Kushiel’s Dart

And now Melisande was in La Serenissima, close enough to the family of the Doge to learn in a day that their soothsayer had received a visitor. Prince Benedicte’s eldest daughter, Marie-Celeste, was wed to the Doge’s son…a near-incestuous knot of the deadly Stregazza, who had poisoned Isabel L’Envers de la Courcel.

Ysandre’s nearest kin who were of the Blood.

Oh, I knew. My hands closed on a fold of the sangoire cloak, feeling the rich velvet beneath my fingertips. I could smell, faintly, Melisande’s scent. Why had she kept it? I couldn’t answer it, my mind shying away from the question. But what she meant it for now, I knew well enough.

A challenge, an opening gambit.

I touched my throat, bare of her diamond.

Somewhere in that deadly coil of La Serenissima, a plot was hatching. It was a long way, a very long way, from Ysandre’s throne in the City of Elua. But intrigue has a long reach, when thrones are at stake. Someone, at Ysandre’s right hand, concealed poison at their heart.

And I could find them out.

That was what the cloak meant, of course. Melisande knew full well how I had served Delaunay, Alcuin and I. He’d let her know as much. Like her, he was a master, and could not bear to be entirely without an audience…one solitary witness, who could appreciate his artistry, the tremendous scope and complexity of his undertaking. Whoremaster of Spies, his detractors called him, when the halcyon days of Ysandre’s wedding and D’Angeline victory had passed.

Witness and opponent, Melisande had chosen me as her equal.

I was an anguissette and a sometime Servant of Naamah, that much, the world knew; trained to observe, to remember, to analyze. Not many knew that. Even those who did put little stock in it. I had been at the wrong place at the right time, nothing more. I nearly believed it myself, and sometimes, I think, it was true.

Others would find it easy to believe.

Who would the gatekeeper have trusted?

I could count them on my fingers. Gaspar Trevalion, Percy de Somerville, Barquiel L’Envers; a half a dozen others. No more.

I could find out, as I had found out that Childric d’Essoms served L’Envers, as I had found out that Solaine Belfours was Lyonette de Trevalion’s puppet. People will speak before an anguissette, careless as with no other, not even the pillow-talk of the Night Court. I stroked the velvet pile of the sangoire cloak. Delaunay had sent all the way to Firezia to find dye-makers who could recreate it. We’d lost the art, in Terre d’Ange. That didn’t happen often. Such a beautiful color, Melisande had said, once. It suits you.

It would be easy, so easy, to begin again; I was born to it, I thought, blinking away the red wash that hazed my vision. Joscelin began every morning with the smooth execution of the Cassiline forms drilled into him since he was ten, that deadly, private dance he now performed in the gardens of Montrève, while members of the household watched with covert admiration.

And I, I channeled my gifts and their awful yearnings into my studies, which I was loathe to abandon. No reason to do so, truly. What texts I had, I could easily forward to the City; aught else, I carried in my own skull. And there were Yeshuites aplenty in the City, to carry on Seth ben Yavin’s teaching, and the Royal Library, and booksellers, too. And the bequest of Delaunay’s house, largely unspent, enough to buy a home in the City, a modest home.

Montrève.

There was Montrève, but it would continue; I was fooling myself, if I thought it needed my hand. It had its own staff and holdings, and I need never doubt the loyalty of Purnell and Richeline, happily installed, making of it a home such as his parents had at Perrinwolde, in the absence of the Chevalier and his Lady, Cecilie.

I could always come back. I would, too. I loved it here.

Almost as much as I had loved being Delaunay’s anguissette, bright star in Naamah’s crown.

Joscelin.

Ah, Joscelin, I thought, and could have wept. My beautiful boy, if not so chaste; truly, I had an ill-luck name. How many times had I proved a trial nigh beyond bearing, how many times had I promised; this is the last? The old priest-he was the same, I was sure of it-had said it. You have stood at the crossroads and chosen, and like Cassiel, you will ever stand at the crossroads and choose, choose again and again, the path of the Companion. My fault, my doing. I sank my hands into the deep, heavy fabric of my sangoire cloak. So many times I had worn it; so many assignations, always blind to Delaunay’s purpose, obedient nonetheless.

It would be different, to do it knowing. It would be different, carrying the secret of my own purpose locked within the vault of my heart, playing counter to Melisande’s deadly game.

It would be harder.