"No!" Imriel raised his gaze, startled. "It is . . ." He looked around him and gestured, helpless. "It is a Serenissiman place. It is meant to be yours, my lord. Not mine."
"Good." Severio smiled. "Then we are agreed, little cousin. Shall we become friends? Your foster-mother Phèdre seems to think it a good idea."
Although I was not, properly speaking, Imriel's foster-mother, there was nothing Severio could have said to gratify him more. We passed some hours in pleasant conversation, giving once again a very abbre viated history of our adventures. Even Joscelin relaxed, forgetting his old resentment. It had been a bad time between us, when Severio be came my patron—the worst of times. But we had grown through it and past it, and no one could not deny that Severio too had grown. The rude Serenissiman lordling with royal D'Angeline blood in his veins had become a man whose merit was worth reckoning.
I would have liked to meet his wife. But this was La Serenissima, still, and for all it is goddess-ruled, the role of women does not equal that of men. And too, I suppose, she may not have been as eager to meet me. In the City of Elua, they still speak with awe of the fee Severio Stregazza wagered for the first assignation upon my return to the Service of Naamah.
For all that, Severio was not insensible of how matters differed in Terre d'Ange. "What of his mother?" he asked, nodding at Imriel when we had finished our tale. "She sought once before to set him on the D'Angeline throne. Will she try it again?"
"Not as before," I said. "Not by such means."
"Asherat-of-the Sea grant it may be so," he said.
Thus passed our meeting with Severio Stregazza, and I was glad we had done it. By the time we departed La Serenissima, Imriel was more at ease with the notion that he was indeed a Prince of the Blood and a member of an extended family, not all of whom were traitors and conspirators. Thanks to my folly, the knowledge of his lineage had been broken harshly to him, and the attempts upon his life in Khebbel-im- Akkad had done little to endear his kin to him.
Severio had helped offset that impression, he and his high-spirited Immortali, who ferried us back to Villa Gaudio, all the while serenading us—or me, at least—with absurdly high-flown lyrics, until Joscelin rolled his eyes in mock dismay and Imriel laughed aloud.
For that alone, it was worth it.
EIGHTY-NINE
IT WAS an uneventful journey home, for which I was grateful.Home. Home!
How long had it been? Two years come spring, since I'd awakened in the night weeping and shaking, dreaming of Hyacinthe. It seemed longer, sometimes; sometimes, it seemed the time had gone in the blink of an eye.
A year ago, we had been in Daršanga.
Imriel had grown taller, an inch at least since we had arrived in Jebe-Barkal. In the spring, he would be twelve. What remained of his childhood—what the Mahrkagir had left of it—would pass quickly. I was reminded of it every day, watching him.
Our mercenary escort treated him with good-natured affection, and he was comfortable with that, more comfortable than he was with being treated as nobility. Goat-herd prince, barbarian's slave. These were the things he knew. They taught him how to curse in Caerdicci when they thought I was out of earshot. I smiled to myself and allowed it.
At night, I dreamed.
I dreamed I was alone on a barren island, surrounded by mists, and somewhere on the island was Hyacinthe. I never saw him, although I heard his voice, speaking my name. "Phèdre. Phèdre." And I danced alone on the barren rock, a vast courtly measure, retracing in a circle every step I had taken before. When I came to the beginning, I knew, the mists would clear, and at the center of my circle would be revealed the tower of the Master of the Straits.
Hyacinthe.
Only I never got to the end, in my dreams. I awoke before I could arrive, my heart pounding, the Name of God straining on the tip of my tongue.
All across the peninsula of Caerdicca Unitas, we retraced our steps. How many times had I made this journey? Once, with Ysandre and Amaury Trente—that is the one they tell tales about. Once, there and back, with Joscelin . . . and once, there. That was the last time. We had sailed to Menekhet, afterward.
Now we returned, step by step. Pavento, Milazza . . . we stayed at inns, where we might, and the Serenissiman sailors who escorted us stayed up late, drinking and carousing. I paid the tally unquestioning. When we were caught between towns, we made camp by fresh water. It was at one such site that I told Joscelin while we lingered beside the campfire, Imriel already abed, the Serenissimans passing the wineskin unheeding.
"She knew," I said, gazing into the flickering flames.
"What?" He was slow to understand, not having lived in my thoughts. "Melisande?"
I nodded. "She knew what I asked, and why, and made the bargain anyway. And then she told me."
Joscelin was silent for a time. "Why would she do it?"
"It was her gift," I said, raising my gaze. "Her gift to Imriel, she said. Because of love."
