Kushiel’s Dart

When he had gone, I laughed. "It seems my turn for dire prophecy has passed."

"You can have mine," Joscelin said wryly. "It seems I’m doomed to make the same choice a thousand times over."

"Are you sorry?" I searched his face in the faint light.

"No." Joscelin shook his head. "No," he whispered, and took my face in his hands, lowering his head to kiss me, unbound hair the color of summer wheat falling forward to curtain us.

It was sweet, very sweet, and I felt the rightness of it in our shared breath, the steady beat of his heart matching time with my own.

When he lifted his head, the shadow of a smile curved his lips. "But there will likely be times when I am."

"Likely there will," I murmured. "As long as it’s not now."

"No," he said, and smiled in full. "Not now."

Above our heads, Elua’s marble hands remained spread in blessing.

Thus did I keep the promises I had made on that long and terrible journey; and afterward, you may be sure, Ysandre de la Courcel had me dancing attendance upon her to make up for time lost on my own business. While she bid fair to make a wise and compassionate ruler, she was also a D’Angeline noblewoman approaching her wedding-day, and indulged her foibles accordingly. Never in her life had she been allowed the luxury of being girlish; if she seized it now, I, who had been raised to fripperies, could not blame her.

One such which demanded my attention was the bedecking of Alban royalty in D’Angeline finery: to wit, the splendid gown Ysandre commissioned for Grainne.

The Queen of Terre d’Ange was more than a little fascinated with the Warrior Queen of the Dalriada. There must have been threescore women fighting among the Albans, but Grainne was the only one whose status was, in its own way, comparable to Ysandre’s.

Eamonn’s death had not diminished her. If her bright spirit was banked with sorrow, it was deepened as well. She stood patiently beneath the Royal Tailor’s prodding as he fitted her, showing a glimmer of her old amusement as she caught my eye.

The gown, a glory of scarlet silk and gold brocade, was too narrow through the waist, though she had been measured no more than a week prior. I listened to the tailor’s muttering and laughed.

"How long?" I asked Grainne in Eiran.

"Three months." She laid her hand on the faint swell of her belly and smiled complacently. "If it is a boy, I will name him Eamonn."

"Is it Rousse’s?"

She smiled again. "It may be so."

Ysandre raised impatient brows. She spoke some bit of Cruithne, but the Eiran dialect took time to master, or great necessity. I’d had the advantage of both. I explained to her what Grainne had said.

"She fought," Ysandre said in astonishment, "with child?"

"It was too soon to be sure, then," I said diplomatically. There is a dreadful Eiran tale about an ancient Queen running a footrace great with child; I spared her that, and was glad I’d not told her about Eamonn’s head, preserved in quicklime.

"Will Quintilius Rousse wed her?" Ysandre inquired.

I translated for Grainne, who laughed.

"I do not think it matters to her, my lady," I replied.

"That’s fine," Ysandre said to the Royal Tailor, waving one hand dismissively. "Make the adjustments." She looked consideringly at me. "What of you, near-cousin? Will you wed your Cassiline?"

One does not refuse to answer a direct question from one’s sovereign, but glancing at her face, I saw that she was genuinely interested. "No, my lady," I said simply. "Anathema or no, Cassiline vows bind for a lifetime. Joscelin betrays them every day he is with me, and that is his choice. To wed would be a mockery, and that he cannot do, nor I ask."

Ysandre, I think, understood; her ever-present Cassiline guards stared straight ahead, and what they thought, I cannot guess, nor did I care.

"Will you return to Naamah’s Service?" she asked then.

"I don’t know." I busied myself with assisting Grainne as she divested herself and dressed in her own garb, handing her kirtle over the tailor’s folding modesty-screen. It was one of those questions that lay between Joscelin and I, and one we had avoided. I faced it now, in part, meeting Ysandre’s gaze. "You have been kind, your majesty, and I have assurances of hospitality from good friends." It was true; Gaspar Trevalion had promised I should never want for aught, and Cecilie and Thelesis as well. "But if I am rich in friends, I am penniless in pocket."

This, too, was true; and a considerable fortune awaited me as a Servant of Naamah. There were other reasons, too, but those were harder to voice. Poverty, everyone understood.

"Oh, that!" Ysandre laughed, beckoning to a page. "Summon the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Tell him it’s regarding Lord Delaunay’s estate."

He came with alacrity, a lean and grizzled man, clutching sheaves of paper. Ysandre had dismissed the Royal Tailor by then, and given Grainne leave to go, which she took, bending one last look of quiet amusement my way.