"Ah." Ysandre nodded once, satisfied. "I understand. Thank you." She turned to go, then paused. "Your companion Hyacinthe will return on the morrow, and you will make ready to leave. I thought you might like to have this. 'Tis small enough to port." She handed me a small, slim volume, much mended. I took and opened it, glancing at the pages, writ in an unfamiliar hand. "It's my father's diary," Ysandre said quietly. "He began it at the University in Tiberium. It ends shortly after my birth. There's a great deal about Delaunay. That's what made me dare to approach him."
"In the players' changing-room," I said without thinking, remembering. I looked up at her shocked face, and colored. "It is a long story, your majesty. Delaunay never knew I was there."
Ysandre shook her head. "My uncle was right. Whatever it is you do, Phedre no Delaunay, you seem to do it very well." Her violet gaze deepened. "My father wed out of duty, and not love. Elua grant you spare me the same fate. I will pray for your safe return, and pray you bring the Prince of the Cruithne with you. No more can I do. I must protect the realm as best I can."
I grieved for her burden; mine own seemed light beside it. "If it is possible, I will do it, my lady."
"I know."
We gazed at each other, the two of us, both of an age, yet so different.
"Be well," Ysandre said, and took my head in both hands, laying the formal kiss of blessing upon my brow. "May Elua bless and keep you. I pray that we will meet again."
She left, then, leaving me alone with my finished marque and my book. Since I had nothing else to do, I sat and read.
In the morning, Hyacinthe arrived, returning from the City. He had with him three rather good horses, foodstuffs in abundance, and two pack-mules that would bear our gear.
And he had clothing.
For himself, he would wear his usual garb, garishly colorful, covered over with a saffron cloak that was the Tsingani travelling color. He had brought a like cloak for me, with a maroon-lined hood, that went over a blue velvet gown with a three-flounced skirt with a maroon underlining. It was very fine, though a bit much, and the fabric was well-used, the nap worn shiny in places.
"Tsingani discard nothing needlessly," he reminded me. "Phedre, you will be my near-cousin, a by-blow gotten in one of the pleasure-houses of Night's Doorstep by a half-breed Tsingano trader. You've the eyes for it, anyway, at least excepting the one." He grinned. "As for you, Cassi-line ..." Hyacinthe held up a voluminous grey cloak, swirling it to reveal the lining.
It held an opalescent riot of color: madder, damson, ochre, cerulean and nacre. I laughed, covering my mouth.
"You know what it is?" Hyacinthe asked.
I nodded. "I saw one, once. It's a Mendacant's robe."
"It was Thelesis' idea, she conceived it with the Lady of Marsilikos." He handed the cloak to Joscelin, who received it expressionless. "You can't pass as Tsingani, Cassiline, not even a by-blow. And we need somewhat to explain your presence."
The wandering fabulists known as Mendacants come from Eisande. Among Elua's Companions, it was Eisheth who gave to mortals the gifts of music and story. So D'Angelines claim; our critics hold that she taught us to play and to lie. Be as it may, Eisandines are the finest storytellers, and the best among them the Mendacants, who are sworn to travel the realm, embroidering truth and fable together into one fabric.
If any D'Angeline would travel the long road with the Tsingani, it would be a Mendacant.
"Can you lie, Cassiline?" Hyacinthe was grinning again.
Joscelin swung the cloak over his shoulders. It settled around him, dove-grey and somber as his former priest's garb, until he shifted and a glimpse of swirling color was revealed. "I will learn," he said shortly.
"You can start with this." Ysandre de la Courcel had entered unannounced. She nodded at one of her dour Cassiline Guards, who held out an armload of gleaming steel.
Joscelin's gear—daggers, vambraces, sword and all. He gazed wide-eyed at the Queen.
"The arms belong to the family, and not the Cassiline Brotherhood, yes?" Ysandre said. "You offered me your sword, Joscelin Verreuil, and this is the sword I accepted. You will bear it, and your arms, in my service." A small smile played about her lips. "It is up to you to conceive a tale of why a wandering Mendacant should bear Cassiline arms."
"Thank you, your majesty" he murmured, bowing without thinking with arms crossed. He reached out then and took his gear from the scowling Brother, settling the belt around his waist, buckling on his vambraces and slinging on his baldric. With the hilt of his sword protruding from beneath the Mendacant cloak, he seemed to stand taller and straighter.
