“True,” he agreed.
“Well, we could start in La Serenissima,” Phèdre said thoughtfully, ignoring our comments. “They kept her secrets well at the Temple of Asherat, but of a surety, someone there knows. Mayhap they’d be willing to talk after so long.”
“We?” I said.
She gave me one of her deep looks. “You didn’t suppose we’d let you go alone.”
I glanced at Joscelin, uncertain.
“This time she’s right,” he said. “You came too damnably close to dying in Alba while we were half a world away. I’ll not run that risk again.”
It made me feel immeasurably better. “So it’s a start. What else?”
“Follow the tale,” Phèdre said simply. “It’s not much, but it’s somewhat.”
“The Bella Donna,” I murmured.
Joscelin rolled his eyes.
My mother had spent almost fourteen years claiming sanctuary in the Temple of Asherat in La Serenissima. In Tiberium, I’d learned that an odd cult of faith had sprung up around her presence there: the Bella Donna, the beautiful woman wrongfully accused, mourning her lost son. It was said that the goddess Asherat-of-the-Sea, herself a grieving mother, had taken pity on her, dissolving the walls of her sanctuary-prison, so that the Bella Donna could go in search of her missing son.
What the tale failed to take into account was that I had in fact been found for some years before my mother vanished. And it wasn’t Melisande who had found me and brought me out of darkness, but Phèdre.
My mother had sent her, though. That much was true.
“Stories feed on kernels of truth,” Phèdre said pragmatically. “There have to have been sightings. And then there’s Menekhet.”
“Menekhet?” I echoed.
She nodded. “She counted Ptolemy Dikaios an ally. I’ll warrant he knows somewhat.” Her brows furrowed. “I’ll warrant he’s a member of your Unseen Guild, too. If ever there was a candidate ripe for covertcy and intrigue, it would be Pharaoh of Menekhet.”
“It’s not my Guild,” I said automatically
“What about your senator’s wife?” Joscelin asked. “Claudia Fulvia.”
I shook my head. “Claudia didn’t know anything beyond what she told me. I do believe that much. I daresay her masters didn’t trust her with more than she needed to know.” I grinned at the memory. “Claudia had her skills, but discretion wasn’t among them. I’d reckon the Ephesian ambassador a better wager.”
“Diokles Agallon,” Phèdre said aloud, remembering.
I shrugged. “He offered a trade of favors. When I refused, he bade me remember his name. He implied that few within the Guild would be willing to make such a trade. And Canis did have an Ephesian accent.” I frowned. “Or somewhat close to it, at any rate.”
“I’d sooner hunt across Caerdicca Unitas than chance your owing favors to the Unseen Guild,” Joscelin observed. “From what I’ve heard of them, it seems an unnecessary risk.”
“Would you say the same if it meant leaving Phèdre for months on end?” I asked. “Mayhap years?”
“I . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Whatever you choose, we will aid you,” Phèdre said steadily. “No matter what.”
I smiled at her. “My thanks.”
I talked about these matters with Sidonie, too. We talked endlessly about all manner of things, and if half our discussions ended up in bed and breathless, we simply picked up the threads of conversation in the morning.
Elua, it was good.
So many things in my life had been hard. Since I’d been abducted as a child, life had dealt me blow after blow. I’d borne them. I’d survived. As Urist, the commander of the garrison at Clunderry, had noted when we’d been shipwrecked together, I had a knack for surviving. I’d struggled with guilt, struggled against strange magics, struggled to become a good man. But this . . . this was so blessedly easy. It seemed manifestly unfair that I would have to walk away from the best thing in my life.
“You can’t let the quest make you bitter,” Sidonie said once when we were lying in bed together, talking in love’s afterglow about things to come. “Unfair though it is.”
“I’m trying,” I said.
She smiled. “You’re doing well. It’s a lot to ask.”
I rolled onto my back. “Well, this deed pays for all. After this, no more.”
“A lavish wedding, mayhap.” Sidonie propped herself on her elbows, gazing at me. “In time, children.”
“Children.” I ran a lock of her hair through my fingers. “Yours and mine.”