"Love." He repeated the word, and prodded the fire with a long branch.
"Love," I said.
In the embers of the fire, a half-charred branch shifted and fell, sending a shower of orange sparks ascending heavenward. "Can you claim to know the whole of Elua's will?" Joscelin murmured. "Those were the priest's words, in Siovale. If he told me then I would defy my Queen for the sake of Melisande Shahrizai's son, I would have laughed in his face."
I smiled. " 'Tis a dangerous force, this love."
One corner of Joscelin's mouth twitched. "That it is."
We crossed the border south of Milazza on a cold, dreary day. The ground was frozen solid and our horses stamped restlessly, hides cooling as we milled and awaited clearance from the Eisandine border-guards. If we had crossed in Camlach, we would have encountered the Black Shields of the Unforgiven, but this far south, they were the Lady of Marsilikos' men, clad in chain-mail with thick cloaks of sea-blue wool to keep them warm, each worked with Eisheth's symbol on the breast— two golden fish, nose to tail, forming a circle.
"Comtesse." The Captain of the Guard approached, bowing deeply.
His face was troubled. "We did not look for you here."
I raised my eyebrows. "Is it ordered that I may not pass?"
"No. No, of course not, my lady. It is only that. . . you were ru mored to have disappeared, in a faraway land." His gaze slide sideways toward Imriel. "Who is the boy?"
It was hard to gauge how much he knew; not much, I thought, or we would have been seized upon entry. Ysandre had kept the story quiet, fearing for Imriel's safety. But it was no secret that Prince Imriel de la Courcel had gone missing from the Little Court of La Serenissima ten years and more gone by, and Imri. . . Imri looked like who he was, his mother's son.
The guard along the border of Caerdicca Unitas would have reason to recognize the stamp of Shahrizai blood.
"He is my ward, for the moment." I folded my hands on the pom mel of my saddle. "And we do indeed come from a faraway land, much farther than you might imagine. That is all you need know, my lord Captain, and all the Queen would wish known. If it does not suffice, we will travel north and cross into Terre d'Ange at Southfort in Camlach. I am sure the word of Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève will be good enough for the Unforgiven ..."
"No!" The Captain winced, imagining the repercussions of turning away the Queen's favorite confidante and the missing Courcel prince. "Of course not. Passage is granted, for you and your companions. My apologies, Comtesse."
Thus did we enter Terre d'Ange.
It looked little different from the Caerdicci lands we had left be hind—hills and low mountains, growing more gentle the further in we rode. Fields lay fallow for winter, dull and grey beneath the lowering skies. Only the cedars that blanketed the sloping hillsides in patches were green. But it was home, and I breathed deeply of D'Angeline air. In the towns and villages, I heard nothing but my native tongue. It seemed strange, after so long. Now it was our Serenissiman escorts who were the foreigners, laughing as they struggled to communicate in langue d'oc and sailors' argot.
Imriel gazed about him with new eyes, seeing the land for the first time as both one who stood in line to inherit its rule, and as an exile returning. There were sorrow and hunger both in his gaze. What he thought, he kept to himself, and I did not press him.
At the inns where we stayed, we were recognized by the common-folk—I by the scarlet mote in my left eye, and Joscelin by his Cassiline arms. It was an occasion for a fête, each time, for our long absence had indeed engendered rumors of our death or disappearance. Wine flowed freely, for which I was hard-put to get them to accept coin, and the finest poets of the village turned out to vie for the honor of singing verses acknowledging our deeds.
Some were heroic.
Some were bawdy.
Imriel listened to both in silent amazement. For a mercy, no one in the villages put a name to his face. Here, in the countryside, the precise nature of Melisande's beauty has been forgotten. All the poems that once bore her name have been changed. At a casual glance, Imriel might pass for our son, the product of our commingled blood. In Saba, they believed it without question. And why not? My own appearance differed from that of my parents, who were dark and fair in turn.
I remember that much about them.
"They write poems about you," Imriel said, the night after the first such fête. "Poems! Why didn't you tell me, in Daršanga?"
"Would it have mattered?" I asked him.
After a moment, he shook his head. "No. Not then."
"I didn't think so, either. Anyway," I added, "they tell a good deal more stories about other people. When we are home, in the City, you will hear the Ysandrine Cycle, which is the great work of Thelesis de Mornay. Now that is a story worth hearing sung, how Ysandre assumed the throne and saved the realm from the Skaldi."
"You were there."
I shrugged. "Only at the end."