words come from my mouth. My mother had me hidden away in the Sanctuary of Elua, yes, while all of Terre d'Ange searched for me. That was her doing, and there was a deep plan behind it that would have taken years to come to fruition. Still, it was no fault of hers that I was kidnapped by Carthaginian slave-traders and sold into hell. I was taken at random. That, not even my mother Melisande could have foreseen.
"No." Phèdre smiled. "It wasn't." With deft motions, she straightened the stack of letters and returned them to the coffer. "They'll be here for you."
"Thank you," I said, meaning for reading them. Meaning for many things.
"You're welcome." She closed the lid, locking the coffer with a tiny key. With my mother's presence banished, the air within the study seemed to grow easier to breathe. Phèdre pushed her chair back, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear with the sort of absentminded grace that was as deeply ingrained in her as Joscelin's Cassiline reflexes were in him. "We should go," she said. "Richeline has everything in readiness, and I'd like to put a few hours of road behind us before sunset."
Obliging, I stood. "I'm ready."
"Good." Phèdre glanced at me, then glanced again, her brows rising. "Imriel nó Montrève, what in the name of Blessed Elua are you wearing?"
I grinned at her, plucking at my shirt-front. "What, this? It's only for travel."
Phèdre shook her head, but the shadow had gone from her eyes, and I was happy to see it. "Sometimes," she mused, "I think Joscelin Verreuil is a bad influence on you."
"I'll change," I promised.
Coming around the desk, Phèdre gave me one of her mercurial smiles; the rare ones, the ones that came from the deep and mysterious reserves of her being, where her own peculiar sense of humor made the unbearable bearable. "Not too much, I hope," she said lightly, dropping a kiss on my cheek. "I'm rather fond of you as you are, love."
"No," I whispered. "Not too much."
Chapter Three
We were on the road in short order. I daresay few households in the D'Angeline peerage were capable of mobilizing as quickly as Montrève's. For all that she enjoyed her luxuries—and she did—Phèdre was able to forego them on a moment's notice.
As for the rest of us, we thrived on it.
No one entered the service of Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève out of a craving for security and a staid lifestyle. Ti-Philippe, who had been with her the longest, pledged his loyalty after the battle of Troyes-le-Mont. There were three of them, then—Phèdre's Boys, they called themselves. I never knew the others, Remy and Fortun. They died in La Serenissima, where I was born, killed on my father's orders.
But the others I knew. Like Gilot, they were a high-spirited lot, men who sought service with the Comtesse de Montrève because they had heard the stories and the poems. Some of them, I think, were hoping to bask in the glory of further adventure. And if they were disappointed that it was not forthcoming, still, life in our household was never dull.
It would have been a pleasant journey, were it not for the purpose. The weather was hot and dry, but the breeze of our passage rendered it comfortable. I would have been content to have it last forever. The City of Elua was a buzzing beehive of gossip, and I had little desire to confront the results of my infamous mother's latest piece of infamy.
"You could always run away and join the Tsingani," Gilot offered helpfully, sensing my mood. "Think of the horses!"
"I wouldn't mind," I said, remembering the Salmon. "Want to come with me?"
"Why not? I've a fancy to see the world." He laughed, then glanced uncertainly at me. "You are jesting, I hope. Joscelin would skin me alive."
"Yes." I shuddered. "And no jests about skinning, please."
"Oh." He fell silent, chastened. "Right."
It wasn't Gilot's fault. He was only four years older than me. It was only a story to him; something that had happened when he was still clinging to his mother's skirts. But I, who had not yet been born at the time, had seen too much horror not to feel it deeply. I was glad, actually, that Gilot forgot at times—that he told me the stories others feared I couldn't bear to hear. I would rather know, always. Still, there were times when I felt myself the older of the two of us.
Travelling light, we made good time and came within sight of the white walls of the City of Elua within several days, arriving in the late morning. Despite the circumstances, I could see Phèdre's mood lighten. Unlike the rest of us, she was City-bred to the bone, and it was where she was most at home.
To be sure, the City of Elua returned the sentiment.