The shadow of Dorelei and the son I’d lost lay between us, but Sidonie didn’t speak of it. We both knew. Neither of us ever forgot. “It’s going to be hard, you know,” she said instead. “Your mother.”
“I know,” I said. “Even with all she’s done.”
“She’s still your mother,” she said.
I’d only ever met my blood-mother twice. The first time, I hadn’t known who she was. I’d been ignorant of my own heritage, a Sanctuary-raised fosterling, ignorant of my own face. I’d thought she was wonderful.
The second time, I’d known.
That time, I had despised her.
I still did. Since the day Phèdre, Joscelin, and I had ridden out of Drujan and Lord Amaury Trente had greeted me as Prince Imriel de la Courcel, turning my world inside out, I’d lived my life under the poisonous cloud of Melisande Shahrizai’s monstrous, unspeakable treason. She had been condemned to death before I was born, before I was even conceived. There was no doubt in my mind that she deserved the sentence, none at all.
And yet . . . she had loved me. I didn’t doubt that, either. A few years ago, I’d finally steeled myself to read the letters she’d written me during the long years of her exile in the Temple of Asherat. And I could not forget that the woman I was meant to bring to justice had also been a doting mother, filled with fierce, unexpected love, counting my infant fingers and toes.
I stared at the ceiling. “How do you suppose it will be done?”
“After so long?” Sidonie’s voice was gentle. “I imagine she’ll be asked to make a confession, then given a choice.”
“Poison or the blade?” I asked.
She nodded. “A swift-acting poison.”
“And the body displayed,” I said dryly.
“Probably.” Sidonie didn’t flinch. “Imriel, I hate this, too. On some level, I daresay even my mother hates it. You wanted a voice in this choice. If it hurts that badly, if you want me to step down . . .”
“No.” I rolled onto my side, grasping her upper arms hard enough to bruise. “No. I want you, all of you, but as you’re meant to be.” I flexed my fingers, then let go with an effort. “Wife, mother, and Queen, Sidonie. Nothing less.”
She brushed a lock of hair from my brow. “’Tis still a high price.”
“I’ll pay it,” I said. “Any price.”
We fell to kissing, then, rolling in the tangled bedsheets. Every time I thought my desire was spent, I found it wasn’t. This time, this respite, was short and precious. Autumn was tipping toward winter. Come spring, I would be forced to choose a course of action. But not yet, not now. What my mind denied, my body knew. I nudged Sidonie’s knees apart, settled between her thighs. I felt her body accepting mine. Sank into her like I was coming home.
Love.
You will find it and lose it, again and again.
No.
“No,” I said aloud.
“No?” Sidonie’s voice, bemused. Her hips rose to meet mine, nails digging into my buttocks, urging me deeper.
Alais’ voice in my memory.
I think she’s going to need you very badly one day.
“No,” I repeated, saying it to the Priest of Elua who had uttered that long-ago prophecy, saying it to Alais with her dreams and dire forebodings. I shook my head, dispelling all their warnings and fears. “No, no, no. I’ll do it. I’ll pay the price. Only don’t leave me.”
“Never,” Sidonie gasped.
“Stay with me?” I pressed.
“Always.” Her back arched; it was a promise, not a signale. “Always.”
Seven
Life continued apace.
Swift, too damnably swift. The bright blaze of autumn’s foliage flared and dimmed. Leaves turned brown and dry, loosed their moorings. In the mornings, the garden where I practiced the Cassiline discipline, telling the hours, sparkled with hoarfrost. The members of Sidonie’s guard watching me huddled in woolen cloaks.
It was the one time of day I always had a pair of her guards in attendance, the one time of day I was otherwise alone and isolated. It had been Claude de Monluc’s idea, not mine, and Sidonie swore she hadn’t asked it of him. If there were any complaints among the guards, I never heard them. I was glad of their presence.
There hadn’t been any threats, but there was a lingering uneasiness beneath the truce. During the nights, it was easy to forget. During the days, there were reminders.
One came in the form of a ridiculous suit pushed all the way from the provincial court of Namarre to the Palace Court. I held among the estates of my inheritance the duchy of Barthelme, located in the province of Namarre. The seneschal had reported the suit to me—some incident of a vassal lord, the Baron Le Blanc, claiming I had violated an obscure clause in his charter of tenure that granted him a tithing exemption on Muscat grapes.