"You have done well," Ysandre said to Hyacinthe, who bowed. She surveyed the three of us. "All is in readiness for your journey. Phedre . . ." She handed me an object, a heavy gold ring on a long chain. I took it and looked; it bore the Courcel insignia, the swan crest. "It is my father's ring," Ysandre said. She held up her hand, which bore its twin. "I wear my grandfather's now. You may show it to Quintilius Rousse, if he doubts the truth of your word. And when you gain the distant shore of Alba, give it to Drustan mab Necthana, that he might know from whence it came. He will know it. I have worn it since my father's death."
"Yes, your majesty." I lifted the chain over my head and settled the ring under my clothing, where it lay below Melisande's diamond.
"Good," Ysandre said simply. She held herself proud and upright, letting nothing but courage show on her face. She was the Queen, she could afford to do nothing less. "Blessed Elua be with you all."
It was a dismissal, and our order to go. Hyacinthe and Joscelin bowed; I curtsied.
And thus did we set out.
SIXTY-0NE
The place to which we were bound was called the Hippochamp. One thinks of Kusheth as a harsh and stony land, but, of course, this is only true of the outermost verges. Inland, it is as rich and fertile as any of the seven provinces, with deep valleys cut through by mighty rivers.
We would travel westward across L'Agnace, taking the Senescine Forest road into Kusheth; or so Hyacinthe believed. He could not be sure until we intercepted one of the chaidrov, the imperceptible markings the Tsingani leave along their route. It would not matter, overmuch, in L'Agnace, which was under the Comte de Somerville's rule and peaceful. Of the Companions, Anael's gift was husbandry, and he taught much to mortals of the growing of good things and the care of the land. It made for a peaceful province, although L'Agnacites are fierce as lions when roused to defend their land, as Percy de Somerville's noble history as the Royal Commander evidenced.
Good weather graced our leavetaking, a damp early thaw rendering the air moist and gentle. Despite my fear at the vastness of our undertaking, I found myself in good spirits to be riding once more. Truly, nothing is worse than waiting idle, while fear preys on one's mind like ravens upon a corpse. And after the frozen terrors of Skaldia, the Senescine seemed almost friendly.
Our first day proved uneventful. We saw no one save a few farmers at early tilling for spring crops, who nodded in taciturn acknowledgment. Once we gained the forest road, we rode in solitude.
Hyacinthe made for a cheerful companion. He had brought a handheld timbale, which he played as he rode, his nimble fingers drumming and jangling out a merry rhythm. After our terrible journey of desperate, hurried silence and secrecy, it seemed odd and dangerous to Joscelin and me, but I saw the wisdom in it. Tsingani do nothing quietly, and there is as much deception in noise as there is in silence.
It was after we had paused for a luncheon that we saw the first sign of Tsingani on the road, passing a campsite near a forest stream. Scorched earth and scraps of metal gave evidence that a travelling forge had been erected there, and the Tsingani are known to be smiths. Hyacinthe scouted the area and loosed a shout of triumph. We hurried to his side, and he pointed to a split twig planted in the ground, one side bent westward.
"A chaidrov" he said, nodding. "We are on the right route."
So we continued our journey, following such Tsingani signs as Hyacinthe espied; indeed, all of us grew adept at spotting them. I will not speak overmuch of these travels, for the days passed without incident. From Hyacinthe, we learned somewhat of Tsingani ways, preparing ourselves for what we might find. In turn, I taught a few words of Cruithne to both he and Joscelin. It is more difficult than Skaldic, for there are sounds in the Pictish tongue that come hard to D'Angelines. I had always despised the fact that Delaunay had made me learn it; ironic, that I should need it so direly now.
The remainder of the time, I passed in reading the journal of Prince Rolande de la Courcel, that with which Ysandre had gifted me.
From this slim book, I pieced together the great and fateful romance that had bound Anafiel Delaunay's fate to the protection of Ysandre de la Courcel, and indeed, made of me what I was, a courtesan equipped to match wits with the deadliest of courtiers.
