"You're right to fear Melisande's influence," she said somberly when we had finished. "Cesare never did, and Lorenzo Pescaro . . . well, his interest lies in ships and trade, and little else. No one knows what truly passes in the Temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea; no one except the priestesses and eunuchs, and they're a close-mouthed lot. But I have heard rumors, this year past. You know I continue to work with the Courtesans' Scholae? They hear things no one else does, though I suppose I don't need to tell you that, my dear."
"Rumors?" I inquired.
A servant entered the room to replenish our glasses of rich Caerdicci red. After months without, it was a luxury beyond words to drink good wine. Allegra thanked him graciously, waiting until he left. "Rumors," she said, then. "Of a secret cult of worship."
"Of Melisande?" My voice cracked.
Joscelin merely swore.
"She took the Veil of Asherat the minute she entered La Serenissima," Allegra said. "She claimed sanctuary and has endured exile in the Temple without complaint for twelve years. She is a mother be reaved. And though few have seen her face, her beauty is renowned. It takes little more to spark the beginnings of a legend."
"She is also," I observed, "a convicted traitor condemned to execution."
"So Terre d'Ange claims. It is easy for people to disbelieve, here. Whatever allegations have been made of her, nothing was proved in La Serenissima." Allegra's expression was grave. "They are rumors, noth ing more. But you are right to fear."
"Wonderful," Joscelin said sourly, putting his head in his hands. "So now we worry that some Serenissiman fanatic will declare Melisande Shahrizai the living avatar of Asherat-of-the-Sea and set out on a holy mission to destroy her enemies?"
"No, love." I smiled at him. "That's why you and I are here."
We talked long into the night, the three of us, and Allegra agreed to the arrangements I requested. I slept poorly and woke early, spending my time composing a reply to Melisande's letter. It wasn't easy. In the end, I kept it simple and to the point.
Swear to me in Kushiel's name that I will have no cause to regret it and you shall see your son.
Summoned by Allegra, Ricciardo Stregazza arrived at Villa Gaudio that morning, and we went through the entire story again. This time, Imriel was present for it, listening with his eyes shadowed and wary, pained at the living reminders of his parents' treason. Not until Ricciardo and Allegra's son Lucio, now sixteen and filled with good-natured manful pride, took Imri to the stables to choose a mount of his own did his spirits lighten.
"He's a good lad, isn't he?" Ricciardo said, watching them go.
"Yes," I said. "That, and more."
My message was delivered by way of an anonymous courier, a stone-mason from one of the Scholae Ricciardo represented. We waited at Villa Gaudio for the man to make his slow return. Allegra took us on a tour of her gardens, where a few late-blooming blossoms lingered.
"I'm sorry," she apologized, glancing at Joscelin. "My lord Cassiline, this must be terribly dull for you."
"No." He gave her his best Cassiline bow. "Not at all, my lady Allegra. I am passing fond of gardens."
I remembered how we had first come here together at Ricciardo's invitation, when Joscelin and I had scarce been speaking to one another. Such a haven it had seemed! We had gardens in Montrève, too, although there are as many herbs as flowers. Richeline Purnell, who is my seneschal's wife, tends them lovingly. Joscelin knelt in one for many hours contemplating his anguish and his Cassiline vows, the day I told him I was returning to Naamah's Service to answer Melisande's challenge.
That seemed a very long time ago.
Ricciardo's stone-mason returned before dusk, bearing a letter with a single phrase written on it.
I swear it.
The handwriting was shaky. It was not noticeable, not to one who didn't know it well, not to one whose own hand wasn't trained in the elegant formal script of D'Angeline nobility and adepts of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. I noticed.
Melisande's hand had trembled as she wrote it.
My heart quickened within my breast and my breathing grew shal low. My blood beat in my ears, sounding out the Name of God, while a different name throbbed in my pulse. Blessed Elua, I prayed, let me be strong.
It was a sober meal we passed that night, and much of it due to my own distraction. Ricciardo and Allegra's daughter Sabrina joined us, along with her husband. In the year we had been gone, their studious, even-tempered daughter had surprised them by falling in love with a poet, a minor son of one of the Hundred Worthy Families. They were wed now, and her belly just beginning to swell with their first-born. I noted the tender pride which with she carried herself and thought on the mysteries of life.
"You feel it?" she asked Imriel, inviting him to lay his hands on her. "It will begin to move, soon."
His face was a study in solemn awe. "I helped Liliane to deliver a kid, once," he told her. "It was backward, but it came out all right, because she was there. Brother Selbert always called on her to attend when a goat was birthing.”