As it happened, it was true. The Duc de Barthelme who had signed the charter some three hundred years ago had been possessed of a surpassing fondness for Muscat wine and had waived the customary tithe in favor of an annual keg of the barony’s finest. Generations later, an enterprising successor to the duchy had managed to evade the clause in favor of a monetary tithe, and the clause had eventually been forgotten altogether until Jean Le Blanc uncovered it.
According to my seneschal, the matter had been settled in the provincial court. The bailiff’s ruling had been favorable to Le Blanc. The records were surveyed assiduously, and Barthelme was assessed a fine for a hundred and eleven years’ worth of illegally gathered tithes.
The incident stuck in my mind because it had been a sizable sum, and when I’d told Sidonie, she’d laughed and said it was a good thing she wasn’t in love with me for my wealth. I’d given it no more thought until Sidonie brought it up again.
“You remember your old friend Baron le Blanc?” she said one evening. “He’s back.”
I stared at her. “The fellow with the Muscat? Whatever for?”
We were dining in her chambers. Sidonie shrugged, spearing a piece of roasted capon. “Lost revenues on a hundred and eleven years’ of tithes.”
“It was a stupid clause,” I said.
“It was,” she agreed. “But that’s not the point. The Namarrese bailiff ruled that since the Barons of Le Blanc collected revenues on a hundred and eleven years’ worth of their finest Muscat in lieu of tithing it, he’s no right to complain. Not unless he’s prepared to deliver a hundred and eleven kegs of Muscat to you. Now he’s demanding a hearing Ex Solium.”
Any D’Angeline peer who felt himself wronged by the regional judiciary had a right to demand a hearing from the throne. It was an old law, but one seldom used for frivolous matters.
I raised my brows. “Is Ysandre going to hear it?”
Sidonie shook her head. “I don’t know how it passed through the Court of Assizes, but it did. He’s hired a persuasive advocate. Even so, they decided it wasn’t worth Mother’s time, so it landed on my plate. I’m to take the hearing as a representative of the throne.”
“A suit brought against me as the Duc de Barthelme,” I observed.
“Mm-hmm.” She tapped her fork idly against the rim of her plate. “Passing odd, is it not?”
“It is,” I agreed. “Will you hear it?”
“Gods, no!” she said fervently. “No, I’m not about to walk into that trap. I pleaded lover’s bias in the matter, and threw it back to the Court of Assizes. Let the Chancellor make of it what he will. If Le Blanc persists, his silver-tongued advocate can pitch his suit to my mother and find out how well she enjoys having her time wasted.”
I frowned. “It is odd, though.”
“Yes,” Sidonie said. “It is.”
Baron Jean Le Blanc never did get his hearing and his suit was withdrawn for reasons that were never made clear. Still, rumor circulated in its wake. My detractors whispered that it was proof that I was exerting undue influence over Sidonie.
It troubled her, and me too, although mostly for her sake. In many ways, we were still coming to know one another as adults. If I’d learned nothing else about Sidonie, I knew for a surety that she had a keen sense of justice and a determined adherence to the rule of law, instilled in her by both parents, amplified by her own sensibilities.
As much as I loathed to mark the passage of time, I was almost glad when the autumn days turned to winter, shortening, and the Longest Night drew nigh.
It was a time of license and sheer revelry, and although it had its roots in a tradition older than the coming of Blessed Elua, it was one D’Angelines had adopted wholeheartedly.
It was sacred.
It was joyous, too.
For me it held a special significance. Three years ago, on the Longest Night, I had kissed Sidonie for the first time. It had all begun in earnest that night. I still shuddered at the memory of her gold-masked face lifting toward mine, our lips meeting. My Sun Princess. The next year, the next Longest Night, I’d passed in Alba. I’d knelt in the snow, keeping Elua’s vigil. That was the night Dorelei had finally surmised to whom my heart belonged. The following year . . . that, I’d passed in Vralia, hunting Berlik. I’d no idea when it had fallen, not for sure. It might have been the night I killed him, or it might have fallen afterward.