They had met at the University in Tiberium, of course; that much I had known. But I glimpsed Delaunay now through another's eyes, as a young man, full of beauty and a splendid passion to know. I had never known Delaunay as a youth. It surprised me to read his poems, carefully recorded by Rolande de la Courcel; wicked, biting satires that lampooned fellow students and masters alike. And it was Rolande who began calling him Delaunay, after his mother's name and the Eisandine shepherd lad Elua had loved. Once they were together—and I blushed to read that passage, wondering how Ysandre had taken it—it was the masters of the University who nicknamed him Antinous, after a lad beloved by an ancient Tiberian Imperator.
Rolande's nature shone through it all, a generous and reckless spirit who loved freely without reckoning the cost, truer to the Precept of Blessed Elua and the archaic ideologies of glory than the political machinations of a monarchy. I could only imagine how Delaunay had adored and despaired of this careless nobility, incapable of subtlety.
It was the death of Edmee de Rocaille that had caused a rift between them, after the University, after Delaunay had been castigated by his father and formally taken his mother's name. Hyacinthe and I had not been too far wrong; there was a longstanding bond between the Houses Rocaille and Montreve—strange, still, to think of Delaunay as aught but Delaunay—and Edmee had been a childhood friend to Delaunay in Siovale, betrothed to Rolande out of goodwill and because her family had ties to the royal House of Aragon.
A good arrangement, it seemed; there was fondness between all of them, and Edmee understood that she was trading passion to be the eventual Queen of Terre d'Ange, mother of heirs.
Then came her hunting accident.
It was obvious that Rolande genuinely grieved for her, and obvious too that he was blind to the possibility that Isabel L'Envers had been involved, attributing Delaunay's vehemence to a mix of grief and jealousy. It is a human failing, to attribute the best of motives to those we know the least, and the worst to those we love best; he loved too well, Rolande did, and feared to be lenient in his judgment and favor Delaunay because of it. He heeded Isabel, who flattered and bewitched him. And they were betrothed, for House L'Envers was powerful; betrothed, and wed.
And Delaunay wrote his satire.
I think that Rolande knew, when Isabel sought to have him banished. I read what he wrote privately, for none to behold, of how he argued long and hard with his father the King on Delaunay's behalf. The agreement they reached was a bitter compromise. Delaunay would live, and retain status such as his father's repudiation had left him, but his poetry was declared anathema. To own it was tantamount to treason.
That much, I had known. I had not known that every extant copy of Delaunay's works was gathered and burned. Nor that Prince Rolande de la Courcel had wept at the conflagration. I daresay no one knew, save Ysandre, who read these same words.
Somehow, then, somewhere, they were reconciled, Rolande and Delaunay. It falls within a gap in Rolande's journal; he wrote only, "All is forgiven, though nothing is the same. If we cannot have the past, Elua grant us a future." One might argue that he wrote of Isabel and not Delaunay, but for what followed.
It came upon the heels of Ysandre's birth, an event heralded in Rolande's life with mingled joy and terror at donning the mantle of fatherhood. That his relations with Isabel had grown bitter was obvious to one trained to read between the lines. I hoped that Ysandre had not discerned as much, though I doubted it. There was another gap, then Rolande wrote, "Anafiel has promised, swearing upon my ring, and my heart is glad for it though neither Isabel nor Father are pleased. But who among us is whole? He is the wiser half of my sundered soul, and I can give my firstborn no greater gift than to pledge my devotion entire." And then, "It is done, and witnessed by the priests of Elua."
Shortly after this, Rolande's journal ends. I know why, for he was caught up in the affairs of the heir of Terre d'Ange, and rode not long afterward to Camlach, to the Battle of Three Princes, where he lost his life.
So many killed, I mused, sitting beside the campfire the night I finished my reading of his diary. So much bloodshed. I had been a child still in Cereus House when these things had shaped Ysandre's life. Mine too, had I known it; but that pattern was forming in the distant future. While I learned how to kneel uncomplaining for hours at a time and the proper angle of approach for serving sweets after a meal, Ysandre was learning how greed and jealousy corrupt the human soul.
No wonder she clung to a girl's dream of love. I glanced at the well-worn journal, then toward the west, where dim streaks of dying sun glowed between the trees. We were near to Kusheth now, if we'd not crossed the border already. It was hard to tell, in the forest. Somewhere beyond the ability of my vision to scry lay the Straits of Alba, that wind-whipped expanse of water as grey and narrow and deadly as a blade, separating Ysandre from a dream.