"Well." Sabrina smiled. "Then I know who to call upon, if the midwife has troubles."
The goat-herd prince. I remembered the stories they had told of him at the Sanctuary of Elua, and the simple-minded acolyte Liliane whom animals trusted, and my heart ached. He should have had that life, should have grown to manhood there in the mountains of Siovale, fit and happy, scrambling over crags.
It should have been so.
But there still would have been Melisande.
We left for the Temple in the morning, travelling by a hired gon dola. Ricciardo and Allegra would have gladly given their own vessels, their own guards to attend us, but I preferred it this way. If aught went awry, no taint of it would fall upon them. We travelled the waterways of the mainland and crossed to the islanded city, shivering a little in the cold air. I'd meant to procure new attire, but in the end, some whim made me wear my Jebean garb, Ras Lijasu's finest gift, with a borrowed cloak flung over it, gold and ivory bangles at both wrists. Let Melisande, I thought, remember how far we had travelled.
It was a bright day despite the chill, and La Serenissima shone brightly under the wintry sun, and brightest of all the Temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea with its gilded domes. We disembarked at the bus tling Campo Grande, where no one looked strangely at three D'Angelines in Jebean attire. I listened to the merchants' cries as they hawked their wares in a babble of competing tongues, understanding more than I ever had before. In front of the Temple, the eunuchs stood impassive with their ceremonial spears. They had chosen to be un manned, or so it was said. I thought of Rushad and Erich the Skaldi, and wondered how Uru-Azag was faring in the city of Nineveh.
"Well?" Joscelin laid a hand on my shoulder. Imriel stuck close by his side, unmoved by the marvels of the marketplace of the Campo Grande. The shadow of fear was back in his eyes. "Are you ready?"
"You're sure?" I asked Imri.
He nodded slowly despite his fear, his jaw setting with a familiar stubbornness.
"Yes," I said to Joscelin. "We're ready."
EIGHTY-SEVEN
"IMRIEL."One word, nothing more; half-breathed, a plea, an involuntary prayer. If I could, I would have stopped my ears against the depths of emotion in it—pain, sorrow, remorse and a relief so keen it made my heart ache.
I couldn't bear to look at her.
Imriel stood still and tense within her chambers, his face bloodless beneath its tan. "Mother."
Melisande glanced swiftly at me, and I had to look at her. "He knows," I said. "Ysandre's men told him. One of them lost a brother at Troyes-le-Mont."
The knowledge was bitter to her. I watched her absorb it like a blow, the smooth eyelids flickering. Why was it that nothing on earth seemed to mar her beauty? Time had only burnished it; grief only deepened it. "I am sorry," she said to Imriel. "Believe me when I tell you I am so very sorry for what you have endured."
"Why?" He took a step forward, quivering with rage and tears. "Why?'
It was the question, the child's eternal question, directed at last to one who had much for which to answer. Melisande bore it unflinching. "Oh, Imriel," she said softly. "So many reasons, and so few. Would you know them all? It would be a long time in the telling."
"People died because of you!" he spat.
"Yes." Her voice was steady. "And people have died because of Ysandre de la Courcel, and because of Phèdre nó Delaunay, too. Messire Verreuil here has dispatched a good many of them himself. Do you despise them because of it?"
"No." Imriel sounded uncertain. Joscelin shot a concerned look at me, and I shook my head imperceptibly. "That's different."
"It's different because you know their story, their side of the story." Melisande's face was impossibly calm. "You don't know mine. You have asked. Will you hear it?"
We were standing, all of us, at odd angles to one another, awkward and formal. Winter sunlight filled the marbled chambers and a pair of charcoal braziers provided warmth. In the background, the unseen fountain splashed. Imriel turned to me, tears in his eyes.
"I don't want to know," he said in Jeb'ez. "I shouldn't have asked. Do I have to listen?"
"No." I shook my head. "The choice is yours."
"Is it true?"
I regarded Melisande, whose gaze had sharpened upon hearing her son address me in an unfamiliar tongue. "Yes," I said to Imriel in D'Angeline. "It is true. Every story has two sides, even your mother's."
Joscelin shifted, but offered no comment.
Imriel stared at his mother.
There was no escaping the resemblance between them, nor ever would be. The shape of his chin, he'd got from his father, and the straight line of his brows. Everything else was hers—the elegant bones of his face, the clear brow, the generous, sensual mouth, the blue-black hair that fell in ripples rather than curls. And the eyes, Elua, the eyes!