The City Guard at the Southern Gate hailed her with a clamorous salute, shouting and whistling. One of them importuned a flower-seller within the walls, and lavender sprigs came showering down from the guard towers as we passed through the gate. The news of my mother's disappearance, I thought, must not yet have been released. They wouldn't greet us so if it had been. I watched Phèdre's eyes sparkle as she caught a sprig of lavender and tossed it back with a blown kiss; watched the guardsmen scramble for it, and Joscelin's amused, long-suffering patience.
I thought of the shadow descending over that happiness, and I hated it.
We made our way to the townhouse, where Eugenie, Phèdre's Mistress of the Household in the City of Elua, was expecting us. After greeting Phèdre and Joscelin, she turned her prodigious affections on me.
"Sweet boy!" she cried, enfolding me in her considerable embrace. "Name of Elua, I swear you've grown a handspan since you left!"
I smiled, hugging her unreservedly in return. I still remembered my first encounter with her. To this day, she is the only person I have ever seen who dared take Joscelin by the shoulders and shake him. But she dealt gently with me for a long time, until I grew fond enough to suffer her affection gladly. "It's only been a couple of months, Eugenie."
"Ah, well." She patted my cheek. "'Tis ever too long."
Although we had ridden hard and fast to arrive within mere days of receiving the courier's message, the Queens summons awaited us. Phèdre dispatched a messenger to the Palace with word of our arrival, and by the time we had changed from our road-dusty attire and partaken of a light refreshment, a reply was waiting. Phèdre read it and sighed.
"Now?" Joscelin asked.
She nodded. "Now."
For this last, shortest leg of the journey, we took the carriage, with the arms of Montrève etched and painted on the doors. There were protocols to be observed. Ti-Philippe, Hugues, Gilot, and another of our men-at-arms served as outriders, guarding our passage.
Upon our arrival at the Palace, we were ushered directly into the Queen's presence.
It was a formal reception, which I had not reckoned on. Although I was seldom able to forget my parentage, I forgot, betimes, that it meant I was a Prince of the Blood, and entitled to due courtesies. Drustan was present, which was not always the case. But during the summer months, the Cruarch of Alba crossed the Straits to abide with his wife, the D'Angeline Queen.
When it came my turn to greet them, I bowed; the courtier's bow that protocol dictates when acknowledging those whose rank is higher than one's own, yet within the same echelon. "Your majesties."
"Prince Imriel." The Queen inclined her head. "Thank you for coming."
Drustan mab Necthana smiled. "Well met once more, Prince Imriel."
They were an unlikely couple, as unlikely as Phèdre and Joscelin—more so, in appearance. Ysandre was tall and fair, a quintessentially D'Angeline beauty, with pale gold hair and violet eyes. She resembled her mother's side of her family, House L'Envers.
Drustan was one of the Cruithne, the Pictish folk of Alba—dark-haired and dark-eyed, his skin tattooed in whorls of blue woad. Even his face was decorated thus. Although it was strange and barbaric to the D'Angeline eye, I thought there was an odd beauty in it.
There were three others present, one of whom made me grit my teeth. I didn't like Duc Barquiel L'Envers, who was the Queen's maternal uncle. He had proved himself a hero twice over, which I knew. It was Barquiel L'Envers who launched a daring rescue from behind fortress walls onto the field of Troyes-le-Mont, where Waldemar Selig wielded his skinning knife and Joscelin had begun the terminus. And it was Barquiel L'Envers who held the City of Elua some two years later against the forces of Percy de Somerville, another pawn my mother duped into treachery.
For that, Duc Barquiel was made Royal Commander, but I still didn't like him. When he looked at me, he saw a threat to Ysandre's throne, nothing more. Also, I was certain it was his daughter who tried to have me killed in Khebbel-im-Akkad, far from D'Angeline justice.
Whether he suggested it to her, I didn't know, but I had no doubt he would gladly see me dead. I didn't think he would be so foolish as to try anything here in Terre d'Ange. Ysandre made it clear that a crime against me is a crime against House Courcel. But I still remembered the words with which Barquiel L'Envers greeted her proclamation.