Not a mere girl's dream, I reminded myself, but a Queen's; Ysandre's blue boy might have hands that would lie lightly upon the Crown, but they came gripping a spear, a thousand spears. It was a dream to pit against a nightmare, of D'Angeline heads bowed before the Skaldi sword. Thinking of Waldemar Selig, I shuddered. It was hard to imagine any Pictish prince who could stand against him, in all his brawn and might and the teeming loyalty of tens of thousands of Skaldi.
And yet. . . the Skaldi had felt the hobnailed sandal of Tiberium upon their necks, while the Cruithne had never known defeat. And Drustan mab Necthana was of Cinhil Ru's lineage, who had cast the soldiers of Tiberium from Alba.
Such a slender hope, and all of it resting now upon our shoulders, this unlikely threesome. I clutched Rolande's journal to me like a talisman, lifting my gaze to the emerging stars, and prayed that we would not fail.
SIXTY-TWO
The scale of the Tsingani horse-fair at the Hippochamp caught me unprepared.
Once we emerged from the Senescine, our route grew ever more obvious, despite the increasing number of roads. As the dank cold of false spring eased into the truer promise of spring-to-come, pale green buds emerged on the trees around us, and traffic grew steadily along the roads.
And amid the travellers, we saw Tsingani in numbers, the true Travellers, journeying always upon the Long Road.
There is another horse-fair at the Hippochamp that takes place in late summer, when the most promising of yearlings are green-broken, offered to the gadje noblemen for outrageous prices. That fair, Hyacinthe assured us, dwarfed this one, as did the fair in midsummer in Eisheth. This was primarily a Tsingani affair, when there were opportunities to be seized early, untried yearlings and stumbling foals at auction, only their bloodlines and the cunning gaze of their breeders to recommend them.
No one has ever made a count of the Tsingani in Terre d'Ange; they are too migratory to stand still for it, too suspicious to report honestly. I have seen them gathering and I can say that they are many, more than we reckon.
As we drew near to the Hippochamp, we passed caravans of Tsingani. It was a strange thing, to witness the change in Hyacinthe. For it was he whom they acknowledged, calling out greetings in their private dialect. And why not? He was young, bold and handsome, one of their own. Hyacinthe shouted back, waving his velvet cap, black eyes sparkling. Their tongue was mixed with D'Angeline, but I scarce understood a word of it.
"You didn't tell me I had to learn Tsingani," Joscelin muttered to me, riding close by my side.
"I didn't know," I replied, chagrined. Even Delaunay, scholar that he was, hadn't reckoned Tsingani a proper language. In all the time I had known Hyacinthe—through all the meals I'd eaten in his mother's kitchen—I'd never understood what it meant to him to be a Tsingano. In front of me, they spoke D'Angeline proper. I thought of all the casual cuffs and curses he'd endured, from the very beginning of our acquaintance, when the Dowayne's Guard had found me. I hadn't known. I hadn't understood. When he took a broken-down nag and built a profitable livery stable out of it, I hadn't realized how deeply rooted in Tsingani tradition it was. I'd merely thought him clever for it.
It is a funny thing, how one's perspective changes. I saw Hyacinthe through new eyes as we journeyed toward the Hippochamp. We passed Tsingani wagons, far more colorful and elaborate than Taavi and Danele's humble Yeshuite conveyance, though similar in design, and the young women hung out the back, making eyes at Hyacinthe. I learned to tell the unmarried ones, who wore their hair uncovered. They chattered and flirted as we passed, and Hyacinthe grew more desirable with every exchange.
If they seem shameless enough to make a D'Angeline blush—and some of them do, those Tsingani women—I will say that it is a deceptive thing, although I did not learn this until later. For all their licentious behavior, it is only show. Among their own, the Tsingani hold chastity in fierce regard. But I did not know this at the time, and I will admit that it galled me somewhat, to see the number of women who made free to bid for Hyacinthe's attention.
For Joscelin's part, his appearance was met with giggles and titters, whispers passed from lip to ear behind shielding hands. The Skaldic women had ogled him openly; Tsingani dared not. The law of laxta is fierce in their society. Hyacinthe could not translate this word exactly, but it is the unsullied virtue of a Tsingani woman. This may be lost in a hundred ways—suffice to say that if I'd ever had it, it was long gone—but foremost among them was the mingling of precious Tsingani blood with one of the gadje, the Others.