Kushiel’s Dart

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.

Chapter Sixty-Two

The scale of the Tsingani horse-fair at the Hippochamp caught me unprepared.